I was warned, in no uncertain terms, to leave the womb alone. I guess that message is lost. I’m afraid for humanity. And the destiny of the planet.
1
Next up:
"We are stuck with racism. Is synthetic and generically-colored skin the answer?"
I can't wait. No need to change the way we think and behave. Technology will solve all of our social challenges!
14
we need to make birthing more humans harder. where's the technology to make that happen?
6
Or, and hear me out here, we also make all forms of birth control, including long lasting IUDs, free for all women to get without jumping through hoops. Find research into male birth control as well so we can take it. Then we don’t need artificial wombs because people aren’t accidentally getting pregnant as often. It worked in Colorado, it can work nation wide.
24
What is it about the male mind that makes them so hate Nature that they would replace her ways with machines? And so arrogant as to think they can dictate a vision on abortion & women's bodies?
With global warming & destruction of the natural world, with over 7,722,117,500 people on the planet & human numbers heading to 12 billion, we best be curbing population growth instead of talking artificial wombs to make more people. Numbers data: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
Scientists & futurists have long envisioned a world where robots ran reproduction & women were eliminated. All that was needed to render women unnecessary, they enthused, was a workable artificial womb. Istvan wants women treated the way men treat livestock: he wants us to grow human offspring in biobags like sheep & cattle. Istvan sees a future without women where reproduction takes place in machines (patented, built, operated & controlled by corporate men), where robotic sex dolls serve for men’s sexual titillation & gratification.
Abortions can be minimized by good widespread sex education, access to contraception & medications like mifepristone. Premature & sickly infant problems can be alleviated by good affordable prenatal health care & nutrition for mothers. There is no need to replace women or Nature with machines.
As to the grand male control techno-visions, I suggest reading Jerry Mander’s prescient book, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology & . . . .
16
I'll wager that the anti-abortion crowd will be firmly against artificial wombs. Why? Because, fundamentally, they don't believe women should have unapproved sex. It's the same reason they're against the use of condoms. Unwanted pregnancies, spread of STDs – these aren't bugs, they're features. In their eyes, a fake womb would encourage recreational non-churchy sex, because a woman thinking of having unapproved sex wouldn't be put off by the prospect of becoming pregnant. You're not going to see religious types going, "Yay! Fake wombs! Problem solved!"
21
This is a totally bizarre column for multiple reasons. Artificial wombs are completely far fetched science fiction. Also, what does it have to do with abortion? Unless he proposes sterilization for everyone and forcing artificial wombs.
9
Forget artificial wombs. Let's develop womb to womb fetal transplants. Then, the anti-choicers can "put their money where their mouths are" so to speak. If an anti-choicer is so concerned about "life," she should no have qualms about accepting a fetal transplant from a pregnant woman who does not want to be pregnant.
14
Just a metacomment, but at 18 in I'm surprised and impressed by the generally sane and pertinent quality of the comments. Can this really be the interwebs?
3
More men debating abortion. Just stop.
21
Well, this should be interesting. If this works out anti-choice onservatives, who scream bloody murder at the thought of paying for someone else's kid to get healthcare, will have to put their money where their mouths are. Are they willing to foot the bill for fetuses in biobags, or will they find another means of evading responsibility for the fetuses they insist must be born?
10
The concept is interesting but who is supposed to raise and pay for the child? How many children without parents will there be? If the woman doesn't want the child and there is nothing but a social welfare system to raise the child, aren't you increasing the size of government? I thought the conservatives wanted to decrease the size of government.
I still think much, if not all, of the anti-abortion movement is about punishing women for having sex.
20
Five years ago I would have given this article serious thought. But like the article in this week's paper about self driving cars in a time frame of ten years in the future, with the planet facing global disaster through climate change and possible human extinction, any "future tech" story which is not devoted to that problem represents a waste of attention, money and resources. Don't fiddle with sci-fi while the planet burns.
28
Development of a fetus into a well-adjusted healthy infant surely is partly due to the womb environment of a living breathing human female - the jostling, the talking, the living. The idea that a plastic bag can substitute for this is hubris. I'm pro-choice, but this idea is scary bad.
38
The so-called abortion debate won't be solved by use of artificial wombs. The real subject at issue is who gets to determine the course of a woman's life. The anti-choice activists will never let go of their will to control women's place in society.
19
Leave these thoughts and ideas to the science fiction books for right now. Mankind isn’t ready for this, even though we’ve proven how utterly incompetent we are for doing, well, almost anything anymore. We’d make a dog’s dinner of this subject also.
14
Fetal transplants have been done on cows for years. How is it that that is not being researched as an alternative?
2
No, nooooo, nooooo. This idea is wrong on so many levels. Anyone who thinks abortion is about the hassle of being pregnant and not the decades spent raising a child is not really thinking at all...
12
Here's a much less complicated solution:
1. Legal abortion.
2. If you don't want one, don't get one.
3. Stop insisting that you have the right to decide what other people can and cannot do with their own bodies.
4. Problem solved.
30
I doubt this would make pro-lifers happy. In my mind, they don’t actually care about the life of the unborn, they are bothered that people are relieved of the consequences of sexual intercourse.
Abortion is debated because it doesn’t align with the moral views of the religious right. This potential technology isn’t any godlier than forced gestation.
11
Whew, for a while there I was worried that men were no longer necessary. With this, women aren’t either. What a relief!
4
The Matrix, Blade Runner 2049 and others made it sound so appealing. But just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
4
Great. More ways for technology to deprive us of our humanity. Makes me sick.
