Following researchers’ success testing artificial wombs with lambs and pigs, the FDA has begun discussing the possibility of human trials for severely premature infants. This technology has the life-saving potential to revolutionize neonatal care. Thinkers like Christopher Kaczor have suggested that artificial wombs could eliminate the perceived need for abortion. Others insist that this new technology has more potential to undermine human dignity than to affirm it.
The FDA insists that the technology will be used only to rescue premature infants (for now). But interest in artificial wombs as an alternative to surrogacy is growing, as sci-fi films like The Pod Generation and viral sensation“EctoLife” take the concept of artificial wombs to its logical ends, imagining the possibility of commercial baby factories and their impact on human communities. Nearly a hundred years since Aldous Huxley imagined a brave new world in which the family had become obsolete and human reproduction relegated to the laboratory, we are approaching the technical capacity to make his dystopia a reality. What will happen to our society if we abandon human procreation for mechanical “reproduction,” including “birth at the touch of a button,” as EctoLife’s marketing tagline promotes?
Mechanical Mothers
While these speculations take the form of science fiction, there is much real-world scientific evidence on which to ground cautionary implementation of this technology.* Can we hope to replicate the effects of a maternal womb with a mechanical substitute? If so, do we still have reason to be cautious?
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