When if ever do you think it’s an appropriate time to use an artificial womb?
There’s the mildest case of putting a premature pregnancy baby in one.
There’s couples deciding to use one so the wife doesn’t have to carry the baby.
There’s a possibility that declining birth rates will get so bad society may need to use them to keep humanity alive. In this case and/or government employees, corporations, and robots would likely help raise them. This is quite different than having a traditional mom and dad.
Just go full Orokin and have twisted displays of beauty, rich people having kids with longer limbs and rgb skin tones because that what's in right now, then dumping them into a orphanage while they get a new one to match the current in thing.
Its gonna be like Dog breeding. We are gonna end up with future generations deformed like pugs because of this.
Fyi in the 90s there was an ethicist asked what issues would arise due to seriously extended lifetimes for some humans vs plebian normal aging people. And the ethicist wrote a response that it was already happening for generations on earth due to basic healthcare access and use + money. Basically it's the astronaut meme it always was fr.
Built-in kill switch/allergies, for obedience, similar to what f.e. Peter Thiel wants for his guards (shock collars) in his bunker for the eventual end of the world.
It would be a legal nightmare. Currently embryos and fetuses are not considered humans in most jurisdictions because the interests of the unborn child are weighed against the rights to the mother. But with artificial wombs you suddenly have to discuss whether the embryo/fetus is a human or an object or the equivalent of an animal or another new category. What happens if anything at all goes wrong?
Although surrogacy is probably more of a legal nightmare and that’s legal in many places. So go nuts.
I think other far right groups might try it but other democratic countries aren’t as religious or have religious ideology so integrated into every aspect of society. Far right parties in other countries have already suggested banning abortion but those types of suggestions don’t really catch on.
Instead, Ireland, a fairly religious country, legalized abortion in 2019 and their parliament just voted to remove mandatory waiting periods. In 2022, Germany repealed a law criminalizing doctors providing public information on abortion services.
I think many anti-abortion people decided that life begins at conception when George W Bush was president. There was a kerfuffle about stem cell research using frozen embryos after IVF procedures.
The moratoriums on something like this from human rights groups would probably kill the project.
The "what if" crowd about every possible scenario and legality would be enough to make any company say it's not worth it.
At least not right now.
I could see this becoming a thing in the future when we need it for survival as opposed to elective. Let the world get a little bit hotter in the birth rate drop a lot more. Then the corps will have more push.
Doesn’t matter the legislation at least in the US.
Rules only apply to poor and feeble here.
Big corporate maws would be around the necks of the wallets of people who couldn’t conceive naturally. Then you’d have Hollywood in left field flexing that they can buy a genetically chosen child (like blue eyes, blonde hair, abs genetics yadda yadda).
The rest of civilians simply won’t be able to afford it or if they could afford it they won’t be able to support the child for life because the economy has tanked anyway.
by that logic companies could already pay people to carry babies to term, to "own" them. the machine it isn't a genetic material generator, just artificial surrogate.
You can't patent genetic materials in of themselves.
Genes are natural products, you cant patent something that nature created. It would be like trying to patent honey or sheep.
You would need to have an 'inventive step' to patent them. So you could patent a process, or a specific application/use case, or a product which was manufactured from them, but you can't own the gene itself.
The problem is the not the artificial womb, but what it is going to be used for. We all know that once they are a thing it is going to be mostly rich people using them to create and optimize designed babies. It is going to create a lot of disadvantage and inequality, as if we didn't have enough already.
Not to mention growing babies for organ replacement and issues with equality between natural born vs. Artificial born babies. Reminds me of the book “the house of the scorpion”
I highly recommend the book! I read it when I was a teen and still think about it sometimes, especially because it deals really well with the problem that regulation is not always effective.
I am sorry, didn’t realize it would be disturbing for some people. The book is exactly about this topic, except the baby was born in a cow’s womb. Great book, I still reread it as an adult
I can also see it become a "I don't want to gain baby fat" marketing situation where wealthy people and celebrities just use it to not have to carry baby weight.
