STOP uterus for rent! STOP natural pregnancies! Better to USE women (and men) in brain DEATH
… for prospective parents who wish to have children but cannot, or prefer not to, gestate
… We already know that pregnancies can be successfully carried to term in brain-dead women
… There is no obvious medical reason why initiating such pregnancies would not be possible
… should be an option for anyone who wishes to avoid the risks and burdens of gestating a foetus in their own body
… Thus, wherever organ donation is legal, brain-dead WBGD [ Whole Body Gestational Donation ] would be a relatively simple tweak to that framework
… The patient moves from being the focus of medical concern, to being a repository of tissues that can be used to benefit others
… a surgical affair, preceded and followed by appropriate hormonal therapy to ensure maximal chance of success
… WBGD donors are as dead as other donors – no more, no less
… preferable alternative to uterus donation and surrogacy and even to pregnancy itself
… Abortion, especially late term abortion, can be traumatic for gestating women both emotionally and physically
… in the case of WBGD, the gestating woman is already dead and cannot be harmed
… If she needs more or less of any particular drug or if foetal interventions are required, we have none of the potential conflict that can affect ordinary pregnancies
… Parents may transfer as many embryos as they can generate … and if necessary, discarding any damaged or diseased ones in advance
… are processes that are routine in fertility medicine across the globe
… pregnancy itself should properly speaking be medically contra-indicated for women generally
… at in a comparison between pregnancy and measles, pregnancy comes out considerably the worse in terms of morbidity and mortality
… We cannot yet forego the uterus altogether for the reproduction of our species
… But we can transfer the risks of gestation to those who are no longer able to be harmed
… feminist concerns, however, might be mitigated if men could also participate in WBGD
… male pregnancy is not, as many would imagine, fanciful, or a piece of science fiction
… pregnancies can come to term outside the uterus. The liver is a promising implantation site
… could be risky – even fatal
… But for brain-dead donors, the concept ‘fatal’ is meaningless: the gestator is already dead