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Could Artificial Wombs End the Abortion Debate?
Published in Christopher Kaczor, The Ethics of Abortion, 2023
If methods of nonlethal evacuation were available and safe for maternal health, then this statement would require that doctors use these means. Artificial wombs, as envisioned, are precisely means that would enable the survival of a viable fetus without additional hazard to the health of the mother. If all physicians abided by this statement, this alone would dramatically change the abortion debate. For if (given the option) the medical community refused to perform terminal abortions and would only perform evacuation abortions, then the abortion debate as we know it today would be over.
The Artificial Womb and the End of Abortion
Published in Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce P. Blackshaw, Daniel Rodger, Agency, Pregnancy and Persons, 2023
The ethics of the use of artificial wombs, and in particular the ethics of killing individuals living in artificial wombs, seems to (at least implicitly) involve some sort of judgment about the moral status of the prenatal human being. Does this individual human being deserve the basic respect accorded to all other human beings in virtue of human rights? Or is there one class of human beings who are excluded from the basic protections afforded all other human beings? We return again to the issue of moral status. Questions about pre-birth abortion, post-birth abortion (i.e., infanticide), and the use of artificial wombs require, it seems to me, some view of the moral status of very young human beings. Is the very young human being just a “collection of cells”, or is the very young human being deserving of protection by law and a chance at life (Kaczor 2015)? How we answer these questions will directly affect our perception of whether or not requiring partial ectogenesis involves imposing on women an undue burden.
Synthetic People / Creating Life from Scratch
Published in Jonathan Anomaly, Creating Future People, 2020
It is conceivable, barely, that through a similar process we might direct a (perhaps artificially intelligent) machine to string together amino acids and build an embryo from scratch. The resulting cell could then be implanted in the uterus of a willing woman, or potentially incubated in an artificial womb. Artificial wombs have been extensively discussed, partly as ways of helping prematurely born children develop in a healthy way. But they are not necessary for constructing synthetic people: they would just save women the inconvenience of pregnancy. The real barrier is the staggering complexity of understanding and synthesizing the billions of base pairs that comprise a human genome, and creating the embryo from which an artificial person could develop. If the process became feasible, it’s easy to imagine at least some women wanting to carry a synthetic embryo to term because they were interested in creating a child that way, or because they were paid to do so. This is not much different from women today who act as surrogates for a friend’s baby, or who accept payment in order to be a surrogate for a woman who cannot conceive or simply prefers not to go through pregnancy herself.
The Dilemmas of Artificial Wombs: Conventional Ethics and Science Fiction
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
Kingma also distinguishes an artificial womb from an artificial placenta and discusses the implications of varied approaches to life support for a baby born at the borderline of viability. Romanis raised questions about what, exactly, it means to be “born.” Does birth take place when the fetus is transferred from a womb to a container of amniotic fluid and an oxygenation circuit? Or should that be considered a “fetal transplant” with birth occurring when the fetus is delivered from the container? (Romanis 2018). Helen Sedgwick’s 2017 novel The Growing Season depicts a world in which gestation takes place entirely in artificial wombs (Sedgewick 2017). She speculates about whether this is liberating for women, whether it is a masculine plot to commodify reproduction and make actual women irrelevant.
Feminist Concerns About Artificial Womb Technology
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
Tamara Kayali Browne, Evie Kendal, Tiia Sudenkaarne
AWT, however, also raises concerns about the potential for exploitation and commodification of pregnant bodies, potentially linked to the affordability of the technology. If the technology becomes widely available and affordable, it is possible that individuals will be pressured to use artificial wombs instead of carrying their own pregnancies, leading to a further devaluation of an individual’s reproductive capacity. In this way, while AWT could open up more reproductive options, the technological imperative may also result in pressure to use AWT when the individual might otherwise prefer to have a natural pregnancy and make use of existing and expanding parental leave entitlements and health care benefits. On the other hand, if AWT is expensive (which would likely be the case, at least initially) its commercialization could lead to a situation where only the rich can afford the technology, exacerbating existing inequalities. For those expected to have high-risk pregnancies, the existence of a technological alternative might be used to deny health insurance coverage or restrict access to public services should the pregnant person or resultant child suffer any negative health consequences associated with their gestation.
Expanding the Frame: An Afrofuturist Response to Artificial Womb Technology
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
Leah Lomotey-Nakon, Elizabeth Lanphier
As the authors note, their goal was to “organize these [ethical] considerations [about artificial womb technology] into a comprehensive framework to organize future discussion, and not to analyze each identified issue or argument in depth.” Yet reproducing but not analyzing each argument presents risks. It uncritically takes at face value claims that a closer analysis might challenge, or at minimum complicate. It may, in other words, presume false arguments are true, or at least leave questionable arguments unquestioned. That these arguments exist within peer reviewed literature and capture blue within a scoping review is not (necessarily) the problem. The worry is that a scoping review flattens the difference between potentially sound and unsound arguments, bestowing validity onto those that may be questionable, by including them in the resulting framework intended to shape future bioethical discussion.