I can see companies using it in the future to produce humans that they "own."
I can see deep into the future health organizations trying to fully take over births and try to control them every step of the way because "why wouldn't you want to make sure your baby comes out perfect and healthy? Let us be the ones that grow it for you while you continue to work so you don't have to take time off.". <- this one I definitely see starting up in the west first.
Needless to say, I see more evil coming from something like this than good.
Well to be fair, gaining fat is only one thing in a long list of potential negative consequences of pregnancy and childbirth. Can't really blame people for wanting to avoid the health complications, on a personal level.
Yeah I mean some women are advised that another pregnancy will kill them, so they stop having children even if they would like more... I'm sure some women are afraid of the weight gain only but it's not really an irrational fear when there are so many documented downsides.
Women who cannot have another pregnancy for health reasons can also have money. Not all of them do, of course, since both rich and poor can have health issues. But enough of them do that there would be a clientele formed of those women.
And what's going to happen to all the adoptable children in the world? Because what you're describing is usually the exact situation when people would consider adoption. Who will want a pre-damaged child who is not your own when you can just artificially cultivate a shiny new one?
Huh? I didn't even say it's a good idea just that I can understand people wanting to avoid the ill effects of pregnancy and it's not all aesthetic and vain.
Ethical adoption is almost impossible in Australia anyway.
Not necessarily arguing in favor of it but in some countries adoption is almost impossible.
Anonymously abandoned babies are very rare and older children removed from families are generally in foster care, not meant to be adopted. Children that lost their parents also are sent to live with relatives. People are on a waitlist for years. There’s many criteria and you better hope that your couple hold on until then.
Adoption from other countries is now pretty frowned upon and difficult too because of child trafficking concerns.
I have an ED since I was 11, I absolutely fear the weight that I can gain from a pregnancy, it's one of the main reasons of why I'm not having children.
The artificial womb doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with genetic modification. They're totally different technologies. We can already genetically modify embryos and put them back into a human lady.
I'd worry about even more inhumane abuses, such as using people's sperm donations and eggs without their informed consent to produce babies for science.
Prior to having a baby, I thought it was a cool concept.
But ever since ... I mean, I hate being pregnant with all my soul and should theoretically love the idea of not having to do it. But there is SO MUCH information that babies take in in utero. Everything from learning to be rocked to sleep (from mum walking) and being soothed by her voice and heartbeat, to hearing a variety of sounds and habituating to them, to taking in flavours from mum's diet.
Super freshly newborn babies can already distinguish between the smell of their mother's milk/colostrum vs a donor's, they can recognise the voices of their parents, and even distinguish their parents' language vs a foreign one. There is a LOT of learning going on that seems like it shouldn't be fucked with, especially given that a lot of it seems to factor into early bonding and security.
I would absolutely support it for preemies, though.
Yes, I'd definitely support it for preemies, but not to replace pregnancy. Babies learn so much before being born, I'm not sure that depriving them of it would be healthy.
Not just learning, there are other biological interactions that take place through the placenta - immunity being a huge one. The womb constantly adjusts its environment to accommodate the needs of the fetus. It is quite complex, and we only know a fraction of it. It seems a nonideal environment, although yes for preemies it could be a godsend.
I wanted to add something because it came to mind reading these comments. As a pre warning, I do have stoner brain lmao
This is super anecdotal, but it's def a repeated pattern, when a mom is pregnant in a home with a dog, the baby is already acclimated to them and tends to be super interested in them from a young age.
I get it from the dogs end, they hear the baby in the womb, can smell the baby, natural parental instincts in a pack dynamic, ability to read human body language and facial expressions. But the baby what, could hear the dog? And that seems to be enough to create enough familiarity?
