Introduction

On a Friday morning in October 1998, we had the usual preoperative

informative talk with a patient, this time with Angela, a charismatic woman

in her mid-twenties. She was informed about the consequences and pos-

sible complications associated with the open radical hysterectomy that we

would perform on her the following week because of stage 1b cervical can-

cer. We told her that she would become permanently infertile, although her

ovaries would be preserved. Apparently, she had a solution-oriented mind

and quickly responded to us: I know the solution to the problem – you can

transplant the womb from my mother. (Brännström 2015 : 676)

Imagine giving birth from the same uterus that gave birth to you. Using
Angela’s personal story, Professor and chief physician in the Department
of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Gothenburg University in Sweden Mats

8

Keeping it in the Family: Debating the

Bio-intimacy of Uterine Transplants

and Commercial Surrogacy

Charlotte Kroløkke and Michael Nebeling Petersen

© The Author(s) 2017
R.M. Shaw (ed.), Bioethics Beyond Altruism,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55532-4_8

189

C. Kroløkke (*) · M.N. Petersen
University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
e-mail: [email protected]