202 C. Kroløkke and M.N. Petersen
a family (Anna 2014 ). Similarly, Christine—a Danish woman hop-
ing to undergo UT in Sweden recounts how the results of her cancer
treatment disrupted the temporality of finishing her education, find-
ing a good boyfriend, a proper job, and then becoming pregnant.
Consequently, the desire for a child along with what can be viewed
as this new supplemental uterus gets reinstated as a natural extension
of conventional life stages, broken abruptly by what is depicted as an
unfair disease. Meanwhile, in the Danish debates, the unified maternal
body is cast as preferable to the fragmented mother frequently associ-
ated with surrogacy. Lillian Bondo, member of DER, echoes the desire
for women to carry their own child, while the then head of the council,
Jacob Birkler, contrasts UT favourably to surrogacy. According to him
and compared to UT, surrogacy does not allow the child to have the
‘same benefits of growing up with the mother who is also giving birth
to the child’ (Lind 2014 ). UT is, in this manner, cast as granting not
only the woman a chance of biological motherhood but in these stories,
emotional, and biological attachments come together to position UT as
preferable—even as far as the child’s welfare is concerned.
UT is, throughout the stories, normalised within the confines of a
romantic heterosexual relationship as well as in the positioning of infer-
tility as a disease. In a recorded chat (‘Chatta om livmodertransplan-
tationer’ 2012 ) between one of the UTx researchers and the Swedish
public, Liza Johannesson goes to great lengths to normalise and legiti-
mise UT. According to Johannesson, infertility is defined by WHO
guidelines as a disease, while the uterine transplant recipients are
described as women who have own ovaries, own eggs, and long-term
partners. All they need is a uterus. Accordingly, in this chat, questions
pertaining to both the legitimacy of UT as a normative and expensive
reproductive practice (‘A typical 1st world problem with an absurd
solution’, as EmmaLis comments in the chat) as well as its potential in
offering men the ability to give birth to children (‘A uterus for men is
just a stroke of genius! You should really work on this’, Erik says in the
chat) are, by Johannesson as she answers in the chat, resolved within
the confines of the heteronormative family structure. Johannesson notes
that ‘all the women who participate in the uterine transplant project at
Sahlgrenska hospital have ovaries and own eggs. These are fertilised with
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