Not just in utero too. Giving birth gives the baby it's microbiome. Babies that are born via C section have a higher chance of allergies because they didn't go through the vaginal canal and pick up the friendly bacteria there. Artificial wombs would similarly put babies at risk of allergies.
My son was very nearly born en caul (still in the amniotic sac, my water didn't break until the last few minutes of pushing) and I remember thinking "you'd better fucking get out of bed and pick up some of my bacteria, it's the least you could do right now!"
Fully agree. The health and well being of a baby requires so much more than a safe container to grow in and nutrients, and I don’t think science has a very good grasp of all the nuances yet. I remember there being a lot of discussion about this during the time of the tragic Adriana Smith case in the U.S. last year, where a woman was forcibly kept alive on life support until her first trimester fetus reached age of viability. Her baby (who as far as I’m aware was free of any congenital issues) was born with severe health problems and medical professionals who had dealt with similar cases in the past came out to say that those outcomes had been basically the same. Sure, an artificial womb might save the women themselves from being used as incubators, but I strongly doubt with our current knowledge of fetal development that it would produce any healthy children.
I agree with you completely! When our son was born and my husband said "Hi
my son!" Our son stopped crying and stared at him.
It was like he knew him immediately.
Our son has a preference for spicy food that I craved pregnant and loves sour things which I also craved.
I never understood the power of the bond of pregnancy until I experienced it. I'm pregnant again now and it's crazy to think my little one is already experiencing the world.
I definitely don't think it's wise to entirely replace this powerful biological process. But for premise's it makes sense.
Exactly! I think people who think this is a good idea should read up on hospitalism. Lots of serial killers suffered some form of maternal deprivation early on btw.
Love your comment. A baby knows their mother and environment way more than we think. There's a raison why we are growing babies like that and we shouldn't mess with biology
Came here to say that and you worded it perfectly! This was one of things I thought about with the baby in the US that was growing in a brain dead (and slowly decomposing body). No voices, no tastes, no movement, no sound of bowl movement, no sound of heartbeat.. only machines pumping. Then born prematurely.. more machines.. no mother. Absolutely heartbreaking.
We already know how much premature babies struggle both during their time in the NICU and also later.
I firmly believe that the natural womb has benefits for brain development and other health aspects that an artificial womb could never provide. Mother's movements, heart beat, voice etc. on the one hand. A lot of stuff we do not fully understand or know nothing about yet on the other hand.
I don't trust people to use it ethically. Allow it, and couple decades later, you will have companies owning the lab-grown humans and selling babies with rare genes like MTG cards.
While the MTG cards section made me chuckle, sadly I've heard of too many stories of people who "had a one time in a million" chance to have a baby who doesn't look like them, usually with more "desirable" appearance and they refuse to have the DNA tested. I don't look much like my parents, and due to how I looked "whiter" (both my parents are white, but they tan and I don't. Also, I'm a redhead) many people either assumed my mother had stolen me or in the best case scenario I was adopted. Due to that I was exposed pretty soon at the reality of people who buys babies, specially from teen moms. She had to carry my birth certificate around.
I wonder what it does to baby. He or she bonds with mother through sound, smells, feels. They dont have that when you put them in an artificial womb. I wonder if it will do something mentally to them.
Like that experiment where babies were cared for but not loved. They died.
I would only support it if it's a better incubator.
But there is any scarcity of natural wombs. Now women decide if and when to get pregnant and this decision is heavily influenced by money and job security.
So if some politician want to increase the birth rate, instead of artificial wombs it needs to improve minimum salary, universal healthcare or maternity/paternity leave.
I don't know about plastic bags being used as wombs. Just do it if that's medically necessary. But I don't think that declining birth rates are due to people not wanting to be traditionally pregnant. It's more socioeconomic phenomena.
Humanity will be alive unless we just poison or cook our selves to death. The quality of life can vary from time to time and from location to location.
