Pro-trans surgeon: ‘Give men wombs so they can have babies’

A prominent surgeon specialising in gender reassignment surgery has said that men should be allowed to have wombs implanted if they want to give birth to children.

Christopher Inglefield, who founded the London Transgender Clinic, said that because uterus implants are possible for women born without a womb, men who are living as if they are women should be allowed the same procedure.

His clinic charges thousands of pounds for each of its many surgical procedures, which include a number of ‘facial feminisation’ procedures, along with breast augmentation, mastectomies and genital surgeries.

Not natural birth

The first baby born to a woman from a live-donor womb transplant took place in Sweden six years ago, and four years later the first baby was born after a transplant from a deceased donor.

Inglefield said the procedure would be “extremely important” for any man wanting to give birth.

He claimed giving a man a womb would be “essentially identical” to implanting a womb into an infertile woman, but admitted there are “clearly anatomical boundaries”.

He also conceded that it would be “highly unlikely” someone who has transitioned from male to female would give birth naturally, and that a child would probably need to be delivered via caesarian section.

Organ donation

A spokesperson for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said there are currently “no regulations in place which would prevent a person who has received a uterus transplant from having IVF treatment.

“The law, as it currently stands, does not require the person who is carrying a child to have obtained a [Gender Recognition Certificate] stating that they are female before having their fertility treatment.”

Liz Armstrong, Head of Transplant Development at NHS Blood and Transplant, explained that “no uterus transplant has yet been carried out in the UK”, and that if it was to go ahead, it would be regulated in the same way as any other organ transplant.

While in England and Wales people are automatically registered as organ donors unless they explicitly opt-out, womb transplants would be classed as a “novel transplant”, meaning they could only take place “with the explicit permission from the donor or donor’s family”.