Woman born without a vagina is determined to be a mom!

New York Post by Natalie Musumeci December 4,2016

A Georgia woman born without a vagina is now on a quest to become a mom.

At just 12 years old, Devan Merck was diagnosed with a rare condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, a congenital disorder that affects the reproductive tract. In Merck’s case, she was born without a vaginal canal, cervix and a malformed uterus.

Merck, now 23, underwent a hysterectomy at 13 years old, and later had reconstructive surgery, using tissue grafts to create a “man-made” vagina.

“They had to basically make a vaginal opening for me so I can have intercourse,” Merck, of Fort Benning, told Barcoft Media. “I had a thick layer of skin that covered my vaginal opening that they had to cut open and then they took skin from my bottom and placed it inside of me.”

Merck added: “I am no different — instead of having a fully functioning vagina, I have a man-made vagina.”

Growing up, dating was always a challenge, and she endured years of merciless bullying.

“Kids would call me a ‘boy’ and a ‘freak’ and boyfriends would disappear when they realized I wouldn’t have sex,” she said.

Even the boyfriend with whom she lost her virginity was cruel.

He would “call me names” and “remind me about my surgeries and how different I was — it hurt me,” she said.

She eventually found love and has been married for five years — and is planning a family.

Festival of Dangerous Ideas: "Can an Idea Be Dangerous?"

"Australians have had occasion to question the practice of child surrogacy in recent weeks as the story of “Baby Gammy” has unfolded in the national and international media. A 21-year-old surrogate in Thailand gave birth to Gammy and his twin sister Pipah on behalf of an Australian couple early this year. But when Gammy was born with Down syndrome, his parents reportedly took his healthy twin sister to Australia and left Gammy behind with the surrogate. The case has brought new attention to the trade of paid surrogacy, which is illegal in many countries, including Australia. But couples from all over the world hire surrogates in countries where doing so is legal or loosely regulated, as it is in the U.S., India, Thailand, Mexico, and Ukraine. “All of a sudden, this is a huge issue here,” Mossop says.

"Ekman’s critique of the practice is certainly provocative. The title of her talk emphasizes “trafficking” in children, but her main argument against commercial surrogacy is that it resembles prostitution; they are two industries, she says, “that sell the female body in different ways.” Whereas prostitution promotes sex without reproduction, surrogacy promotes reproduction without sex, Ekman argues. Both employ large numbers of poor women. “How come in prostitution and surrogacy you need to actually go to all these poor countries and fool people into it? I mean that tells you something also about the nature of the job,” Ekman says. “In one way [surrogacy is] worse, because it doesn’t take 15 minutes and you can forget about it.”



“If you’re somebody who has had a child through some kind of surrogacy and somebody’s saying to you, you’re the equivalent of a human trafficker, it’s very confronting,” Mossop says. “Because it goes to these primal … very strong feelings that people have about having children, people find it quite threatening.”

"Which is part of the point. The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is “not really designed to offend,” Mossop says. But offense is practically baked into the conceit of systematically challenging deeply held beliefs specifically because they are deeply held.