Jessica Alves wanted to feel what so many women feel: a child growing inside her.
In August 2021, at 38, she traveled from London to Brazil to undergo the tests ahead of a surgery no one in the world had ever achieved before: a uterus transplant in a trans woman.
Months earlier, she had undergone gender-affirming surgery in Bangkok, an operation lasting nearly six hours, and had already stored frozen sperm in the hope of trying later through in vitro fertilization.
The procedure cost nearly 40.000 dollars, and she preferred to keep the name of the doctor who would perform it secret. Something like this had never been successfully completed before. The only precedent dates back to the 30s, when Danish pioneer Lili Elbe tried it and died months later from an infection.
Nearly a century later, medical science was still unable to offer any guarantees: specialists warned that, even if the transplant were performed, a natural pregnancy would be impossible without connecting the uterus to the ovaries.
To this day, that transplant has never taken place. But Jessica’s desire to become a mother remains, above all, a story about daring to dream of what medicine still cannot promise.