In The Womb Where To Watch

[Christain Cobb]

TheEctoLife Artificial Womb Facility envisages a controversial new way to be pregnant, with the baby growing in an idealized, but completely inhuman environment: transparent "growth pods" arranged by their hundreds in human baby farming operations.

To be clear from the outset: this is just a concept at this stage, the brainchild of Berlin-based "producer, filmmaker and science communicator" Hashem Al-Ghaili. There are no immediate plans to build an EctoLife facility, this is merely a piece of science fiction Al-Ghaili has extrapolated from the current state of fertility research.

Al-Ghaili's argument goes something like this: pregnancy is not fun. It can be exhausting, painful, nauseating, intrusive, inconvenient and sometimes flat-out dangerous for a mother, and there are all kinds of ways it can be suboptimal for a baby. If you're pregnant and you smoke, or party, or stress too much, or catch certain diseases, or you simply don't play enough Mozart at your burgeoning belly, you might not be giving your child the best start you can.

The science isn't far off, says Al-Ghaili, from being able to replicate the ideal gestation conditions in a temperature-controlled, infection-free womb with a view. An artificial umbilical cord can provide oxygen and nutrition as the tot floats in artificial amniotic fluid, continually refreshed with precisely tailored hormones, antibodies and growth factors. Baby waste products can be removed, run through a bioreactor and enzymatically converted back into "a steady and sustainable supply of fresh nutrients." Yummo.

Little speakers can make sure the tyke is getting the best possible brain nutrition, too. We're talking all the classical music it can handle (which may be more than the parents can handle), as well as your own soothing voice piped in as well, to start building that invaluable bond.

...And potentially, beyond. Human babies are among the most helpless and underdeveloped in the animal kingdom. Why can't we pop out of the womb and take our wobbly first steps five minutes later, like a calf does? It's because our brains are too big for the human female hip gap; we're born undercooked, with soft, pliable skulls, several months behind other animals developmentally. But in an EctoLife EZ-Womb, there's no such biological limit. You could experiment with much longer gestational periods, the results might be terrific.

If this all sounds a little impersonal, cold and disconnected to you, Al-Ghaili has more technology to soothe your mind. Think you might miss the feeling of the baby kicking? Boom. A haptic suit can bring that sensation back for any parent that wants it, and only when they want it. Want to see the beginning of life from your kid's point of view? Whack on a VR headset and tune in to a 360-degree camera any time you like.

What's more, if you don't dig the idea of your precious bundle of joy being grown in a 400-pod baby lab, at a baby farm boasting 75 of those labs and pumping out 30,000 babies a year, you can have a battery-powered pod installed in your own home. Heck, keep it there post-birth to get some little brothers and sisters happening.

You might not have the same intensely human birthing suite experience as the billions of parents before you, but on the other hand, you'll arrive at your first day on the tough job of parenthood feeling physically fresh and well-rested, instead of having been gradually weighed down and latched onto by a parasitic organism that tends to leave rather a path of destruction upon its exit even in the best case scenario. Given the option, I'm sure some mums would choose to push a button and watch a little pod open up.

It'll start out, Al-Ghaili feels, as the only option for certain parents: those who can't conceive or bear kids naturally. But as it's refined and proven, it'll become an option for all prospective parents, linking in easily with the IVF, genetic screening, embryo selection, genetic potential modelling and genetic engineering we know is coming rapidly down the chute.

Once it's well-developed and available, it might start looking like a pretty attractive option for folk that like the idea of a baby but can't see why they should have to go through the ordeals of pregnancy and childbirth to get one. Heck, you might not even need a day off work, just hold hands with your significant other after a day at the office, head down to the baby farm and pop the lid on life as a parent. EctoLife will even hook you up with a free genetic test to make sure you're not heading home with the wrong kid.

That's the argument, in a nutshell, for growing your kids in an artificial nutshell. You can explore it in more detail in the extraordinary video below. I'm not gonna lie, I find this concept pretty twisted, inhuman and dystopian. But given the Matrix-reminiscent layout of the EctoLife facility and a certain Paul Verhoeven-esque quality in the narration, one gets the impression Al-Ghalil wants to provoke strong reactions.