7
This looks like a ridiculous solution searching desperately for a problem to resolve. We do not need to find a home, er womb, for aborted fetuses. There is no shortage of people on this overpopulated planet of ours.
Sensible immigration policy can solve any problem resulting from our aging population. Allowing seniors to choose death with dignity would also help.
The last thing we need is to bring a million unwanted babies into the world every year.
8
No, artificial wombs are not the answer.
6
Oh yes, sir, this will certainly alleviate the problem of men controlling women's bodies...
10
New ways to overpopulate the planet are definitely not what we need. Just provide people with safe, inexpensive means of controlling reproduction.
36
The premise of this article is ridiculous. The central issue in abortion is who get's to decide what women can and cannot do with their bodies and that the decision to terminate an early stage pregnancy is her's and her's alone. To say, as it is suggested. that women will not have the right to terminate a pregnancy but forced to have the fertilized egg/embryo extracted to be grown in an artificial womb as some sort of compromise in this debate is "ridiculous"! What part of "women's rights" do people not understand? Here's a suggestion, since it is necessary for fertilization to occur, men's sperm should become public property as well. If spermicide occurs, charges of negligence will follow. OR, women.... Do not have sex with men who do not support the most basic of rights; that you will have dominion over your own body. Just saying.
50
This is the craziest article I have read in a long time. Our planet is getting roasted by all the people on it and there’s lots of drug addiction and homelessness because of people who haven’t been cared for properly during childhood. Why would we push for more births from mothers who don’t feel they should be mothers? Crazy!
13
Who will care for the extremely damaged babies that women will be pressured to popping into a bag? Who will help the parents grieve who decide to do this and live knowing they’ve created a child who will never be happy, healthy or adopted? With overpopulation the world’s biggest problem, who will feed the children no one will be responsible for?
7
This article is playing a game that is absurd and dangerous. The right to terminate a pregnancy is that; fetus goes as well. The idea that any person who wants an abortion because of fetal anomaly or serious medical problem (does the writer like the idea of an anencephalic gestating in a sac? how about a trisomy 18 fetus with severe heart disease, very abnormal brain and other serious anomalies?) or rape, or incest or just because ...deseves the right to an abortion. It is not about where a blighted or unwanted fetus resides.
11
After artificial wombs are perfected, all you would need is a sperm and an egg. And it's likely that the sperm and egg can be cloned or artificially engineered, too. Conception will take place inside a test tube and gestation will take place inside an artificial womb.
5
Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
3
"Are Artificial Wombs the Answer?"
To what question?
They might be fine for regular folks. But I would hate to see some kind of mass breeding designed to create an army of people for potentially sinister purposes.
2
RE: "The Abortion Debate Is Stuck. Are Artificial Wombs the Answer?"
No. (That was easy!)
16
This is a ridiculous article, which, of course, was written by a man.
The right to an abortion is the right of women to control what happens to their bodies. It has nothing to do with where the pregnancy takes place.
I have as much right to say no to an artificial womb as a real one.
15
How entirely dehumanizing.
4
Who would take care of these kids and the cost of bringing them to term?
4
As someone who believes that society is worse off for allowing late-term abortions, I believe that artificial wombs would reduce, but not eliminate, moral concerns. I do not believe that society should become so cavalier about abortion that we reach a point where we kill (abort?) a viable fetus in an artificial womb because the birth deal was not monetarily funded or because the promised blue eyes were the wrong shade. What kind of society would we be if life became that disposable? I have never wanted to “control” a woman’s life; my concerns have always been about the world I and my descendants will live in. As a member of society, I - like the pro-abortion crowd- have the right to speak out and change my fellow citizens’ minds about these issues, which I believe are moral decisions. Right now, the biological link between birth and a human mother’s womb gives a mother (correctly) a very large (but not exclusive) say in the birth decision. Once that link is broken, society can more clearly and precisely tackle the deeper “meaning of life” issues inherent in abortion. As a society, we will have to decide when to allow such “artificial” births and how to provide for the resulting babies’ well being. Conservatives will have to agree to expansion of the social-welfare net to deal with the lives of artificial-womb “orphans” and the current pro-abortion crowd will finally have to acknowledge that abortion really concerns important moral issues.
3
No. There too many humans in this planet. Spending exorbitant sums on technology to bring more unwanted children into the world would be an abomination.
4
It's interesting to me that in all of this discussion the one factor that is left out is whether or not an "artificial womb" is actually a suitable environment for a fetus to grow in. Sure, the technology may be workable, but an actual womb is not simply a disembodied machine, it's part of the mother (with all that relationship implies from a developmental standpoint). This article strikes me as simply an opportunity for the author to promote his half-baked "transhumanist" ideas, rather than an attempt to "solve" the abortion issue.
7
On what planet, do we need artificial wombs to make more people? Certainly not ours, in which growth at all costs has brought us to the brink on so many fronts.
The author asks, "Who will pay for those procedures, and who will care for those children once they are born?" Certainly not the pro-lifers who wash their hands of fetuses as soon as they're born. Certainly not the poor, or the state. Maybe the super wealthy who could pay to watch their youngster grow in a sterile cage, choosing the best genes for the perfect mix.
So Dolly the sheep has been pressed into service for procreation once again. We need extogenesis like we needed clones of ourselves, like we need to take control of women's bodies, like we need to be fruitful and multiply, like we need more stuff, larger economies, larger cars, multimillion dollar apartments that sit empty, and so on over the cliff to our extinction. We so deserve this fate if this is the sum total of our focus.
