Surgeons at Cleveland Clinic transplanted a uterus into a woman identified only as Lindsey in late February. The clinic plans to perform ten such transplants in a clinical trial. Recipients at this time will be women who can't get pregnant because their uterus is damaged or missing.

But transgender women are watching.

I hope it becomes a reality. I absolutely would be willing to do it.

Ever since I was old enough to understand the concept of parenting, I wanted to be a mother. I didn’t know how that would ever happen, but that’s what I wanted.

--Chastity Bowick, 30, a medical case manager in Worcester, Mass

Bowick began her transition when she was 19.

It is theoretically possible to transplant a uterus into someone who was born male. But the body would need a lot of preparation.

Gender reassignment surgery would be much more involved, for one thing. As with traditional male-to-female surgery, doctors would have to create a vaginal canal. But they would also need to make space for the uterus. That would require widening the pelvic inlet, which is substantially narrower in natal males.

After all that, the patient would need about a year to heal before undergoing the womb transplant — which in itself is quite an ordeal. The first one performed in the United States took nine hours.

If the transgender woman had stored sperm before transitioning, she could use it to fertilize a donor egg for implantation, so her baby would be genetically related to her. Careful administration of hormones would help the patient sustain her pregnancy, which would require close monitoring.

Any patient with a uterus transplant would also have to take powerful drugs to prevent her body from rejecting the donor organ. (For that reason, the transplants are designed to be temporary; surgeons plan to remove the donated womb after the recipient has carried a pregnancy or two to term.)

Bowick is not deterred.

Being a trans woman is already complicated.

And pregnancy would be a beautiful thing — even the morning sickness. I mean, I’m kind of getting that now anyway, from the hormones. And I’m moody. After all I’ve gone through, I’m up for any challenge.

--Bowick

If you’re a trans woman, this is a way of completing the dream. Looking like a woman, feeling like a woman, and being able to bear a child like a woman. The whole notion of being like anyone else who wants to carry a baby — the opportunity for that is blowing people’s minds, in a good way.

--Deborah Simmons, Minnesota psychologist

There are biological women who cannot bear children and they’re not lesser women because of it.

--Bowick, who also plans to adopt

Because of getting fired from job after job, most trans people, especially trans people of color, are barely able to take care of themselves, much less a child.

It’s just an exciting idea.

I love living in an America, where someone like me would have a chance to have children.

--Angelica Ross, TransTech Social Enterprises, Chicago

This author would have signed up for this if she had transitioned younger and could have afforded it. As it was she had to be the male parent and do the best she could with the mothering part.