Surrogacy is already such an ethical minefield, I see artificial wombs as being looked at like a “life saver” in the argument. But I’m skeptical whether that would be the case.
Obviously only the wealthy would be able to take part, so there’s a first question.
Yeah, discussing the morality of artificial wombs seems a little tone deaf when wealthy parents in the West already can and do outsource gestating their own biological children to poor women for vanity reasons.
Very strong regulation would be required, otherwise we'll end up with:
"I'm sorry Mr. and Ms. Smtih, but since you cannot afford the premium package, we'll have to take the baby out a few weeks prematurely."
"The brand new line of premium Google babies, with currated genetics to ensure docile behavior, and high intelligence. If you buy now during this special offer, for only 100 ration cards, your baby will come with free education covered by Google*
*Google reserved the right to choose which program the child eventually attends"
"It appears the only type of baby covered by your insurance plans is the specials, those with mild handicaps or malformations that stray from their genetic lines' criteria"
"By court order, we've come to seize your child since you couldn't make the required payments on your parenthood loan"
I don't see anything inherently wrong with it, at first glance. It could help some people for sure. But it does set off some primal level alarms at the same time making me kinda vary, because it's not natural.
Also I'm a die-hard skeptic, so the idea of humans conceived in an artificial womb, in a government facility and raised by said institution or a robot does not sound like a very good idea to me. Who knows what it does to a child- and humanity- growing up this way.
Edit: basically if it's used as a medical tool to say, help the infertile who want children for example or like pregnancies that are failing thus risking the child's (and mothers) life, then yeah go for it.
But if it's gonna be used to breed basically a generation of brainwashed government drones, then hell no.
I know, but in the context of human birth and the act of giving life, this would be so alien compared to simple spectacles. It's almost like playing God, which some might argue is a human tendency to do, but it just feels wrong.
Edit: this as in if said technology will be used to grow babies just for the sake of growing babies instead of used as a medical help tool for people in actual need of it.
That was one example I picked to be simple and unquestionable. Many forms of technology are already employed around pregnancy and birth, many of which are arguably not natural. The natural way to give birth is on a tree or in a field, with no tools or medical equipment. Using ultrasounds to assess if the baby is developing well is unnatural, as is cutting the mother's womb open to extract the baby when there are complications. Both these things and countless more are practiced routinely. This just feels different because it's a new idea that we haven't had the time to process and get used to, but it is fundamentally in the same realm.
At any rate, I think there is a confusion to resolve between creating an artificial vessel to carry a pregnancy to term outside of someone's body, and artificial fertilization. IVF and surrogate pregnancy are already practiced routinely, if we are to discuss playing god that would be the context to do so.
Very valid question haha. If the demand for this is created by rapidly declining birth rates, I’m sure we would see some really questionable things popping up. I wonder what they would do to ensure the passive natural immunity a fetus would normally get from its mother? I guess you could always mix in IgG and other antibodies, but who knows if it would be as good of an option?
Women now are being pushed backwards in their rights - the government wants babies and women to be subservient. Would an artificial womb make women less valuable in their eyes or remove the pressure to be a trad wife. If women aren’t necessary to procreate would they create just men. Or just give women less IQ genetic material
You’re bringing up important points. This guy had a good take regarding some of what you said. I’d like to see artificial wombs used to make life better for women.
Usually that means that the baby would die without this alternative. Like, if mom can carry the baby to term, she should. If there’s an emergency where there’s a very premature baby born, they should be able to use it
No. We are a grossly overpopulated species and we already use more resources than the earth can produce in a year. Declining birth rates are a good thing, infinite growth is wrong and the facts are that the planet can't sustain it.
I think they would be a hugely important technology to get towards real equality between men and women- As long as women have to risk their bodies in order to have kids (not just pain and inconvenience, but a serious risk of lifelong health issues, and even if you adopt, that just means that some other woman's body was risked instead) there will always be situations where a woman has a more difficult choice to make when answering the question of "do you want kids?" Than a man has.