And at the end of the day, if I search my heart, I've got two kids that I feel very connected with and close to, and I didn't have to go through pregnancy or labor; I left that bit to my wife. So I'm hardly in a position to criticize the idea. We'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Of course, the problem with this advice is that it assumed that I would always be the one who had control over my own body. That turned out to be only partially true for many reasons, including that some men decided that they had a right to make decisions about my womb and the wombs of other women and girls, whether we liked it or not.

At the time, I could not understand why it was a crime for a doctor or a nurse to help wombs, which had become pregnant. I did not know who and why anyone had decided that wombs would not be permitted to have a safe and legal medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy.

It took many years for me to learn that the law, which made abortion a crime, was in the main made by human beings who did not have wombs and would never be pregnant. For some reason, these womb-less humans thought that I and other wombs lost the right to decide if we wanted to remain pregnant or not.

Then in 1973, the United States Supreme Court decided that women had a constitutional right to decide if they wanted to terminate their pregnancy or not, and if they did make that decision to terminate, at least in the first trimester of their pregnancy, then they could have the option of a safe and legal abortion.

Wombs all over the nation, and in many other countries, celebrated the decision in the United States Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade. It meant that women and girls did not have to risk their lives with illegal abortions. For decades after that, wombs were safe from politicians who wanted to make abortion a crime, as it was in many states prior to Roe v. Wade.

Fast forward to June 24, 2022. That same U.S. Supreme Court with different justices reversed Roe v. Wade, and decided that those with wombs no longer had the right to safe and legal abortions. Their states could decide that wombs should be compelled to carry a pregnancy to term or take the risk of an illegal and dangerous abortion, even if the wombs were pregnant because of rape, incest and even if the life of the woman with the womb was endangered. This new decision was made by four justices who had no wombs and would never be pregnant, and one person who had a womb, and many children and whose religion taught her that abortion was a sin.

This new decision will mainly hurt young women, poor women, rural women and women of color. Those women have the most vulnerable wombs because it will be difficult or impossible for many of them to travel to other states to obtain a legal and safe abortion. Many do not have the financial resources to travel. Many cannot leave their children, if they are single parents. Many cannot leave their jobs to travel to another state.

Of course, wombs in the bodies of wealthy women will not be affected because these wombs will have the financial support to travel to other states or other countries where abortion will be safe and legal. Unfortunately, however, many millions of wombs in about half the states will not have that luxury.

At night, Morgan often rested his head on Richele's pregnant belly, calling Jesse by name and feeling him wriggle in response. Sometimes the couple would play games. They'd gently poke first one side of Richele's abdomen, then the other, and watch as Jesse followed their touch by poking the same side back. They even teased him by poking the same side twice and laughed as he poked the "wrong" side back.

All their prenatal shenanigans paid off. In the recovery room, it seemed abundantly clear Jesse recognized his parents right away, turning his head in their direction when either one spoke. When he cried, he'd calm down instantly at the sound of their voices.

"It was so exciting because there was this trust and communication and a certain sense of bonding between us right away," says Morgan Rapp. "And for him, I think, it was reassuring because he had a sense already of where he was."

Thanks to ultrasound and other high-tech tools allowing a peek inside the womb, scientists have discovered a virtual sensory playground in which your baby is living. The fetus responds to your voice and other sounds in the room, reacts to light and dark shadows as you move from place to place, tumbles as you switch positions, even tastes sweet or spicy foods you've just eaten.

There's already an array of tapes and gadgets on the market that help parents talk, sing or pipe classical music into the womb via little speakers on the uterus. One researcher has even developed a "curriculum" designed to speak to the fetus and supposedly boost intelligence, coordination and well-being.

Most researchers studying fetal development say Mother Nature and the stimuli your baby naturally receives in the womb from your everyday conversations and activities are good enough to prepare your baby for the outside world. Study of how the human brain develops still is in its infancy, but there's no convincing scientific evidence that deliberate fetal acoustic stimulation, as it's called, influences intelligence, creativity or later development.

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