Lately it seems we are looking everywhere but where we need to. Maybe when the challenges are so great, the idea of an innocent child born of artificial womb coming into the world as its savior is inspiring. But its a fairy tale. A Grimm one at that.
Technology cannot resolve immutable human problems. We have to deepen our understanding of our place on this earth and evolve. That simple and that hard.
5
A. Really, really creepy. B. I don't even want to start on how condescending and controlling this is towards women. Seriously Handmaid's Tale stuff. C. Who, exactly, is legally responsible for a child born in this manner against the will of the biological mother? D. And what about the father? E. The writer acknowledges the difficulties with cost and the challenge of finding adoptive homes for all of these babies. Whose job is it to solve those difficulties?
If this is what "transhumanism" is about, then transhumanism has to go all the way back to the drawing board.
17
See " Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus' by Mary Shelley
Human science and technology often runs well ahead of our educational, historical, legal, moral, political and socioeconomic ability to weigh and balance costs and benefits to humankind.
Humans are one of three closely related African primate apes - bonobos, chimpanzees and humans. Humans are closer to the patriarchal violence and sex driven chimpanzee than they are to the matriarchal peaceful sex driven bonobo cultural society.
But the one and only biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that appeared in Africa 300. 000 years ago is driven by nature and nurture to crave fat, salt ,sugar, habitat, water, kin and sex by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation.
3
The right has shown little interest, except in the form of contempt, for children whose parents cannot care for them. The authors solution would do little other than exacerbate the number of orphaned children who no wants to care for. Here’s a crazy idea...please stop telling women what to do with their bodies.
9
Nope and nope.
This is a science fiction fantasy. We don't know what we don't know - it's only recently that scientists discovered it's better for babies to pass through the vaginal canal, so they can get covered in the mother's microbiome. The first few generations of babies born this way (IF they could be born) would be part of a massive and unethical experiment, that would likely lead to babies with all kinds of deficits.
And it wouldn't overcome the central problem - the mother doesn't want the baby. She would still be the mother. Would she get stuck with the bills? Or would she sign over the embryo to a corporation? Would this turn into baby harvesting?
This doesn't work on a biological level, nor an economic one. How about we just accept the right of women to abortion.
10
Really?
How about just butting out of a woman's right to make her own decisions about reproduction and bodily integrity?
Not so hard at all.
11
Please, I can only imagine the myriad troubled and painful lives that bringing unwanted children into the world would create.
6
This seems to me to be a modest proposal
7
Along with this scenario of transferring a fetus from a pregnant woman’s body, we also need to consider the prospect of a child being gestated from the start in an artificial womb. At what point will life begin for him or her?
4
Presumably, the embryo will have to be transferred between the pregnant woman’s womb and the artificial womb. Unless we are also pouring trillions of R&D funds into transporter technology, that will require an invasive medical procedure. This article paints a dystopian prospect—a whole new avenue by which anti-abortion zealots might eagerly violate women’s bodily autonomy and personal liberty.
Abortion can be outlawed what with women being “freed” from the necessity of carrying the pregnancy and undergoing delivery. Men and women, who very reasonably seek abortion for many different reasons beyond the burden of pregnancy and delivery, will be criminally punished. Women who resist will be strapped to a gurney to undergo this new “enlightened” procedure to save the cluster of cells that can one day join the army of motherless orphans.
20
If the true goal of those who oppose reproductive choice was to reduce the number of abortions performed each year in the US, they would support universal health care, comprehensive sex education, and free access to all contraceptive methods, including long-acting ones such as IUDs.
Virtually none of the anti-choice crowd supports any of these simple measures.
Artificial wombs? Great — I hope that the technology develops as a way to save wanted pregnancies.
But it should never replace the simple, basic right of a woman to choose if and when she becomes a mother. A pregnancy-ending artificial womb can’t change that, so it’s a moot point in the abortion wars.
26
I can’t remember a better example of missing the point. This author is solving the wrong problem, while stroking his personal passion. The abortion controversy is about individual liberty to decide whether and when to have a child in opposition to religiously-motivated government control of women. An artificial womb not only fails to satisfy either, it will surely alienate both.
47
This new technology would be VERY expensive! Who is going to pay for it??
5
@Sandi So it’s ok for Medicare for all to pay for an abortion to end a human life than it is for it to preserve a human life? A child’s life has value only in so far as the child is wanted?
1
@Joe Borini So if you have such a problem with abortion, feel free to pay for the development and use of the biobag.
4
And we're another step closer to Huxley's "Brave New World", which turns out to have been just as prophetic as Orwell's "1984". What we we're facing is the worst of all possible worlds: an amalgamation of the two dystopic visions, combining the worst features of each.
9
This speculative opinion piece lays bare the hypocrisy of anti-choice fanatics. So-called "pro-lifers" are NOT concerned about the life of a child. If they were, they would advocate for free and universal maternity care, maternity leave, and child care, which would have a much bigger impact on a woman's decision to continue an unplanned pregnancy than enacting draconian anti-abortion laws or terrorizing Planned Parenthood clinics. Who is going to take care of all these orphans? Surely not the taxpayers--unless these products of "artificial wombs" can be harnessed, a la Huxley, to a new caste of Epsilon slaves. No. It's not about the child; it's about constraining women--overwhelmingly poor, minority women--and publicly shaming them.
A better way to address the "abortion" issue is outlined in today's Farhad Manjoo's piece, "Abortion Pills Should Be Everywhere," which posits birth control as a private choice.
A more ethical use for artificial womb technology might be one targeted to wealthy people who are unable to conceive or carry a child and would pay for it themselves. Just saying.