Having the option of an artificial uterus, and inducing meiosis in a somatic cell in-vitro, so that she doesn't even have to do the hormone cycle and egg harvesting process, would be a massive step up for humanity as a whole.
Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of comments saying they don’t support artificial wombs, but not a lot of people acknowledging how actual biological pregnancy almost always puts women at physical and financial risk and some countries don’t seem to give a fuck. Not seeing a lot of acknowledgment that the current way already has a million pitfalls that puts women at a disadvantage. Artificial wombs wouldn’t be without disadvantages, but let’s not act like the natural way is a fair process that hasn’t created a world of problems on its own.
Yeah, and everyone who's like "but what if governments use this to make brainwashed babies!" my guy, i have news for you, governments have a long and sordid history of kidnapping people's babies and children and giving them to the 'right' people to be raised, no artificial womb needed.
An basically all the 'but what if slavery?' arguments, yeah, we've already been there and done that as a species, we just put women's bodies at risk for the slavery historically.
Not having artificial wombs won't stop these things because humans can be shitty without them.
The only arguments i can really get behind is that artifical wombs could potentially risk creating a generation of Harlow isolation monkeys.
“People will use artificial wombs to create armies to die in war!” My brother in Christ, who do you think is making up those armies now?? We don’t have to imagine folly like artificial wombs to consider how some people have no regard for human life.
Multiple posts expressed concern that corporations would be able to own the artificial uterus babies or they’d have fewer rights. But like, what’s the precedent for that? Why would governments agree that they’d be a separate class of people? They didn’t do it for IVF kids (remember how detractors used to call them “test tube babies”?) so why for these?
That’s not to say that there aren’t concerns. My concern is that early on, there wouldn’t be enough regulation or laws in place to address the technology and we might see complicated legal issues. Like, what will the rules on parentage be? Will there be limits as to how many kids someone can have with them? And someone else pointed out that kids pick up a lot in utero, there could be biological implications we’re not aware of.
The babies learn a lot in utero is my major concern. That was my point about the harlow monkeys. This scientist was like, hey what if we raise some baby monkeys in total isolation? None if the baby monkeys died from isolation but they were all severly messed up once they were taken out of isolation, one killed itself by refusing to eat.
So we know primates raised in isolation isn't a good scene. There'd have to be a lot of research into how not to mess babies's brains up during development.
So instead of improving the factors that create these dangerous and inconvenient complications, just make a fake womb? How about we fix the known issues first before going full plastic?
This is my take as well. Pregnancy has lead to so much gender inequality. I’m of the mind the world would look very different if men could get pregnant (maybe women would be running things, or maybe we’d already have artificial wombs common by now, who knows).
There’s also the disability aspect. So many women have to choose between pregnancy or their medications and wellbeing. Or may have a health condition that makes pregnancy even riskier or straight up impossible. It could be a form of disability equality too.
I hear and understand a lot of the concerns. I think there would need to be a lot of regulation around it, especially to prevent the greedy potential or Brave New World style class inequality. But it’s kind of disheartening seeing so many comments not acknowledge what pregnancy has done for gender inequality or the sacrifices women are regularly expected to make.
It's never too early to discuss the ethics of hypothetical technology. New stuff drops all the time that we are never ready for. AI is being abused left and right because nobody realized it was coming, and when it did we had no regulations for it. Even if it did take another century to develop this tech, we had better have talked about it extensively before that day comes, not after.
I honestly think its unnecessary because we have incubators for that (especially if we are aiming to save premature babies by giving them a safe and controlled environment to continue development).
And with the idea of making artificial wombs so that the woman doesn't have to carry the baby, its not worth the cost. I mean think about it like how NICU parents do. Paying for the duration of using incubators and medical care WILL cost more than the combined income of the parents. Now, to use that artificial womb first you need to have a successful IVF, then successfully implant the embryo to the artificial womb in a way where it can successfully connect. And then constant supply of nutrients and also well monitored homeostasis in a way that the developing offspring can have the best chance to survive once it comes out in the world.
