Taxpayers should fund $300,000 UTERUS transplants to help transgender women get pregnant, suggests American Medical Association

The American Medical Association (AMA) has suggested that taxpayers should subsidize uterine transplants worth up to $300,000 to help transgender women conceive.

Arguments to reduce the cost of the surgery were made in the June issue of the Journal of Ethics entitled Patient-Centered Transgender Surgical Care.

But the AMA has been criticized for pushing the idea and accused of taking an “activist position.”

It argued that trans women’s inability to bear children may lead them to experience “psychological dissonance,” which undermines their health and well-being.

It’s because doctors pioneering womb transplants think they’re on the verge of allowing transgender women to bear their own children.

The AMA says trans women who want to bear children can “plausibly justify” the grant of uterine transplants, which cost up to $300,000.

“Trans women lack a trait (the ability to bear children) that allows them to experience psychological dissonance in a way that undermines their health and well-being,” wrote Timothy F. Murphy and Kelsey Mumford in their Journal of Ethics.

“The lack of a uterus also hinders the prospect of carrying a child in a way that is available to women as a class.”

“It follows that the absence of a uterus is an obstacle to full participation in the social benefits associated with the woman’s identity.”

Dr. Marty Makary criticized the medical society, questioning why it didn’t use its resources to explore complications surrounding gender-affirming treatment.

“It’s odd that the AMA chooses to really focus on this activist position rather than fund the important research we need in transgender medicine,” he said. Fox’s Fox & Friends on Wednesdays.

What is the regret rate after transition surgery? What is the long-term complication rate of hormones?

‘Those studies are not being done. Instead of funding those studies, they have chosen to take an activist stance.’

He added, “And it’s very difficult to do research in this area, Ainsley, because the activists have driven a lot of people out of town, that reasonable doctors and objective scientists have been driven out of town.

“Even recently, Mayo and Jefferson fired people for simply suggesting we need better research.”

The AMA magazine said some patients consider uterine transplants to have children, but others see it as an option to enhance their femininity and “consolidate their identity.”

The surgery allows patients born male to have children and Dr. Makary said, “Medically, it’s possible.

The question is: should it happen? It’s strange that the AMA chooses to really focus on this activist position instead of funding the important research we need in transgender medicine.

“Now there’s a movement within the American Medical Association saying, ‘Let’s do this with biological men or biological men who identify as women.’

“If you remember, for decades doctors have identified transgender people with chromosomal tests and well-defined biological characteristics, but now there is a movement where some doctors and the American Medical Association say that people should be able to freely choose their sex change as a matter of personal choice.’

He added, “That’s why you can walk into a Planned Parenthood as a kid and walk out with a bottle of hormones. They think it’s the job of the medical profession to simply confirm what you want to do.’

A team of doctors at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB) was among the first in the country to offer the medical procedure to hysterectomy patients and women born without a uterus earlier this year.

They believe it is “medically possible” to perform the procedure on trans women who were born male but have undergone sex reassignment surgery.

Dr. Paige Porrett, the chief surgeon of the Comprehensive Transplant Institute at UAB, told DailyMail.com, “I think there are a lot of providers, like myself, who imagine this to be the case.”

“I think it is certainly medically possible. The future is wide open.’

Dr. However, Porrett cautions that it’s too early to set a timeline for those kinds of breakthroughs, warning that there could be increased risks in transgender patients due to hormones and previous gender-confirming surgeries.

“I think it will happen in the future, but there’s going to be a lot more work our community needs to do to provide that safely.”

The procedure is already considered high risk in cisgender women due to an increased risk of complications and many women who need the procedure have structural differences in their vaginas and other genitals.

Doing this with a transgender woman, especially one who still has male genitals, would be even more difficult because of those anatomical differences. Hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery can make it more difficult for a trans patient to produce enough eggs for IVF, which is part of the transplant protocol.

A uterus transplant has only been performed about 100 times worldwide in tightly controlled clinical trials.

The first was performed in Sweden in 2014 and the procedure is slowly gaining ground in the US.

UAB’s Uterine Transplant Program is one of only four programs in the US to perform uterine transplants and is the first to perform the procedure outside of a clinical trial.

In May, a baby boy became the first born of the UAB program. His mother had been diagnosed with a rare condition that caused her to be born without a uterus.

“Frankly, there aren’t many transplant surgeons like myself, either in the United States or in the world, who can perform this procedure,” said Dr. Portrait.

“It’s a major operation.”

Uterine transplantation is a multi-layered process that takes about 18 months on average.