28
@Djogba
Great comment. Thank you. Subsidized Maternity leave and high quality child care in particular would make a huge difference. Many women have abortions because they can’t afford a child.
2
Several of these reader comments demonstrate the sad fact that so-called pro choice advocates don’t want women to have a choice, they want them to have abortions. This technology would give pregnant women one more option, perhaps a more humane option. The reaction is, who is going to pay for these unwanted kids? We’d rather abort them than support them. To even suggest that a fetus is something more than “genetic material “ is to open the possibility that there is something more at stake when deciding what to do about an unplanned pregnancy.
4
This article failed to appropriately address the psychological impact on both parents (but especially the mother) and the fetus of having a fetus survive via artificial womb and then be raised by an adoptive family. It is not simply fetal demise via abortion vs. fetal survival via artificial womb - it is an entirely different life experience altogether as an adoptee - and that difference deserves more than a sidenote comment.
12
In a world that is already badly overpopulated (yes that includes the USA), and because of that losing the battle to prevent climate change, the last thing we need is a way to artificially bring more infants into the world.
20
We should be giving out birth control free for everyone who will take it. No unwanted pregnancy = no abortion
7
I would argue that transhumanism is more likely a pseudonym for eugenics. All I see from using artificial wombs is adding another dimension to the political debate which may or may not help in reaching a final decision.
The statements made in the article: "Who will pay for those procedures, and who will care for those children once they are born?" are an absolute concern. This will strictly be a procedure for the extreme wealthy and way out of reach for the 90% of average Americans.
Other questions include, if fetus die in artificial wombs, who is responsible for the life of the fetus? If an abortion is only the removal of a fetus from an in utero environment (and not the death of the fetus), is not a fetus still aborted (an illegal procedure in many states) when it is removed from a woman's womb even though it may be placed in an artificial womb? Is an artificial womb just a means by which males can control the development of a fetus, which they lose when a woman has full control and rights over her body?
16
Brand new idea indeed - from Aldous Huxley's early 1940's book "Brave New World".
4
Artificial wombs are necessary but not sufficient to end the abortion debate. There is the issue of cost (who pays?), the fate of those born (adoption? foster care?) and the asymmetry of demand for and availability of artificial wombs (will there be enough to accommodate every unwanted pregnancy?). However, the notion that this technology will create a sci-fi dystopia is completely asinine. No technology is without social cost or risk. Matches can be used for arson. Photography can be used for blackmail. People need to get a grip on their discomfort and stop standing in the way of progress.
4
And to follow this “brilliant” idea we should supply every woman with an AI that will feed take care of the kids, work while the baby is asleep to cover for the extra cost for providing for them...women fertility decision is not based only the pregnancy temporary condition during pregnancy but mostly of how having children will change their life quality and style and should be left to their discretion.
12
Oh my god. In so many ways I'm glad I won't be around by the time such "transhumanist" ideas take effect (if they ever have time to, considering the fact that both humanity and the planet are doomed).
So this is just what we need: a whole new raft of humans in an overpopulated world, developed in a machine, born to be orphans and reliant on a government that already does such a stellar job of feeding, nurturing and educating the needy.
And where on earth does this writer get the idea that women want, or would in any way be willing, to have their embryos or fetuses plunked into an artificial womb resulting in the child the woman DOES NOT WANT to bring into the world?
Just: insanity.
46
The questions surrounding the artificial womb will be seen in quite a different context by the time the technology is perfected. By then, we will preserving species and recovering extinct species under highly controlled technological conditions. Most of our food will be genetically engineered to compensate for the violent climate changes affecting farmlands. Most "meat" will be artificially produced if for no other reason than to make it affordable. And we, as humans, will be used to far more and better engineered bodies, at least for those who can afford them. Genetic cures and new technologies for prostheses are going to demand a complete rethinking of what is and is not "natural" biology. The point here is that artificial wombs will only be one small part of this future. Their primary purpose will not be to settle the abortion debate (long since settled by the mass availability of abortion pills) but to provide environments for creating improved (in the technical sense) human beings. After all, somebody has to take care of the mastodons.
4
It’s not a solution if the motivation behind anti abortion laws is controlling women and their bodies.
I’d be surprised if conservatives were amenable to allowing women control over their bodies AND taking care of the unwanted children.
30
Okay, but how long before we "improve" the technology so that women and men are no longer needed except for their eggs and their sperm and we start growing human beings outside the womb from start to finish? And for what purpose? We're already emotionally alienated from each other. We are already, for the most part, disposable as our jobs are taken over by automation. Abortion debate or not, isn't this one more slip down a slippery slope toward human obsolescence?
Furthermore, who is to say that we will not get to the point where somebody else decides for us that we should not carry a child to term in our bodies for other than medical reasons, and that our babies should be transferred to an artificial womb because we smoked a cigarette, or took a drink, or were poor, single, divorced, or were not the "right" color, religion or in the "right" political party? Yes, having a baby carried to term in an artificial womb is voluntary, but, and not to be an alarmist, how long before it becomes mandatory "in certain cases" for "the sake of the child" and who makes that decision?
24
I knew immediately this was written by a man. And that the comments were mostly from men, too.
That's because there's zero mention of the #1 reason women have abortions. It's not because we don't want to carry a pregnancy. It's because we don't want to have a biological child.
True, a pregnancy can endanger your health or even your life. That pales in comparison to how much having a child turns a person's life upside down.
