I have seen a lot of marginalization of children with artificial reproductive technologies, but I think this may take the cake. Never in my life have I encountered such a callous disregard for the health and well-being of a child that is so supposedly “wanted.”
Two women have donated their wombs to their daughters. A uterus transplant has only been done a handful of times, but never before from mother to daughter.
Before the transplant, the daughters underwent IVF to create their own children. If the uterus transplant takes, these embryos will be transferred to this experimental womb in a year. No joke. Doctors are willing to experiment with the life of another human being in a hand-me-down womb. From The Week:
Plenty of people say they’d do anything to have grandchildren. But that commitment was taken to a new level in Sweden recently, when two would-be grandmas became donors for the first mother-to-daughter uterus transplants ever performed. How were these ground-breaking operations carried out, and, more importantly, will they work?
Will the patients be able to have babies?
That remains to be seen. Doctors caution that the two uterus-recipients still face hurdles. It’s unclear how the anti-rejection drugs the women have to take might affect the fetuses, for example. Other unknowns: The placenta might not develop as it should, the fetuses might not grow properly, or the babies might be born prematurely. “We are not going to call it a complete success until this results in children,” Michael Olausson, one of the Swedish surgeons, tells The Associated Press. “That’s the best proof.”
That is a lot of unknowns to just blithely go ahead. I mean does no one care that this may permanently affect the health of another human being? What if the daughter begins to reject the transplant and the child dies as a result? What if he or she suffers a major birth defect if something goes wrong? What if the anti-rejection drugs do cause a problem for this child as he or she grows in grandma’s womb?
Talk about Russian Roulette with the life of a precious child. I am totally gobsmacked that this is even being allowed to go forward.
The Catholic Church warned us that this would happen. The Church told us that if we remove the love (you know that actual physical act of love) from procreation, children will become man-made objects to be manipulated and degraded. Children are gifts, not experiments. At least they used to be.
Hat Tip: Matt Swaim
Rebecca Taylor blogs at Mary Meets Dolly
September 20, 2012 at 4:24 pm
So, what if Grandma donates a kidney to her daughter and she goes on to become pregnant? I know the IVF is objectionable, but what is wrong with transplanting a sick organ with a healthy one? I'd like to know exactly (aside from the IVF) what is morally objectionable about organ transplant.
Plenty of people have normal pregnancies with transplanted organs. Is your objection just with the danger? Would you advise a woman with a heart transplant not to undergo a pregnancy because of danger to her baby?
Until the Catholic Church formally forbids something, we shouldn't blithely condemn it, especially when it's therapeutic. And, might I add, it is especially sad when you judge the amount of love in these people's hearts for children. It adds a very unhelpful note of bitterness to an ethical debate.
September 20, 2012 at 4:26 pm
I too am concerned that the risks might be too high to justify doing a uterus transplant. But would a uterus transplant be morally wrong if the risks could be brought to a very low level, and if IVF were not involved? It seems to me that such a transplant would not be morally wrong, if the transplant were done to replace a non-functioning or missing uterus, if the transplant recipient could still produce her own eggs and still had the possibility of conceiving naturally.
(IVF of course is clearly morally wrong, because it divorces procreation from the marital act, and because it too easily turns human life into a commodity.)
September 20, 2012 at 5:53 pm
When children are turned into a commodity (which they have been) then it's totally acceptable. One is as good as another. "Abort one? Just make another one! What's the BFD?"
Where we see an obvious human, they see…something. But it's not a person. Until they want it to be.
And we're supposed to be the anti-science people.
September 20, 2012 at 5:56 pm
The uterine transplant, per se, would not necessarily be immoral. It does not change the identity of the individual. For example, gonad transplants would have a woman or man producing gametes and thus offspring with an identity different than their own. The uterus is the diseased organ. What is objectionable here is the use of this technology with such little regard for the humanity of the experimental subjects. When doing experimentation on humans, there can be no compromise of their human dignity, the risk to the subject must be justified by the benefit, the subject must be fully informed and voluntarily consent to the procedure. Under current circumstances, any benefit from this procedure is negated because it requires the use of immoral IVF. If in the future, a uterus could be transplanted and a woman's own ovaries produce eggs and conception can occur naturally through the marital act with the embryo implanting in the transplanted uterus, then it seems it would be a morally licit procedure.
September 20, 2012 at 7:33 pm
The immune suppressing drugs are the biggest concern. Women are naturally immune suppressed during pregnancy, so lower doses are likely called for, presumably they've thought of that. Who knows what those powerful drugs would do to the child? I doubt it's ever been tested this was even in animals.
