The contradictions of conservative feminists opposing the womb transplant

Some conservatives seem to be stuck between demanding women have more children while expressing disgust at new medical breakthroughs that would allow more women to do just that.

With the Police Crime and Sentencing Bill being further debated this week in the Lords – with the prospect of passionate debate about the proposal to decriminalise women who obtain abortion beyond the legal limit – women’s reproductive rights and freedoms are increasingly being questioned. The reaction to the first baby born via a womb transplant earlier this month showed a growing resistance to reproductive technology, as a fear of progress is leading some to seek comfort in the natural order.

The birth of Hugo Powell, the first baby in the UK to be born via a donated womb transplant, has been criticised by conservative feminists, seeing it not as progress but further evidence that motherhood is being undermined by science. Grace Bell (with Steve Powell) was the first woman in the UK to give birth to a baby born from a womb transplanted from an organ donor, a woman who had recently passed away and donated her reproductive organs. Grace was born without a womb, as a result of Absolute Uterine/Womb Factor Infertility, and is one of 15,000 women in the UK with a similar condition.

This surgery was a huge step forward in reproductive technology, as alongside rounds of IVF, it allowed Grace to carry her own child, despite the fact she was told at 16 that she would never be able to do so. But it was heavily criticised by conservative feminists who are digging their heels into the sanctity of undisrupted, natural motherhood rather than embracing the fact that women, like Grace, are driven so strongly by the desire to become a mother, that they are willing to undertake complex and risky surgeries to overcome unimaginable medical challenges.

In 2020, Louise Perry made her case against reproductive technology. She argued that the expansion of scientific research into matters of fertility was ‘removing the body from the process of human reproduction’, drawing from the case of a lamb born via a bio-bag to prove her point. Perry argued that ‘no one has the right’ to have a baby, or to be a mother, as it should be left as a process to be defined by natural causes, beyond human control. Yet issues of fertility have never been beyond human control. Not only does it involve active human interaction, but prenatal and maternal care has transformed childbirth and massively reduced mortality rates. Without these developments, having children would be a much more tortuous and dangerous task, so despite resistance to medical ‘disruption’, women would be much worse off without it.

But the concerns around de-naturalising motherhood don’t really apply in the case of a womb transplant. The womb (which has been donated, not bought) is transplanted within the biological mother, thus there is very little disruption of the ‘natural bonds’ that form between the mother and child during the period of gestation. The womb transplant surgery is as close to ‘natural’ that women born with these difficult infertility conditions can get. Thus, to oppose it reveals unnecessary biological elitism and essentialist ideas about motherhood.

There are further concerns that the womb transplant will damage and degrade the value of motherhood, by expanding the possibilities for its commercialisation. Helen Gibson, the founder of Surrogacy Concern, has complained that this will ‘lead to further casualisation and detachment from the realities of our sexed bodies and experiences’. And Jo Bartosch in The Critic took issue with womb transplants, seeing the technique as merely an ‘extension of the consumer mindset’.

This treatment is said to show the increasing demand that we have control over our reproduction, at whatever cost. But to me, the use of science, technology and research to enable women who desperately desire children to have them, is the one of the best use of time and resources that we can give.

The charity Womb Transplant UK, which provided the funding and research for Grace’s care, has stated their goal is specifically ‘developing a practical and safe operation and procedure which will allow women, who were either born without a womb or have lost their womb as a result of illness, to have their own child’, and that the charity does not intend to be ‘involved in research for those not assigned female at birth’.

Still, concerns are being raised that womb transplants could be used to give transgender women the opportunity to carry children. But if you read the charity policies, this idea is not within the realm of their work. These operations are rare, expensive, difficult and have been limited to the use of extreme cases for women who have been diagnosed with medical infertility. To deny the opportunity for these women to have children, on the basis of a ‘slippery slope’ – which would require vastly more and different medical research before it could become even technically feasible – does nothing to affirm the essential qualities of motherhood, but makes these mothers seem cruel and unfeeling.

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There is a tension growing within the conservative movement’s revaluation of the family. On the one hand, many conservatives criticise those who don’t have children. The much (over-quoted) comment concerning the ‘childless cat ladies’ from US Vice President JD Vance in 2024 showed that the reprioritisation of the family within conservative political movements is increasingly implying that childless women have no stake in the nation’s future and are deemed as less committed to the country. Conservatives are appealing to many voters on the Christian right through the re-essentialisation of womanhood as being defined by maternity; motherhood, rather than womanhood, has become central to conservative arguments.

But while re-locating the value of women in motherhood, they are resisting the attempts of science and technology to extend this opportunity to those who face medical challenges. It seems contradictory to deny the chance for infertile women to try to be mothers when this science and technology exists.

President Trump has recognised the need to expand access to infertility treatment in a pro-family political environment, announcing last October that he was urging employers to create a new fertility benefit, and was actively working to lower the cost of IVF drugs, specifically through TrumpRx. While there may be legitimate concerns around the inequality of access and the commercialisation of the reproductive processes, the fact that modern medicine has disrupted some of the challenges of infertility and family formation is a huge stride forward.

If conservatives truly believe in the value of children and parenthood, then they should encourage the use of science and medicine to give motherhood to otherwise infertile women, rather than gatekeeping it. As Ella Whelan states in her article in the Telegraph, ‘Those concerned with falling birth rates should surely be celebrating every breakthrough that creates a happy, healthy family.’ And while it is not unlikely that at some point more advanced reproductive surgeries will become available, for women like Grace who, as teenagers, were told they had no hope of becoming mothers, the expansion of reproductive care is priceless. These medical advances should not be restricted to protect the feelings of conservative women who have rooted their identity narrowly in a particular version of biological motherhood.