GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: What is a good enough reason for a womb transplant?

domingo, 18 de noviembre de 2018

BioEdge: What is a good enough reason for a womb transplant?

BioEdge: What is a good enough reason for a womb transplant?

Bioedge

What is a good enough reason for a womb transplant?

by Michael Cook | 17 Nov 2018 |

Another chapter in the Reproductive Revolution. An Indian woman has given birth to a child gestated in her mother’s transplanted uterus. Meenakashi Walan, 28, and her husband, Hitesh Bhai, 30, from Gujarat, welcomed a daughter conceived with IVF nearly a year and a half after the transplant.

Births from “borrowed wombs” are not common but are no longer the stuff of headlines. What sets Ms Walan’s pregnancy apart, according to the Daily Mail, is the reason why she needed a uterus transplant. Hers had been damaged after a miscarriage and two abortions.

The couple conceived their first child naturally but the infant died at birth. She became pregnant twice more, but there were complications and both foetuses were aborted.

Ms Walan’s mother said that “I was heartbroken after her first newborn had died and then two abortions had scarred her uterus lining. When she told me that she can become a mother if she gets a uterus from me, I got excited.”

Mrs Walan, says the Daily Mail, is now an enthusiastic supporter of the procedure. “I feel uterus transplant is a noble cause - this is only alternative available for women who want to be mothers.”

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Occasionally we tag one of our articles “reproductive revolution” because it exemplifies how far law and technology take us once sex has been detached from reproduction. This week’s tale comes from India. A team at Galaxy Care Hospital in Pune has performed India’s first successful uterus transplant. A 45-year-old mother donated her womb to her 28-year-old daughter who eventually gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

Arrangements like this are no longer newsworthy, but what made the transplant necessary? It turns out that the young woman had had at least two abortions and these had damaged her uterus. Frankly, I find this fertility-at-any-cost approach a bit bizarre.

But not more bizarre than some of the other stories: the Dutch sperm donor who may have fathered 1000 children, the Japanese man who is raising 13 children by commercial surrogates from Thailand, the 65-year-old German grandmother who gave birth to quads, the German zoophile who is in a “relationship” with his Alsatian because “Animals are much easier to understand than women” and so on.

The reproductive revolution was originally intended to give loving couples the joy of having children of their own. How differently it has turned out. As they say, “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children."