It's more acceptable to say women want control over their bodies, but what we really want is control over our lives. We don't want to become parents — with all the responsibility that implies — until we're ready.
An abortion is the only way to ensure that pregnancy will not result in parenthood. Under the artificial womb scenario, even if someone else gestates and raises it, that's a child of yours out there...who will likely contact you someday. And if most of us didn't feel strongly about wanting to raise our biological children, there would be whole lot more adoption and a whole lot less abortion.
111
I think if men understand anything, it is the sentiment “I don’t want a biological child even if someone else carries it.” The sentiment doesn’t count for much for men and I’m not sure why it would count for more for women.
5
Many women who have abortions already have kids. They have an abortion because they know they cannot afford another. If we really wanted to prevent abortion, maybe we should do something about the poverty too many families live in.
17
I think you are confusing the right to life with the right to living. If a woman chooses, a pregnancy is messy, uncomfortable and life changing. It is also a wondrous human experience as a developing child evolves in the gurgling cauldron of a warm, living, moving, noisy, heartbeating womb which mother and child share for 9 months. It sometimes ends badly for either or both. It always has life changing consequences for both and is just the beginning of journey both will take which will continue to be messy, uncomfortable, sometimes painful and sometimes wondrous. No box of artificial tricks will ever come close to matching the human experience of gestation, birth and the continuation of the living journey through the unknowable bond of love and nurturing. If a woman chooses to do so.
10
Someone, please tell Mr. Isvan that the anti-abortion debate is not about bringing other people's babies to term; and it is *especially* not about releasing women from the burden of gestation, child-bearing and child-rearing.
19
Artificial wombs will not even come close to resolving the abortion debate for the simple reason that most of those who oppose abortion rights do so not because they care one whit about the child (as their failure to advocate for sex education and easy access to contraception demonstrates) but because they want women to adhere to tradition: pregnant, barefoot, and in the kitchen; not competing for (men's) jobs; not free; not able to enjoy sex without consequence.
The welfare of the unborn child is the absolute last thing that the abortion "debate" is about. If you think that artificial wombs will satisfy the conservative crowd who hate women't lib, pay close attention, if and when artificial wombs become a reality, who protests the loudest. If anything, artificial wombs will outrage conservatives even more, because women will no longer have to suffer through wanted pregnancies. There's something about women suffering in labor that makes certain kinds of people happy (c.f. those old men of ancient times who wrote the book of genesis).
73
@EB I suggest talking to more people who are pro-life - including women. Fun fact: the majority of pro-lifers are women.
2
This article ignores the very real issue of someone's rights over their own genetic material. For example, there have been cases where, after a divorce, a woman wants to implant frozen embryos that were conceived with her ex-husband's sperm. If he objects, a court will not allow her to proceed. He has a right not to become a father, even if she insists she will not require him to participate in any way in raising the child.
There is recognition that people have a right to determine whether their genetic material is used to create a child. In the case of unwanted pregnancy, even if you had an artificial womb, and someone lined up to adopt the resulting child, the parents would have to agree to allow their genetic material to be used in this way.
If someone doesn't want a child, that doesn't mean they are OK with that child being developed and raised by someone else.
51
@Karen At what point does your genetic material turn into a human being? Just curious.
2
@Karen Could a man invoke the same principle to insist an already pregnant woman abort rather than produce a child with his genetic material?
2
As always the devil is in the details. First an ethical issue for the absolutist right to life people. What should be done with a fetus who as a result of diagnosed birth defects is: doomed to a short and very painful existence under constant but ultimately unsuccessful medical care or one that will be institutionalized its entire life or third one that has inherited a fatal gene that will kill it at a young age?
A second question on a more practical level is who will bear the cost of the procedure and bringing the fetus to full term and if not adopted the cost of raising it?
13
The Brave New World.
Totalitarian solutions to assure equality and to end dissimilar treatment or to achieve perfection. Is the loss of liberty not necessary?
5
Women will never truly be free or equal until we are freed from the burden of reproduction and reproductive diseases. I suffered undiagnosed and miserable with endometriosis and adenomyosis for nearly 20 years. I am 33 now and very much want children but am terrified of the process - I don't trust my diseased body, which has felt both alien and enemy to me most of my conscious life. We read a lot about trans people suffering from gender dysphoria. I suffer, too - I never chose this burden or this body. It pains me deeply, literally and emotionally. When I share my struggle, I am often told that I don't "have to have children." This misses the point. I want the option men have - to have my own biological children without the burden, risk, and physical misery of carrying, bearing, and feeding them with my body. I do not want to be a vessel for human growth. I find the idea the opposite of beautiful, or sacred - I find it repulsive and heinously unfair. A cruel twist of fate dealt by evolution. I am a woman and deeply conflicted about it. I do not want to be a man. I want children, my own children. But I do not want the risks and the trauma associated with that. I want what men have. Women have a right to be free. The sooner we can grow babies in labs, the better for women (and children) worldwide. Controlling for nutrition, stimulus, maternal health, etc. will lead to better outcomes for babies and free women of the shackles we have worn since the dawn of time.
11
@BW I am a woman who does not have, nor has ever wanted to have, children. I am baffled by the desire to have one's "own" children (e.g. the imperative to pass on one's genes), but I guess the biological imperative is pretty strong in some.
Nevertheless, I do not believe that most women who do want to be mothers regard pregnancy as something from which one wants to be freed. The mothers I know do not regard pregnancy as repulsive or heinous: in fact, they regard it as a critical stage in forming the bond with their children.
Growing children like potted plants is what sounds repulsive to me.
