Liberation or Folly? Your Takes on Artificial Wombs

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Earlier this week I asked readers, “What do you think about artificial wombs? Are they ethical? Desirable? Should they be a priority for scientists? If they become advanced enough to be viable, would you ever use one? How would a world in which they were available differ from ours?”

Kaitlin, who favors artificial wombs, has been thinking about this subject for a long time, and sees it as a clash between equality and identity:

I was a 16-year-old girl when my mother thought I was monstrous for announcing that women would never be equal until everyone had access to artificial wombs and the ability to have children with their partners, regardless of gender. To my mother this was the stripping away of her identity and role in the society—motherhood. For me, it was imagining a world where no one has to be defined by their reproductive role unless they choose it, the necessary step for creating an egalitarian society with true gender fluidity. I had just finished reading American speculative fiction writer Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, where artificial wombs and their use (or not) play major plot points, and I was intoxicated with the possibility that I could be more than my reproductive organs.

Mark opposes artificial wombs in general but has mixed feelings:

I imagine the perfection of such a technique is only a matter of time, and the benefit to previously pre-viable children cannot be ignored. At the same time, the question immediately brought to mind this quote, 1970):