Womb transplants are science at its most human

At four-and-a-half pounds, the first baby grown inside a transplanted womb in the UK has been born. Amy Isabel was born happy and healthy in February, but her parents, Grace and Angus Davidson, have only gone public with the news this week.

Grace was born without a functioning uterus. While she and her husband were able to create a healthy embryo, her condition – called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome – meant that any pregnancy would be nonviable. So, in 2023, she was implanted with her sister’s womb. Thanks to the work of scientists and doctors, the couple now have the family they always wanted.

The interviews with Grace, Angus and the doctors involved in the research, planning and execution of this life-giving surgery are deeply moving. The story behind the birth of Amy Isabel is almost Biblical – two sisters, a sacrifice, an immaculate conception (through IVF) and a miraculous birth. But instead of God’s hand, it was embryologists, surgeons and gynaecologists who brought this baby into the world. Amy is even named after her aunt, who gave up her womb for her sister. Her middle name, Isabel, is after the surgeon, Isabel Quiroga, who, along with Dr Richard Smith, spent years perfecting Grace’s procedure. If ever there was evidence of the awe-inspiring power of human ingenuity, aiding the creation of life is surely it.

Amy is not the first baby to be born via a transplanted womb. The first ever was baby Vincent, born in Sweden in 2014. Since then, there have been other successful births across the world. But Amy’s birth feels particularly joyous, perhaps due to the context into which she has been born.

Discussions of motherhood have been overwhelmingly downbeat of late, so it’s heartening to read a bit of pro-baby news for once. Last week, Gen Z’s favourite singer, Chappell Roan, sparked heated discourse after telling an interviewer she didn’t want children. All the parents she knew, she said, were ‘in hell’. The notion that children are too much like hard work has become more mainstream among young women.

In light of this, it was beautiful to hear Grace describe how happy motherhood has made her. ‘I have always had a mothering instinct’, she said, ‘but for years I had been suppressing it because it was too painful to go there’. She told the BBC she was initially scared she might not be able to feel the joy of motherhood after so much hope and anxiety in the lead-up to her daughter’s birth. Thankfully, she was mistaken.

Amy’s birth also comes at a time when the news is often dominated by countless stories of negligence, death and injury in maternity care. These are often linked to a culture within the NHS of ‘nature knows best’. Inquiries into NHS trusts with high infant-mortality rates, such as the 2022 Donna Ockenden report, point to cases of women being refused c-sections and other medical interventions because midwives and doctors were keen to keep ‘natural’ birth rates high. But nature is red in tooth and claw, and many women have suffered because of this desire to lionise more ‘natural’ processes.

To make matters worse, NHS fertility treatment is paltry – hampered both by a postcode lottery and a hostility to new technologies involving hormone therapy and immunotherapy. An obsession with Mother Nature means that women who desperately want children, but are not able to have them ‘naturally’, are not properly provided for.

In the US, conservatives are attempting to effectively ban IVF through clumsy lawmaking. And some states, such as Louisiana, retain laws that prohibit the intentional destruction of IVF embryos, limiting options for desperate parents by making the process more time-consuming and costly. Despite many women suffering from fertility issues – about one in every 5,000 women has Grace’s condition, let alone other problems with becoming and staying pregnant – reproductive technology is often scorned.

Baby Amy is a wonderful example of what we can achieve when we meddle with nature on humanity’s behalf. Her story is one of awe-inspiring scientific and technological breakthroughs, and the simple miracle of human life. This is science at its most human.

Ella Whelan is the author of The Case For Women’s Freedom, the latest in the Academy of Ideas’ radical pamphleteering series, Letters on Liberty.