9
As long as women are denied the bodily autonomy available to men and must risk their lives and their physical well being to bear children, we will never have true equality - neither of opportunity nor of outcome. It’s charming some people think it’s “beautiful” that women can do this - frankly I envy those people, especially those who can without fear and instead with trust in their own healthy bodies and wombs blissfully dive into pregnancy and childbearing. But who are you to deny any woman feelings regarding her own body? From all sides, women are told what to do and how to act, what their bodies should or should not do. All women deserve choice and say in how they use their bodies and in how they do or do not bring babies into the world. Your opinion is yours to have but keep your emotional preferences and your laws off my body.
6
This is the comment I was looking for and I completely agree with you @BW. The future will come with all sorts of possibilities and rather than pretend we're not going to make the technological progress we must think about how to use it to free the highest number of people from any unwanted suffering whatever that may be.
1
I've believed for years that those who believe abortion is murder should concentrate on developing an alternative that is at least as safe as abortion. This sounds like a possibility.
For me, the biggest argument in favor of abortion is that pregnancy is dangerous to the body of the female who becomes pregnant. No one should be forced to risk life and health from pregnancy.
That being said, there are other issues, including fetuses that have severe deformity. That's another continuum and the question would become where to draw the line.
The cost is the least difficult. Those who oppose abortion should pay. If you're thinking of charging women to end an unwanted pregnancy, you're already on the wrong track.
12
@Betsy S - there is also the issue of whether, at this point in history, we should be focusing our limited resources on developing a system for creating millions of unwanted, factory-made orphan babies.
23
@Anthony FlackTotally agree with you. It's weird that human overpopulation--the root of ALL environmental crises--doesn't even get a nod in these discussions.
10
@Betsy S
No, no, and no. If women want to end their unwanted pregnancy, we already have a perfectly effective way to deal with that. It is called abortion.
5
Who will adopt the babies born in artificial wombs because their mothers (and fathers, if they're still in the picture at all) are unable or unwilling to raise them? I don't hear of too many pro-lifers offering to adopt unwanted babies, of whom there are tragically too many already.
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@Peter Czipott Especially those children who are born with built-in genetic medical problems and malformations but who had not been naturally expelled from the womb for some reason or another.
13
@Peter Czipott
My thought exactly! The pro-lifers show such deep conviction for saving those lives, so the logical next step is for them to all get in line (perhaps even a draft of sorts) to raise those children who are incubated via this method.
As was said above, women who choose abortion don't want to raise the child, for a variety of different reasons too numerous to mention.
The author is quite naive about the true underlying issues of the abortion debate. This technology will open up a whole new can of worms without resolving society's abortion battles.
12
We need to seriously discuss overpopulation, responsible procreation, our affect on the worlds limited resources and the selfishness of others to impose their will on those who are poor.
The outside womb is a dystopian answer to an unnecessary question.
The question worth asking is What do we do with the billions of people who will lose their homes to climate change or their ability to support themselves due to automaton?
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@Deirdre
I share your concern about climate change especially the prospect of mass migration and wars as countries facing mass starvation try to take and defend resources such as water -- a 21st Century repeat of the successive waves of Celtic, Germanic and Slavic migrations that so disrupted the ancient worl
But, as to over population, you are behind the times. Every advanced and some of the developing countries have reached peak population and have birthrates below replacement. Or more simply have declining populations without immigration.
5
@John Goudge . Deirdre is in no way behind the times-- human overpopulation remains a critical issue, especially with 11 billion predicted in the next 100 years. Moreover, the nationalist/populist craze sweeping Europe and the United States advocates having umpteen children (for fear the "white race" will be outnumbered or disappear). And many developing nations have not got their family planning act together. Added to their own limited success is the US policy under the sway of conservatives to revoke all funding for family planning that even alludes to abortion. Last, American Evangelicals also push for gigantic families for their own evangelical reasons.
6
We in the United States are already below the replacement rate. Our birth rate is 1.73. Japan’s is 1.44, and China’s is 1.60. The replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman. So we are already responsible family planners. Where it is out of control is in Africa and even Spanish-speaking America.
3
I think philosophically speaking until people understand that this is a women’s rights issue and not a moral issue about the sanctity of life, there is little to be said about alternative solutions or to even have this debate. Women’s bodies are collateral damage in the abortion debate. Conservatives drudge it up as a way to get votes from religious sects that would otherwise be against many of their amoral policies and stances. This is fact. There are books and articles and research papers about it. The decision to have an abortion should always be available because women should not be forced into any decisions about their lives, and that includes dealing financially and emotionally and psychologically with a baby that is incubating in a bag in a lab, because government has proven time and again, people have proven time and again, that women’s decisions about their own lives don’t matter. So why would women not be punished financially, emotionally, psychologically for choosing not to raise their own child? How would this actually advance a woman’s right to choose what her own body does or does not do? That’s what, from a feminist perspective, this conversation needs to be.
44
@N Using your argument would also apply to men- why should they be forced to support children they do not want? I think you're opening a can of worms here.
1
Pretty sure this technology is almost totally irrelevant to the abortion debate. The majority of women seeking abortions are doing so bc they don’t want/can’t take care of the baby that would result not because they abhor pregnancy itself.
92
Planet earth already has a massive overpopulation problem that the press and most people ignore. Plus, our world is becoming more and more toxic by the day. Artificial wombs are definitely not needed.
36
Who would pay for the process of bringing fetuses to term in an artificial womb? The women who would suffer the most if abortion became unavailable would be those unable to pay. Hopefully those who abhor abortion would step up to bear the costs of this kind of gestation and be willing to adopt the children.
