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Could Artificial Wombs End the Abortion Debate?
Published in Christopher Kaczor, The Ethics of Abortion, 2023
However, this objection fails to distinguish between partial ectogenesis and complete ectogenesis. A woman tempted to seek abortion already has a human fetus within her. Complete ectogenesis is already excluded. Partial ectogenesis is the continued development of an already generated human being in an artificial womb after transfer from a maternal womb. By definition, partial ectogenesis does not involve generation and development entirely outside the womb. So, although some people who oppose in vitro fertilization, twin fission, cloning, or parthenogenesis should, to be consistent, oppose complete ectogenesis, it does not necessarily follow that they should oppose partial ectogenesis.
The Artificial Womb and the End of Abortion
Published in Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce P. Blackshaw, Daniel Rodger, Agency, Pregnancy and Persons, 2023
Romanis gives four reasons why a human individual in an artificial womb is not a newborn, and Colgrove calls into question all four of these reasons. He writes,Being a newborn means having been born recently. Subjects of partial ectogenesis have been born recently. Thus, they are newborns. The issue has nothing to do with how they are treated, how they behave, the capacities they exercise, their relative dependence on technology or their social interactions. None of the features Romanis discusses, therefore, support the claim that gestatelings are not newborns.(Colgrove 2019, p. 724)Now, Romanis might reply that the subjects of partial ectogenesis have not in fact been ‘born’. They have been removed from the uterus prior to birth, which would have (presumably) taken place months later. They are like the Scottish nobleman Macduff “from his mother’s womb/Untimely ripped”, and thus not naturally “born of woman” (Shakespeare, MacBeth V. vii). But Colgrove points out that the subjects of partial ectogenesis fulfill the definition of “live birth”. If the subjects of partial ectogenesis are newborns who have been born alive, then they have the moral status of newborns who have been born alive. This leaves open the possibility of infanticide. However, if infanticide is morally wrong and ought to be legally prohibited (Kaczor 2015, pp. 41–58), then the same protections are enjoyed by the subjects of partial ectogenesis.
A response to Mulder
Published in Bertha Alvarez Manninen, Jack Mulder Jr., Civil Dialogue on Abortion, 2018
It is certainly theoretically possible that someone else may have been a match for McFall. If the theoretical possibility of there being another donor is sufficient to release Shimp from his obligation to donate his bone marrow – in that he could not be legally compelled to do so – then this presents a problem for Mulder’s argument when it comes to a pregnant woman’s alleged obligation to sustain a fetus, since we can bring in what is theoretically possible in the science of pregnancy and gestation. In 2016, a 26-year-old woman at the Cleveland Clinic was the recipient of the first ever successful uterine transplant in the United States.27 In 2014, a woman in Sweden gave birth to a baby boy two years after her uterine transplant.28 Some medical professionals are hopeful that one day transgender women may be able to experience pregnancy through uterine transplants.29 As of yet, there has not been a case of a pregnant uterus being successfully transplanted into a different woman, but medical technology can, and has, achieved marvelous things. Moreover, there have been advancements in the field of ectogenesis – gestation outside the womb – so that one day it may be possible for a woman to extract an embryo or fetus from her body and have it be gestated in a fully artificial environment. Suppose that, one day, these scenarios were to come into fruition, making it theoretically possible for another woman, other than the biological mother, to gestate an unwanted fetus. Would this absolve the biological mother from her alleged moral obligations to the fetus, so that she can no longer be legally compelled, from Mulder’s perspective, to remain pregnant? In other words, it seems to follow from Mulder’s argument that if, theoretically, another woman could gestate this particular fetus, then the woman who is actually pregnant is under no moral obligation to continue to sustain that fetus. She may then permissibly abort after all.
Artificial Womb Technology, Catholic Health Care, and Social Justice
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
The Catholic health care ethicists cited by De Bie and colleagues in Supplement 2 have suggested partial ectogenesis is only licit in cases of failing pregnancies that reflect a dire medical necessity (Kaczor 2007, 2013, 2018; Reiber 2010). The reasoning behind their suggestion is most clearly stated by Kaczor who argues that the papal encyclical Donum Vitae calls parents to maintain fidelity to the principle of “integrative parenthood” whenever possible throughout a pregnancy. This principle grants a conceived child a right to be carried in the natural womb of its mother throughout the entire term of pregnancy—what Kaczor characterizes specifically as a right to “gestational parenthood.” Kaczor recognizes the right to gestational parenthood is not absolute and that exceptions will arise when other, more fundamental rights of a child are at stake—such as a child’s right to life. Furthermore, he suggests medical conditions that risk the failure of a pregnancy give rise to a reasonable exception to the right to gestational parenthood since a failed pregnancy would obviously forgo a child’s right to life. Hence, it is only in such dire medical situations as a failing pregnancy that Kaczor and Reiber suggest future applications of partial ectogenesis via AWT might be deemed licit within Catholic health care in order to secure a child’s right to life.
Thinking Inside the Bag: Patient Selection, Framing the Ethical Discourse, and the Importance of Terminology in Artificial Womb Technology
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
Mark R. Mercurio, Kelly M. Werner
Domain II, as the proposed framework is conceived, covers a lot of ground, from 2 weeks, where AWT will clearly not be possible anytime soon, to 21 weeks, where it may be. Including them both in the same decisional domain might make it too easy to dismiss those below, but near, 22 weeks. The developers of EXTEND claim no intention of lowering the limit of viability, but the question will eventually arise, and should be carefully considered and debated before the first time it is faced by a clinician. Complete ectogenesis (growth and development outside the uterus, from conception to birth), on the other hand, is a straw man—no technology enabling it is on the horizon, no one is seriously suggesting it anytime soon, and all ethical questions related to it certainly need not be settled before human trials of AWT begin. In the consideration of ethical issues related to AWT, ectogenesis should not be considered in the same domain, or discussion, as the use of AWT just below what is considered a gestational age threshold with current technology.
A Different Take on the Law and Ethics of AWT
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
Susan Kennedy, Lawrence Nelson
One issue is the authors’ elision of the legal and the ethical with respect to the status of fetonates. When examining the legal status of the fetonate in Domain III, the authors correctly point out that extremely premature neonates are “endow[ed]…with full [legal] rights and protections” once out of the uterus and alive “even if immediately followed by AWT” (De Bie et al. 2023, 74). However, their sole authority supporting this statement (Colgrove 2019) is poorly chosen. Colgrove’s thesis is that any subject of ectogenesis, even partial, has “the same moral status as newborns,” not legal status (723). But a philosophical argument for an entity having moral status is sharply distinct from establishing that it has legal status under the positive law of a particular jurisdiction. Colgrove provides reference to only a single legal authority establishing that basic rights vest at live birth, namely chapter 1, section 8 of the U.S. Code, and it does no such thing. It does not confer any legal rights, but only defines the meaning of “born alive” for purposes of U.S. federal laws that employ the word “person” and its legal cognates.