September 21, 2012 at 12:05 am
Did no one else catch that this experiment would be only be considered a success if a child results? Meaning the child is part of the experiment. (The parents may not be thinking this callously, but the doctor sure is.)
That is a completely different situation than a woman who has had a transplant for a life-saving organ like a heart or kidney getting pregnant naturally.
Uterus transplants may sound like a nice idea, but think about the cost to real human lives before they can be perfected. Is it OK to sacrifice the lives of a few unborn for an experimental procedure that is not life-saving for the mother? I think the answer is no and I am certainly allowed to say so.
It is certainly never moral to consider a child as an experiment, which is exactly what is happening here. The same could have been said for IVF in its early stages.
Of course, the IVF makes the whole thing immoral which is also a major part of the the objectification of the child here.
September 21, 2012 at 12:34 am
More succinctly, a successful heart-transplant is a beating heart. A successful kidney transplant is a functioning kidney. There is no other criteria to judge successful uterus transplant than the birth of a child carried in that uterus. So, personally, I think there is an degree of disregard for unborn life inherent in the whole idea. (I suppose menstruation would be considered a success, but who would undergo a transplant just to have a monthly period?)
September 21, 2012 at 3:33 am
Everyone here thinks IVF is wrong, so let's remove that red herring and talk simply about uterine transplant with the expectation of conceiving naturally.
Would you rather women keep dysfunctional uteri and keep having stillbirths? That is usually what a diseased or malfunctioning uterus does – it cannot retain the little human being living in it. So, far from being degrading or objectifying, this surgery is life-saving for that person traveling down a Fallopian tube who needs a healthy organ to nest in. Nature ordains that a whole person of childbearing age has a healthy, functioning uterus that can maintain a baby, and a transplant to supply one is fully in keeping with a woman's dignity, and it values unborn life rather than devalues it. The Church has never pronounced otherwise.
Again, you keep assigning terrible motives to the people involved – this time the doctor, without any proof of it. This doctor does not "sacrifice" children for his "experiment" any more than someone who corrects uterine defect (say, a bifurcated or bicornuate uterus, or perhaps severe endometriosis) with limited hope of success does. It seems to escape you that these people are going to great lengths to preserve and maintain life, rather than "objectify" babies.
Speaking of that, how is wanting a baby when there is a possibility of risk "objectifying" a baby? Women of very marginal health try to have babies every day. Some older women try to be open to life at some risk to the child and themselves. Does that mean it is somehow sinful or illicit to have a baby when there is a health risk to either? No. They are to be praised for bravery instead of condemned for foolhardiness.
Your private judgement upon whether or not this is sinful or licit is not based on reason or Church teaching, and I hope people of good faith realize that. Most importantly, you must not give people the impression that the Church binds them in their actions in this respect when She does not.
September 21, 2012 at 4:46 am
Barbara, I see where you are coming from but here neither of these women had a uterine defect. Both were missing a uterus.
Having two women (mother and daughter) undergo invasive procedures for an non-life-threatening condition (really a life-style choice here) and then placing probably more than one human life in said transplanted uterus KNOWING FULL WELL there may be major issues including adverse drug reactions, placental problems and pre-term birth is simply bad medicine. Period.
Now it maybe that the Church, in the future, will approve uterine transplants in special cases. That may happen, and I will embrace that teaching if and when it comes. I will sure be one to blog about it! 😉
But I don't apologize for shedding light on THIS case. From the IVF to the callous, yes callous, disregard for the well-being of the child as part of this experiment, I feel this is part of the objectification of children the Church warned us about when we began to separate procreation from intercourse.
In reality, I cannot think of a way that uterine transplants maybe tested ETHICALLY so as to be low in risk to mother and child. Fertility experts in NY abandoned their uterine transplant program because they felt that some of the safety issues are "insurmountable" in humans.
Unborn life will have to put at grave risk many times over, as it is here, for uterine transplants to become commonplace. Is that treating human life in all stages with the utmost dignity and respect? I do not think so.
One of my favorite quotes from the Charter for Health Care Workers:
"The desire for a child, sincere and intense though it be, by the spouses, does not legitimize recourse to techniques which are contrary to the truth of human procreation and to the dignity of the new human being.
The desire for a child gives no right to have a child. The latter is a person, with the dignity of a "subject." As such, it cannot be desired as an "object." The fact is that the child is a subject of rights: the child has the right to be conceived only with full respect for its personhood."
September 21, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Thank you for this Rebecca Taylor.
September 21, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Isn't it still against Church teaching to have yourself sterilized as the grandmothers are seeking to do? That is another sin heaped on the pile.