Who is in Need, and of What? Tracing Norms through Accounts of Need in the Development of Uterus Transplantation

About 200 000 women in Europe, medical literature reports, is affected by uterine factor infertility – a condition caused by the absence or dysfunction of the uterus. With the aim to find a cure for this condition – which is considered to be the only major type of female infertility that is “untreatable” – there has been a rapid development of research on uterus transplantation (UTx) in the last decade. However, ethical examinations of this development have, so far, not drawn on contemporary feminist scholars’ extensive examinations of the complexities of assisted reproductive technology (ART) but have rather been geared towards risk/benefit analyses with regards to donors, recipients and the intended child and focused on clinical practices and transplantation techniques or, occasionally, on priority setting. Against a backdrop of feminist engagements with ARTs, I seek in this presentation to tease out some of the underlying beliefs and assumptions about in/fertility, pregnancy, motherhood and female embodiment lingering in this development. To do so I trace how some different notions of “need” become enacted in various accounts of UTx development as they are expressed in medical publications, in my previous research on women with UFI (Guntram, under revision) and in data from my current work on the perspectives of medical professionals involved in the Swedish UTx trial and Swedish media coverage of UTx. In this trace, I ask; what is considered to be “needed” and who is consider to be “in need” in this development? And, what may responses to such questions reveal about the potential of assisted reproductive technologies to challenge and/or perpetuate beliefs and assumptions about in/fertility, pregnancy, motherhood and female embodiment?