15
@Granny Franny This would be paid for by the corporation that ordered the designer babies.
The case study that, to some degree, suggests that ectogenesis does nothing to shift the real debate here is the recent fervent fight by some groups to establish full, no-questions-asked abortion rights for women with perfectly healthy late-term pregnancies where they are already carrying a fully-viable baby in utero.
Here in IL, that law has now already been passed, even as it polled at about 13% popularity.
If you think about it, a woman with a perfectly healthy pregnancy at, say, 37 weeks, could already go in for induced labor or a c-section and give the baby up for adoption, rather than abort. But the fight by these groups to open up the legal right for women in such a situation to abort the baby anyways suggests that knowledge of their child living in the world with different parents is not an acceptable alternative to abortion. In other words, it is not the pregnancy they wish to terminate. It is specifically the baby's future existence.
Until birth, it is their right now in IL to make that decision, even when there are already plenty of options to spare the baby and still not become a mother.
5
@P Citation needed.
This idea is a red herring. The only 'late term' abortions are carried out for one of two reasons: to save the mother's life, or because the fetus has deformities inconsistent with life.
This idea that women and/or doctors are interested in ending completely healthy pregnancies a few weeks before birth is ridiculous.
3
Ok here are a few things to think about:
What happens when this technology advances to the point where it can be used to bring frozen embryos to term? Does that make them viable ?
Who would be responsible to do what and who would pay for it?
What right would the parents have to prevent someone from “rescuing their children” without the parents’ consent?
What happens if someone leaves their estate to a frozen embryo with a trust to invest on behalf of the embryo until it is born in 500 years? Does their child end up owning the world? ( I guess these last two issues are relevant now now come to think of it )
The technology itself sounds like a good thing given the risks of childbirth to both the mother and child, but we should really figure out what to do about the theoretical before it becomes the practical.
5
Don't know about other guys, but I'm very glad that (I believe, at least) that there are no biological children of mine running around some place, unbeknownst to me. And if some young adult in real difficulty showed up ag my front door with good evidence that he/she was my biological child, I would be completely unable to treat that person as simply another stranger --"I'm not your father; I have nothing to do with you."
Do you feel the same way, guys? If it's not important, then it won't matter to you who the (biological) father of your children might be.
As long as we think that BIOLOGICAL parenthood is important or even relevant, an artificial womb might shift the debate, but it will not solve the problem of abortion in our culture.
11
I'm all in favor of artificial wombs, along with the means to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place: easy access to and free-of-charge birth control of all varieties (including the "morning after" pill), sex education, financial support for poor women who choose to keep their babies, and enforcement of the biological father being 50% responsible for the child.
If you reduce the number of pregnancies with these and other methods, then the number of babies born via artificial wombs would be much lower than the figure cited, and could go to infertile couples through adoption.
But I would still want emergency abortions to be available when the mother's life is in danger if the transfer process would not be fast enough.
I know extremists on both sides of the issue will never agree to something as reasonable as this, but I don't believe the majority of adult Americans are extremists. I think they are conflicted, as I am: wanting to support women's self-determination but also wanting to stop the killing of the unborn.
And it is so important to get abortion out of national politics. Then, perhaps, evangelicals and conservative Catholics would stop voting for evil politicians with an end-justifies-the-means argument that allows them to ignore everything in the Bible they claim to believe in.
9
If only more people were as conflicted about supporting the right to bear arms, but also wanting to prevent the deaths of living humans.
15
@Austin
I'm not conflicted at all on the gun issue: I'm in favor of every form of gun control possible. I don't agree with the SCOTUS ruling that the writers of the Constitution meant individuals should have the right to bear arms; it's clear to me in reading the text that they were referring to state militias.
3
Don’t forget that not every pregnancy produces a healthy, happy baby. I did design work on a medical book once about birth defects. There are some really horrible things that can go wrong with a pregnancy that lead to nothing but suffering.
6
And, as in the past, if some authority decides a pregnant girl or woman is unfit because they are, say, under the age of 12 or too poor, would that authority be able to take the mother's developing fetus and place it in an artificial uterus? How about lactation, can the compartment make milk, a substance thought to contain many antibodies needed by newborns? How would the transfer be accomplished? Caesarian incision? If 22-24 weeks is the optimum time, how would this affect a woman's right not to gestate a fetus and suffer morning sickness or other pregnancy related symptoms? I know of a young girl pregnant via predation who was told that when the stork delivered a package, it was the package that was important and the wrapper the package came in was thrown away. Can the artificial wombs be reused?
7
@Debra Merryweather
Very important question. How is the transfer accomplished? Does it impact the mammal's ability to have future offspring?
Mammalian milk is species rather than individual dependent. Formula does work well these days for the most part.
I'm not sure people would accept this even if were feasible. It sounds a little bit Brave New World-y to me. And what about the psychological implications of all these motherless children?
32
No, this is not a solution to the abortion question for the
obvious reason that it's not just about being pregnant, it's about the economic catastrophe that single motherhood would bring on, or the inability to finish a degree, etc.
37
It's hard for me to see who is going to benefit enough from this technology to pay for the massive R&D costs and ongoing operational costs to make it happen. As you say, the resulting 150,000 unwanted children would be a massive burden -- who wants to make that a reality?
31
An interesting concept. Of course it completely sidesteps the conundrum of who is actually responsible for raising the resulting children, which I suspect is by far the biggest driver of abortions in the first place.
