Transgender Gives Birth - Now Womb Transplants For Men Are Next

Trystan Reese, a transgender man living in Portland, Oregon, has given birth to a boy with his partner of seven years, Biff Chaplow. Their son, Leo Murray Chaplow, was born July 14.

Reese, who was born female at birth, posted a video in March explaining his decision to carry a baby as a transgender man.

"I'm OK with my body being a trans body," he said. "I'm OK being a man who has a uterus and has the capacity and capability of carrying a baby."

However many transgender activists want to take the next step with womb transplants to enable anyone to have the ability to carry a baby.

Womb transplants are no longer theoretical since Dr. Mats Brannstrom of Sweden has delivered five babies from transplanted wombs, all since 2014. 

The first patient, Emelie Eriksson was born without a womb but received a donor womb from her mother in order to carry her son, who was born from the same womb as his mother, strangely enough.

So far in the US, 4 transplants have taken place, but 3 of the wombs were rejected and removed. Swedish doctors assisted in those procedures and, later in 2017, there are plans for British doctors to transplant wombs into 3 or more UK women. In Belgium as well, doctors will transplant wombs into 20 women this year.

For the 1 in 4,500 women born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a condition in which women are born without a uterus, the procedure is their only hope for giving birth to a child. 

It was only a matter of time however, until the transgender movement stood up and took notice because, of course, women with MRKH syndrome aren't the only ones born without uteruses. So are men. 

If a womb transplant is possible into a woman's body, medical science now knows of no reason why such a transplant should not be possible into a man's body as well.

Now health experts are predicting that the first male womb transplant recipients will be here within a decade. Already, external sex organs can be artificially constructed, breasts implanted and hormones injected, but a functioning uterus capable of giving birth was still out of reach for those who want to change their sex. The lines between male and female have grown perilously thin and indistinct.

An expert on cutting edge reproduction procedures, Dr. Alghrani of Liverpool University's Health Law & Regulation Unit explained, in a recent interview, other ways in which the womb transplant procedure could stand reproductive science on its head. 

Not simply men who want to become women, but also gay men who want to experience childbirth, single men who receive donor eggs and then reproduce alone and even married heterosexual couples who want to share child-bearing roles, alternating between husbands and wives giving birth, perhaps with the same uterus. 

As she describes it, "couples could jointly share the reproductive burdens and joys of pregnancy."  The possibilities are dizzying. 

What is more, laws that are meant to protect against discrimination may now be used to force hospitals to adopt the controversial procedure and the UK's national health system (NHS) to fund them. 

According to Dr. Francoise Shelfield, University College London infertility specialist and lecturer in obstetrics and gynecology, the rights to womb transplant surgeries (when possible) for transgendered people are "enshrined in legislation".

A contributing author to the gender studies textbook Everyday Women's and Gender Studies, J. Wallace is a female by birth but is now accepted as a man, a man with a unique distinction: giving birth. In the chapter "The Man's Art of Pregnancy" Wallace explains away questions of gender identity and even claims that carrying a baby to term and giving birth made him/her feel like "more of a dude". 

The concept of motherhood itself is under assault, a sentiment now being echoed by many all over the world.

One such woman, Laura Perrins, a co-editor of The Conservative Woman, stated bluntly that male womb implantation "Will impinge on the meaning of motherhood and womanhood." Not only that, "Most taxpayers will not think this is a good use of resources. It raises moral issues that will have an impact on women's rights."

A feminist voice speaking out is Julie Bindel, who worked as an assistant director at the Research Centre on Violence, Abuse and Gender Relations at Leeds Metropolitan University, "Those born male who are dosed with female hormones and undergo cosmetic surgery in order to present as female will never be women. This is not about transgender rights - it's about a twisted notion as to what constitutes a 'real woman.'"

Make no mistake, the entire concept of gender is under attack through shifting pronouns, cosmetic surgeries and now the act of childbearing itself. 

Through government funded surgeries and gender studies education, within a generation, men are set to take from women their most difficult, incredible and unique role in the human species.