Fertility professor: Men could be pregnant as soon as 'tomorrow' with uterus transplant

If you’re a man, you’re in luck, according to one of the world’s leading fertility professors — you could get pregnant as soon as “tomorrow."

Woah, what?

Dr. Richard Paulson, the president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, says that with the success of womb transplants in women, men will soon be able to undergo similar operations.

Paulson explained at the ASRM’s annual conference in San Antonio last week that there are no anatomical reasons why a man can’t have a successful womb transplant.

"You could do it tomorrow. There would be additional challenges, but I don’t see any obvious problem that would preclude it. I personally suspect there are going to be trans women who are going to want to have a uterus and will likely get the transplant,” he said, according to the Independent.

What are some of the challenges that come along with the operation?

Paulson said some of the complications of a male womb transplant would be:

• Men have less room in their pelvic area, although there is enough room
• Giving birth would be complicated because a male does not have a vaginal opening. Therefore, a caesarian delivery would be necessary
• Men don’t have the proper hormones needed for pregnancy, so they would have to undergo hormone therapy
• A uterus would also have to be procured, either through a living donor or a brain-dead donor
• Then an embryo would need to be implanted into the uterus through a process known as in vitro fertilization

Aside from the obvious physical barriers, there are big ethical questions surrounding the operation, the Independent noted, because placing a living unborn child in a male's body would pose a "significant" risk to the baby.

So far, at least five womb transplants in Sweden have resulted in successful births. Those operations happened only in women.