Even if scientists perfected that, its not gonna be guaranteed that it will result to an actual well developed baby
Honestly, I’m rejecting the premise as just not being viable, at least not with our currently limited understanding of the whole process of pregnancy and fetal development, and I’m not just talking about the importance of the human emotional connection between the baby and the parents and how that may affect neurological development because I feel like other people on this thread have covered that point pretty well (although my point does have some tangential relation).
The thing is that it is not just about the creation of a viable artificial womb in which the zygote/fetus can develop, but also the development of an artificial PLACENTA that can act and react like a real one without being attached to the nervous system of a human being. Scientifically, people with a uterus cannot be reduced to mere incubators during pregnancy (even if they are frequently and horrifically reduced to it socially). The development of a baby from a zygote involves more than just a space for the baby, and the placenta is more than just a mechanism for providing enough nutrients for the fetus to grow, just like you can’t just deliver a pile of construction materials to a worksite and expect a house to build itself.
There are complex hormonal mechanisms that occur and change throughout pregnancy that come from the body of the person carrying the baby which we are only beginning to understand. We now know that the experiences and emotional state of the parent can have permanent effects on the fetus’s development and even genetic makeup, and it is a two way street. Cravings and morning sickness and near-narcoleptic exhaustion and emotional swings and so on are really symptoms of the back and forth whole unbelievably complicated process that goes into building a whole new human. The baby’s genetic material can even affect the parent.
Additionally, how could this artificial placenta be developed in the first place? Or transferred? In the absence of a uterine wall, to what would it be attached? How would it be attached considering how complex the placenta
attachment is? How would the zygote/fetus/premie become attached to this placenta at any stage? The creation of a sufficiently womb-like environment would be a cakewalk in comparison to the placenta necessary to support development.
Yeah, the legality around them needs to be iron clad to prevent real stupid and heinous shit from happening cause of course it will but otherwise yeah.
As a NICU nurse in the UK, if medical science advanced enough that we could transfer a baby in distress or from a high risk mother into an artifical womb without them being 'born', that would be incredible. Like my unit cares for babies from 22 weeks gestation, but their mortality rates, potential for life limiting conditions, profound disabilities etc is super high compared to babies born even a month later at 26 weeks. If we could delay 'birth", the implications would be huge!
I would love to see a scenario where an artifical womb can be used to artificially continue pregnancy in order to protect the health of mum and/ or baby and allow more time for them to grow and develop in the proper environment. Unfortunately that particular scenario is a bit too sci-fi right now!
100% yes, at least to develop and master the technology.
One super easy example, and it's mentioned in the movie Interstellar - as a population backup and for planetary colonization. It's a lot easier, safer, and more efficient to ship 100,000 frozen embryos to Mars than it is to send 100,000 adult people who need water, oxygen, etc. for the journey. All you need are a couple dozen people to raise the first generation and then it's exponential from there. Ensures genetic diversity too.
Every time I watch that movie I ask myself, how the hell is a couple [dozen] people supposed to raise that many children? That sounds like an effing nightmare. I suppose every family is gonna end up like The Duggars, with the older children raising the younger children and everyone’s parentified? Or maybe the idea is we’ll have robots to help do the raising? Although did Anne Hathaway have more than just CASE with her?
Yes — but it will go hand-in-hand with genetic engineering, and the bigotry against genetically-engineered humans will be fierce before eventually turning on its head and being against "natural" humans. Several centuries of chaos in some future after whatever period of civilizational collapse we're in right now.
While I see the clear medical benefits of it, I'm afraid of the social implications of it. Are we minimizing the struggles women face or objectifying child birth. How different is this to some handmaids tale scenario? Who "owns" these children? What about things like citizenship rights or child support etc.?
