- [Narrator] You can borrow that, and you can borrow those.
You can also borrow these.
But can you borrow this?
(upbeat music)
Men can say what they want about their bits,
but the uterus is pretty dang tough,
and that makes sense, after all it allows a human being
to grow inside another human being.
While not every woman dreams of feeling nauseous
or carrying 30 extra pounds or having to constantly pee.
A lot of women do.
But one in 500 women struggle
with what is called Absolute Uterine Factor Infertility.
- And that is when there's something wrong
with the actual uterus.
That it's either missing from birth,
you have lost it in hysterectomy due to benign reasons
or malignant reasons.
So it's not possible for the uterus to contain a pregnancy.
- [Narrator] Well, not without a little help.
Meet Dr. Liza Johanesson and Dr. Giuliano Testa.
They are two of only a handful of doctors
around the world who perform uterine transplants,
which is exactly what it sounds like.
- It's taking the uterus of a donor
and transplanting the uterus in a recipient.
It can be performed with a living donor or a deceased donor
and allows a woman to experience pregnancy.
- [Narrator] But how easy is it to swap a uterus?
Turns out, not so easy.
Both the recipient and donor undergo transplant surgeries
that last about five hours each.
- Then you have the process where you have to make sure
that the uterus is viable.
- [Narrator] And if it's viable,
they try to implant an embryo via IVF.
But, the surgeries don't end there.
Unlike in other organ transplants, the uterus is only allowed
to stay in the recipient for five years.
The removal is important, so that the recipient
does not have to take immunosuppressive drugs
for the rest of her life.
If you are keeping score that's at least 12 months
and two to five invasive medical procedures.
With this kind of commitment, patients aren't lining up
for this elective experimental procedure, right?
- Yeah, you would be surprised.
There's a lot of interest, both from the donor side,
as I mentioned previously, but also from the recipients.
There're several hundred women calling in
and wanting to be a part of this.
- To me, why wouldn't you try to help somebody
and to never have a period again, that's just a bonus.
- [Narrator] Taylor has two boys.
For Taylor, pregnancy became a bonding experience
when she could feel her baby move.
- There's a completely different thing
once you start feeling them kick and feeling them move.
- [Narrator] In 2016, Taylor donated her uterus
to another woman.
- This is something that only women get to do, right?
And so, there's just something special
about being able to carry another life
and bring that life into the world.
- [Narrator] In the US, the surgery is only being done
in clinical trials.
At the Cleveland Clinic, University of Pennsylvania
and Baylor University.
And world wide, about 17 babies have been born
via a uterine transplant.
And more doctors plan to start their own trials.
The potential success
has the transgender community excited too.
Can a uterus be transplanted into a biologically male body?
- At the moment, we are focusing
on restoring a body function that was supposed to be
there in a female and not creating a new one,
but that can change.
- [Narrator] This all sounds complicated
and you're probably thinking,
why do we need a surgery when other options
to parenthood are available?
- The last cornerstone in infertility
that we have not been able to cure
is the uterine factor infertility
and for these women,
they have traditionally been assigned to adoption,
or gestational surrogacy if they had an active child wish.
Or they had the option of just accepting their infertility.
- Theoretically, many things are possible
and will be in the future
that do not seem to be possible today.
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