Dr. Narendra Kaushik, a surgeon in New Delhi, India, who runs the Olmec Transgender Surgery Institute, announced that he has plans to transplant a donated uterus into a transgender woman, with the goal of allowing her to become pregnant via IVF and give birth to a child.
“Every transgender woman wants to be as female as possible,” Dr. Kaushik told The Mirror. “And that includes being a mother. The way towards this is with a uterine transplant, the same as a kidney or any other transplant.”
Dr Kaushik has said he is ‘very, very optimistic’ about making the success of the procedure. The risky process will involve taking the donated reproductive organs from a donor which could include a dead person or a trans man who has transitioned.
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The procedure of actually impregnating Trans-Women
Impregnating a trans woman would be complex process and can be done via IVF and a C-section because they do not have a fully functional vagina.
This procedure won’t be able to make trans women become pregnant naturally because it does not allow woman’s uterus to be connected with fallopian tubes. However, experts claim that theoretically it is possible for any trans woman to get pregnant through this procedure and carry to term the embryo that will be implanted in the womb.
The Mirror quoted, that every Transgender wishes to be a female which also includes being a mother. Uterine transplants are as possible as kidney and other types of transplants. This is the future of the medical world; we can’t claim when but it will be possible soon.
The uterine transplant in a trans woman has been attempted once in the past. In 1931, Lili Elbe underwent a similar surgery but passed away 3 months later due to a massive heart attack caused by an infection that she had acquired during the procedure.
However, uterus transplants have been successful in cis women for a while now. 2014, a cis woman gave birth to the first ever baby born from a woman transplant and in 2018, a child was born to a cis woman who had been born without a uterus, after receiving one from a donor.
Moreover, today medicine and science have evolved to a previously unthinkable degrees. So, Dr. Kaushik remains highly optimistic about the procedure and claims that very soon the trans community will be able to bear children via IVF where eggs will be implanted directly into the transplanted wombs.
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Womb Transplant remains an experimental procedure
The transplants that cost approximately £50,000 per surgery are still considered an experimental procedure. Major complications include recipients suffering include organ rejection, blood clots, urinary tract infections and internal bruising. Adverse side effects of immunosuppressants, drugs used to reduce the risk of the body rejecting the organ, may also lead to other complications. Womb transplants are predominantly performed using a womb donated from a living woman, although modern organ-freezing techniques have made it possible for deceased donors’ uteri to be used too.
Kaushik, who has 15 years of experience in gender-affirming surgeries, remains optimistic. “We cannot predict exactly when this will happen but it will happen soon,” he explained. “We have our plans and we are very optimistic about this.”
Speaking about his clinic, He said his clinic is at the center of a booming industry in New Delhi set to rival Bangkok for sex-change surgery and boasted that 20 per cent of his clientele are international, with many from the UK.
Dr Kaushik also said: “Many of our patients tell us that their sexual partners don’t even notice that they weren’t born with female sex organs.
“That’s our aim, to make it so that they live as normal a life as possible as a woman. We aim for an aesthetic ideal.”
Dr Kaushik has, however, not revealed the name of the recipient or given a timetable for this pioneering surgery.
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