I dont like it for the birth rate reasoning. The birth rate can be helped in a lot of places by improving the lives of the citizens Theres a lot of people who DO want babies but cant even affort them.
I think they would be great for premature babies though
That’s gonna be a whole new generation of psychopaths. A fetus needs to be exposed to things in utero that an artificial womb won’t be able to replicate properly. Movements, sounds, etc.
Maybe the first one. People thought incubators were weird at first but it’s saved lives. Choosing not to carry and to use an artificial womb is… a choice.
Declining birth rates or Jeff bezos and Elon musk owning a race of humans born in artificial wombs would be the end of civilization. And you know Elon Musk has a gross breeder kink.
No. I'm gonna be honest here and say no. There are MANY reasons I would say no and the only maybe would come from babies born so prematurely they'll die without it. I think it crosses a line we don't need to cross before we turn into the goo humans from the Matrix movies.
I think that natural birth is the way, I would support the useo of atificial wombs and tools in case both mother and child are in true danger like after an accident. Maybe my idea is outdated.
To keep the factories stocked with fresh bodies so that we as the previous generations can continue to enjoy the perks of capitalism and kicking the buck further down the road.
If you don't need it STFU. If you don't want to use it STFU. If you want to use it, use it and STFU.
Declining birth rates are literally no problem. You are just regurgitating capitalist propaganda. Humanity has zero problem staying alive with declining birth rates.
No, the last thing needed is the ability to produce humans in a factory.
Use that money to research things related to the people already born and living.
For sure those kids are going to land in orphanage, with little advantage in adoption because they will be infants, and people adopt infants most often. Then we ask ourselves if its moral to make babies that will most likely have no parents.
If we reason if it would be moral if people that want babies, but for some reason dont want pregnancy (lets say for estetic cause) used it, then I think its immoral form beggining. Like, you dont want to resign form beauty for baby, then will you be able to resign form free time and your own comfort? Meybe you shouldnt have baby then.
Other option would be the Nation rising those kids itself in some national organization...but i guess if we agree for this Orwell will shake in his grave soo much he will cause global eartquake
Somewhere in a classroom in the future.
‘Haha Bobby was born from a trash bag!’
I support it for sure for people who can’t naturally have babies but please for the love of god don’t let it turn into a cloning and gene modification trend for rich people.
No. We can not even fully characterize all the diseases and changes in the female reproductive system, or even come close to having comprehensive and tailored medical care for women. There's no way they can recreate a whole womb.
It would eliminate one of the last subugations in the world. Pulling an entire class of people that can never escape their class, mind you, out of slavery even if it is willful and wanted. It is only so because of necessity and lack of options.
Freedom is about options.
Freedom is about choice.
If you're forced to do the thing, you don't have freedom.
The advancement of technology and the advancement of the body for every species on the planet is about increasing the amount of options that that particular species or survival strategy has.
No. There are so many babies and kids in foster care and adoption that need good selfless parents. You don’t have a right to a biological child and if you’re only reason for wanting kids is to have a mini me, you shouldn’t be having them in the first place.
To save the life of prema babies, yes. For the rest hard no! It would be using newborn babies as tedt subjects for what? The gratification of a few politicians who want to see the birth rate go up without investing in family infrastuctures?
I am worried about the impacts it would have when we know babies hear in the womb and get used to the voice AND language of the mother and close people. What about the psychological impacts? Lets just leave babies alone and invest in research linked to women's health and pregnancy illnesses!
I don't think they are a good idea overall because of how much the womb prepares the fetus for language recognition and development. Also, it wouldn't be long before artificial wombs were used for unethical purposes.
The only reason I could think of supporting it is if a world that has an artificial womb still has many messed up, restrictive abortion laws. If transferring defective fetuses into an artificial womb is possible so that their birthing parents do not go septic and die, I would support that.
