A uterus transplant can fulfil the wish of women without a healthy uterus to have their own child. What is medicine allowed to do, and where are the ethical and also economic limits?

In 2019, for the first time in Germany, two children were born who had grown in a transplanted uterus. Worldwide, there have been 73 transplants of this kind so far. A total of 21 children have been born after such an operation.

Girls with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, or MRKHS for short, are born with a rare malformation of the female reproductive organs. Their vagina and uterus are atrophied or non-existent. Ovaries, on the other hand, which produce eggs and sex hormones, do. As a result, these women are able to carry their own genetic child when they are implanted with a uterus. A long, arduous path.

Prof. Dr. med. Sara Brucker is a gynaecologist and medical director at the Research Institute for Women's Health in Tübingen. With the help of the Swedish expert Prof. Mats Brännström from the University Hospital of Gothenburg, she performed the first uterus transplant in Germany in 2016. In Sweden, Brännström has already helped eleven children into life in this way. One of the first was the now five-year-old son of Lolita Carlerup, who describes her path to having a child through diary entries. Her sister Linda Wästerlund donated her uterus after she had already carried four children herself. Complicated and controversial

A uterus transplant is ethically controversial because its purpose is not to save the recipient's life, but only to fulfil her heart's desire to have a child that is biologically her own. Moreover, it is the most complicated transplantation that is medically possible - even more complicated than a liver or heart transplant, according to Brännström.

As part of "WissenHoch2", the documentary "Extremer Kinderwunsch - Gebärmuttertransplantation" (Extreme desire for a child - uterus transplantation) sheds light on the ethical, financial and medical issues involved.