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Dr. Avner Hershlag, Chief of the Center for Human Reproduction of North Shore University Hospital, writes:

I strongly object to Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis’s characterization of gestational carriers as ‘a class of people who rent their uterus.’ This is an insult to our patients and the women, often close relatives, who carry a baby for them. This experience has brought out the best in these families, with so much love and compassion in the utmost act of giving.

“As long as a woman who carries a pregnancy for another woman is ready to take on the usual risks of pregnancy, this existing widely used method should weigh against the experimental transplantation.”

Uterus Transplants May Soon Help Some Infertile Women in the U.S. Become Pregnant (New York Times, November 12, 2015)

Author Denise Grady quotes Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis, the director of solid organ transplant surgery at the Cleveland Clinic on the ethics of uterine transplant (which he considers superior) versus surrogacy: “You create a class of people who rent their uterus [sic], rent their body [sic], for reproduction. . . It has some gravity. It possibly exploits poor women.”

Many things have the potential for exploitation. This does not mean that surrogacy, as it is practiced in the US, is actually exploitative. Although this new surgery is an exciting, new field for transplantation surgeons, it has the potential to exploit women by having them undergo unnecessary, dangerous surgery when there are safer alternatives, such as surrogacy.