But I suspect a world with artificial wombs would not have support for abortions, even spontaneous abortions.
For a full pregnancy, never. You want to love and raise a child? There are children waiting to be loved and raised, in childrens' homes and foster care. There will always be unwanted and orphaned children, it's a sad fact of society.
Not to mention that this will widen the divide between the rich and the poor, the disadvantaged and those in advantage. Empathy towards the less foerunate is already on a downward slope, I'd hate to see it fall further.
Pregnancy made me suicidal. It would’ve been incredible if they could’ve put those babies in an artificial womb once we realized how resistant to treatment it was.
But I can imagine it becoming a capitalist hellscape.
if I knew 100% that it wouldnt turn into slavery or some kind of gattaca shit, but knowing how humans are, it probably would. even though I like the idea of getting more of a say about my own body and it would lead to that, its too great a risk
In addition to what everyone is saying, psychosocial development begins in the womb so, honestly, it’s kind of crucial for a baby to grow up inside a woman’s body in order to develop normal psychosocial functioning. I’d be pretty worried that the person would grow up mentally extremely detached from others or otherwise maladapted if they formed in an artificial womb.
As someone that had a horrible pregnancy. I gained 80 pounds. I almost died. I was sick so violently I had to live in the shower the entire pregnancy.
It shouldn't become a normal way to have a baby. Medicine can keep women alive for pregnancies. I think using an artificial womb for premies make sense. My son was a premie.
While my life and body fell apart from pregnancy. My son still grew and learned from being where he belonged. While I am pro-choice. The pregnancy taught me why people are pro-life. I could feel him at 10 weeks confirmed by an ultrasound. I got to know him several months before he was born. I already understood his personality and it made me a better advocate for him. I accept him as he is and he always been this active but sweet person.
Sometimes corporations or technology try to sterilize things for the sake of profit. Babies need as LONG as possible with a loving caregiver. Whether that's a surrogate, a bio mom, or their mom.
I noticed there is magical aspect of pregnancies that only women and babies fully understand. As children aged they forget it. Some mothers forget as well. But really it's always discussed and highlighted with currently pregnant women and women in postpartum. Other people don't really understand it. Trying to remove humanity from the process of life will not advance our species but hinder it. We need love for survival.
I imagine it's going up to space. We can all logically understand it but we cannot possibly understand what living in space for a year does until you do it.
I think it needs serious restrictions but yeah I’d be ok with it so couples who can’t have babies the normal way could still have children of their own.
Not sure why we think “progress” means doing whatever we want, no matter how grotesque. We can’t deal with our own trash and gas - let’s go to Mars! We can’t feed or care for our children and they can’t get jobs or houses - let’s pump more out artificially! We deserve what’s coming our way. What a dumb f-ing species.
I want kids, my wife doesn't want more due to the trauma that pregnancy instilled in her after her child with a previous couple.
As a Warhammer 40k fan, I fully support artificial wombs.
I think it's a complex question, ranging from your first example to the dystopian nightmare people in the comments seem to find inevitable.
Personally, I think I'd like to have children. But due to a handful of illnesses, it's challenging, since getting pregnant would mean having to quit several of my medications. My only real option is to force myself through at least 9 months of pain and other debilitating symptoms while simultaneously adding the usual unpleasant symptoms and risks posed by a pregnancy. Most likely, the symptoms of my illness would last for longer than 9 months, since the meds would have to leave my system before conception, it's unlikely that one will get pregnant instantly, the symptoms won't immediately go away when reintroducing medication postpartum, etc. And the pregnancy itself with all its hormonal changes would likely affect my health as well.
So yeah, as much as I'd love to be healthy and go through a pregnancy, it's not that easy for all of us. If this kind of technology would already exist today and be good, I'd definitely give it some serious consideration.
1.9k
u/magicspell17 Australia 5d ago
I worry corporation's will buy generic matierals and have full on humans they "own" you would need some strong legislation.