Daily Times

While some women experience pregnancy and childbirth as joyful, natural and fulfilling, others find themselves recoiling in horror at the physical demands of carrying and sustaining a child in their womb, and even more so at the potential brutality of giving birth.

In 1924 the evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane coined the term ectogenesis to describe pregnancy in humans provided through an artificial womb. Haldane imagined that artificial wombs might become so popular by 2074 that only a small minority – fewer “than 30% of children” – would then “be born of woman”.

Giving birth can endanger the health of older women, or women with certain health conditions. An artificial womb could present a better alternative to commercial surrogacy, which many denounce as exploitative. It might also mean that the divide between mother and father can be dispensed with: a womb outside a woman’s body would serve women, trans women and male same-sex couples equally without prejudice.

If an artificial womb is created, it will mean that women will be freed from the dangers of pregnancy, and create a more equal distribution of “labour”, with women able to work throughout gestation. It will also give men an essential tool to have a child entirely without a woman, should they choose. It will ask us to question concepts of gender and parenthood.

Nonetheless, a fully functional artificial womb will undoubtedly present entirely new ethical dilemmas, including some we may not yet be ready to negotiate. But it could offer, at least, solutions to inequalities that we find intractable today.

Feminists, not surprisingly, have extensively considered what ectogenesis could mean for women’s rights, the structure of the family, class, and society.  Right wing anti-choice activists, although perhaps initially delighted to have an alternative to abortion, will have to contend with a radical redefinition of “motherhood” and the hierarchical and gendered societal relationships for which it is an antecedent.  There is no guarantee that these changes will be good for women who currently already struggle to defend reproductive freedoms. Feminist critique ranges from one extreme to the other in terms of whether ectogenesis will liberate or further oppress women.

In her seminal work, The Dialectic of Sex, written in 1970, Shulamith Firestone argued that inequality between genders, and women’s virtual imprisonment in the home, was the direct result of biological reproductive differences and women’s correlating investments in mothering.  For her, ectogenesis, accompanied by revolutionary social changes, was the way to free women from the tyranny of their own biology put in the employ of patriarchal structures, including the traditional family.  She noted that, so far, these technical and social changes have been impeded by medicine’s domination by men, who have no vested interest in upsetting the traditional status quo.

The problem for feminists, though, is that any technology deploying the principles of a problematic model of pregnancy could unwittingly lead to its normalization or the perpetuation of these same problems. In this context, the devaluation of gestative work and the diminishing of the maternal-fetal relationship can be viewed only as antithetical to the feminist cause. While it cannot be denied that artificial wombs might still benefit a great number of people, of whom women form only part, it is worth questioning their particular usefulness as a feminist tool for liberation — speculatively or otherwise. In this context, artificial wombs could certainly alleviate the physical constraints currently faced by some women; but, without addressing the patriarchal models on which it might itself be built, the technology’s liberatory potential overall remains limited.

Decisions about reproductive technologies are more often then not made by doctors and individuals in the absence of a social justice framework. Progressive people, interested in equality and social justice, need to prepare for how rapidly evolving technology will shift reproductive rights and responsibilities. The real dystopian future is one where we look back with nostalgia at the brief period during which Roe vs. Wade had its fragile relevance and impact as a high point in women’s reproductive freedom. It may sound alarmist, but really, we have time to consider the ethical, moral, societal ramifications of this technology and frame the arguments of the future before others do it for us. We have some time, but, not much.