In my opinion, the solution to the abortion problem in this country is ridiculously simple- long-term reversible birth control. IUDs and implants, free and available to everyone from clinics in strip malls, drug stores, school nurses etc. Paid for by the government with the funds saved by not providing Medicaid to children born into poverty. The demand for abortions would plummet and both sides would get what they want. Why is this not happening??
118
@Nancy Finnegan It's not happening because for a lot of people, the real issue is not about the life of the fetus, it's about controlling what women are allowed to do with their bodies. If it were really about preserving life, abortion foes would be in favor of sex education, in favor of full subsidies covering maternal and infant health care and nutrition, and opposed to the death penalty - how many of the people passing laws to overturn Roe v. Wade do you see supporting all the things that would improve life for the children whose lives they are so determined to preserve? Artificial wombs are interesting in that they might bring their hypocrisy more clearly in the open, but it's already pretty clear. As to who would pay and raise these children - well, you would think the people who are determined to save them would be eager to cover the costs... but I'm betting they will find a way to put them on the same women who need abortions because they can't afford the child they are carrying. We will know the concern is really about everyone's quality of life when the "pro-life" forces start arguing for the lives of the mothers and the children _after_ they are born.
26
@Nancy Finnegan Excellent ideas. mmwhite gives a fairly good explanation on why it is not happening. I would only add that population decline is not the desire of anyone getting wealthy on growth and other peoples labor. Population decline means a recession, which sounds bad, but it wouldn't mean much to poor people, who will still be poor. It would decrease the wealth accumulation rate or may even decrease wealth of the wealthy and corporations. Thus we are destined to continue unlimited growth until there is nothing left, because they need more. It's never enough.
9
@Nancy Finnegan
Because women with full agency, freed from becoming pregnant or carrying or raising children except when they enthusiastically opt in to do so, are extremely threatening to established economic and political power structures. They would compete with men for influence and resources on a scale not yet seen in any nation or epoch, and that is profoundly disquieting to those who already feel they have enough trouble keeping both power and wealth.
21
What is so hard about recognizing a woman's right not to be forced to produce another human being?
168
@Lisa Thank you. The abortion debate to me is less about "what makes a life" and more about "to what degree can we compel a person to use her body as a life force for another person?". We are not forced to donate kidneys or parts of our livers, even though without those organs someone else may die. People with rare blood types aren't compelled to give blood, even though someone may suffer for lack of treatment. Why are women the ones who are compelled to use our bodies to keep someone else alive whether we want to or not?
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@Lisa - You betcha! Especially when nobody has any idea what life is, let alone when it "begins".
The religionists have been all over the board on this topic just within the past 5 decades. Through the late '70's, evangelical leaders were vocal in their opinion that life began at birth and were decidedly pro-choice for a bunch of reasons including the emotional health of the mother.
Then Jerry Falwell (w/ help from Paul Weyrich) cynically engineered a 180 degree turnaround in the evangelical's position as a way to attack and defeat Jimmy Carter. Carter, a Southern Baptist at the time, was threatening the tax-free status of Falwell's Liberty U. madrassa because it was practicing de facto racial discrimination. Falwell wanted both his tax-free status and an all-white campus, Birth Choice was just the wedge issue he hit upon to serve his real purpose.
16
@Lisa
Yes. Period.
2
Once such artificial wombs are technically feasible, not even available, Roe v. Wade ends. The original decisión, with this part never challenged, left a fetus viability loophole. If fetuses are viable at nine or ten weeks via this technology, any judge in the country can wipe out Roe or reduce window to that time frame. I would think pro choice groups would fight them tooth and nail even if the artificial wombs might save some children. Having only a few available, the technology would have to very expensive, vs. wiping out choice for millions would be unacceptable to them.
1
There is definitely a need to have a means around high risk pregnancies.
But how bizarre is our own society if artificial wombs seem a better prospect than universal access to contraceptives and safe, legal abortion?
124
@NM Of course, it is not a better prospect, not for the parents, not for the fetus, and not for society. Into whose arms would these thousands of "transplants" be born? They are orphans upon birth. This is a ridiculous, obscene scenario, fraught with medico-legal and ethical considerations far beyond abortion.
7
Years ago I thought of writing a science-fiction novel about this idea. The novel never panned out, but it did make me think through some of the implications.
The article only touches briefly how the children born from artificial wombs would be raised. Will enough adoptive parents be found? Will laws have to be revised to make adoptions more easy?
If there aren't enough adoptions or even temporary foster arrangements, will the children be housed in modern versions of old-fashioned orphanages? Who will pay for these institutions? Will the children be a hated and helpless minority group who will blamed for rising taxes?
What about the ideologues who secretly encourage abortion to control population or eliminate "bad genes"?
If this technology is possible, the country would need to plan for the social side effects -- not blunder into them.
24
There already is a science-fiction novel that involves this kind of theme that takes it to the next logical step: mass (re)production. It’s a giant of literature by Aldous Huxley called Brave New World. Most of us had to read it in high school or college.
One thing that people consistently fail to consider when embracing new technologies, or altering the world or species from their natural state: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES.
19
@Matt
Yes, I read it years ago. But the purpose of the artificial wombs in Huxley's novel was to be baby factories manufacturing the social classes that the government wanted. Not to solve the moral problem of abortion.
There were lots of "unintended consequences" of Roe vs Wade. The Supreme Court thought opposition to abortion would atrophy once they waved their magic wand. Instead the abortion wars have poisoned our politics for 45 years.
4
@Charlesbalpha
See "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Please remember that it was written as a dystopia
1