Artificial Wombs

The people most invested in the creation of an artificial womb may not be the scientists. Members of the Raelian cult—who also claim to have cloned a baby—announced in 2003 that they had developed a Babytron (their word) that could incubate human embryos from conception onward. No evidence exists to support either of the group’s audacious claims.

More seriously, some abortion foes, to support their fight, have seized on the potential of external gestation. As they point out, Roe v. Wade relies to a large degree on the nonviability of the aborted fetus. Forty states and the District of Columbia have restricted abortion after approximately 24 weeks of gestation, at which point a baby could survive birth. An artificial womb would vastly extend the period of fetal viability. In theory, an embryo could survive outside its mother’s body from the moment of its conception. Some anti-abortion activists have said that women should therefore be required to incubate aborted fetuses in artificial wombs.

Bioethicists worry that another subset of women will employ fake wombs for convenience, to avoid stretch marks and weight gain or to prolong Hollywood careers. Some radical feminists see the man-made uteruses as a way not just to free women from pregnancy but to rid the human race of females completely. If sufficient ova were banked, they say, men could have an artificial womb surgically implanted and bear children themselves.

Clearly, the most logical and worthy use of artificial wombs would be to help couples who cannot conceive but wish for a genetically related baby. But even in that case, the rationale for an artificial womb is murky. “We have a perfectly safe, workable alternative,” says Thomas Murray, the president of the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank in Garrison, New York. “We have surrogate mothers.” An infertile woman might be squeamish about having someone else carry her issue, another body exchanging blood and emotion with her child. “But,” Murray continues, “if someone insists on an artificial womb, if they want to create a biologically related baby so badly that they are willing to risk having that baby be severely deformed, it’s hard for me to see the moral good in that.”