It’s been just a few days since the story broke about nine women in Sweden undergoing womb transplants in the hope of bearing children someday. Most of the women were in their 30s at the time of transplant, all of them got donated wombs from living relatives, and all of them had their own eggs harvested and frozen pre-transplant with the hope of fertilization, implantation, and a healthy pregnancy and baby someday. These women were either born without a uterus or suffered irreparable damage as a result of cervical cancer.

Their story brings hope to the many women around the world born without a uterus and to those who lose them to injury or disease. It’s also bringing a great deal of hope to transgender women who dearly want to bear their own children some day.

Stephanie Mott is the executive director of the Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project. She’s a transgender woman herself. She knows first hand how strongly some transgender women crave the act of bearing a child of their own and she wrote of this desire in an essay published on The Huffington Post.

Mott has thought long and hard on the joys and challenges of being a transgender woman. Her thoughts have gone from curse to blessing, from simple to complicated and back to simple again. She counsels other transgender women on embracing their life the way God gave it to them and in overcoming the myths and stigmas associated with the intimate circumstances of their lives. She feels medical miracles are coming soon, miracles that will further blur the lines between women who were born with a woman’s body and those who were not.

At 56 years of age, Mott knows she will never be the recipient of a womb transplant nor will she ever personally experience the joys of childbirth. She is expecting, however, that she’ll see it happen during her lifetime and she anticipates the news will bring her the joy of the three-year-old girl-child spinning and twirling down the aisle while shopping for beautiful dresses with her mother. To Mott, the only two regrets she feels for being born a woman but not in a female body is the joy of being that little girl and the joy of giving birth to her own baby.

There have been no babies born yet to the nine women in Sweden. The first phase of embryo implantations will begin in the next few months. As women around the world wait to see if a pregnancy results, transgender women around the world will be eagerly awaiting the joy-filled news, too. And they’ll all share the same hope.


Source: Mott, Stephanie. “Trans-Uterus.” HuffPost Gay Voices. The Huffington Post. Jan 21, 2014. Web. Jan 29, 2014.