I heard on NPR yesterday that a hospital in New York has been conducting research and is close to being able to offer uterus transplants to women who want to bear children. You can listen to the story on NPR’s Day to Day by clicking here. You can read about the research here. Here’s some more on the subject from the AP via The Spokesman Review in Washington. Need a little satire with your news? Try this, from The Spoof, in the UK. Gotta love them Brits!
Uterus transplants. That’s right. Not lungs, which are necessary to breathe. Not kidneys, which are necessary to process and excrete fluids and minerals. Not a heart, which is, of course, the ultimate transplantable necessity. No, a uterus. Harvested from a woman who was unlucky enough to be killed while of childbearing age.
In case you hadn’t heard, having or using a uterus is not necessary for life. It’s not even, truly, necessary for a fulfilling life.
C’mon, folks. We are so obsessed with having (i.e. “bearing”) our own children that we will go through major abdominal surgery (we’re not talking about a laporoscopic procedure here) and treatment with immunosuppresant drugs for the sole purpose of being able to say we bore our own child?
How much attention is being paid to the impact of those immunosuppressives on a developing fetus? More importantly, why expose a child to any kind of risk associated with that therapy if it’s really not necessary?
Reproductive science has developed some marvelous therapies…first artificial imsemination then in vitro fertilization. We can now screen for a large number of genetic disorders early enough in pregnancy to allow parents the choice to bear a child with Trisomy 18 or cystic fibrosis. We can implant the ovum and egg from one couple into a woman’s body and successfully cultivate a pregnancy to a healthy conclusion.
Why is it so imperative for a woman to actively, personally participate in the incubation and delivery process to reach fulfilment in parenthood?
The basic immorality of this doesn’t even address the fact that this therapy will probably be out of the reach of all but the wealthiest infertile couples. The working poor infertile couple who has no health insurance will just have to go without. Or they can do what we’ve done for centuries…take in a family member’s child, adopt…
This seems the ultimate folly and vanity to me. If we want to outlaw some procedures, instead of focusing on embryonic stem cell (using cells which will be destroyed anyway) why not focus on something really needless, like transplanting uteri?
Posted by Cheryl 