Indian doctor plans to perform transgender womb transplant
- New Delhi-based surgeon Dr Narendra Kaushik intends to perform the surgery at his clinic using a donated organ from a living or dead donor
- The only recorded case of a trans woman having a uterus transplant in 1931 resulted in her death
A doctor in India is planning to transplant a womb into a transgender woman, to enable her to carry children.
New Delhi-based surgeon Dr Narendra Kaushik intends to perform the surgery at his clinic using a donated organ from a living or dead donor, according to reports this week.
“Every transgender woman wants to be as female as possible,” Kaushik said. “And that includes being a mother. The way towards this is with a uterine transplant, the same as a kidney or any other transplant.”
While a transplanted uterus would not allow a transgender woman to conceive naturally, due to the womb not connecting to any fallopian tubes, she could in theory become pregnant through IVF, reports said.
There has only been one recorded case of a trans woman having a uterus transplant, Danish artist Lili Elbe in 1931, but she died months later from complications. Elbe was played by Eddie Redmayne in the Oscar-winning film The Danish Girl.
Uterine transplants are rare even for cis-gender woman, having first being successfully carried out in Sweden in 2014. The first US uterine transplant took place at the Cleveland Clinic in 2016. Both procedures resulted in successful live births.