Artificial Wombs

[irnbruguzzler]

Would we want these?

What would become of women if we had them?

I don't understand this. Bemybebe told her story and then a load of people posted, some to her and some in general, then the conversation moved on, and then Sakura came on to respond to a strong challenge that had been made to her upthread accusing her of being a comic creation. Nothing whatsoever to suggest she was negating anyone's experiences

Anyway. I think the conversation about the actual experience of the foetus of growing inside a person and hearing the heartbeat and voices and sharing meals in a way and all the rest of it is very interesting. If an artificial womb was invented what's the betting that the mechanical stuff (blood goes here, fluid here) would work really well but the babies wouldn't work properly. And it would be because the people replicating the womb has looked at it as an entity by itself rather than an integral part of the woman. So an extension of the idea that the woman is just a "vessel" and the idea that they had when they worked out how babies were made that the sperm made the baby and the woman was simply a receptacle to grow it in - the baby belonged to the man and was a product of him entirely. So thinking you can grow a baby in a jar if you get the soup of hormones right overlooks the fact that a woman is not just a jar.

Oh an I read somewhere that men are able to lactate and was a bit sceptical to say the least! Can they does anyone know? I mean apart from if they have a medical reason for it IYSWIM

A baby that came from an artificial womb would probably be psychotic.

Agree SardineQueen the fact that anybody could believe this would work, is because people see women as objects.

The attacks on Sakura are disgraceful.

Rereading my post 8:11 about sharing food etc it occurs to me that there is a general feeling that women are too irresponsible to be trusted with something as important as growing babies. In the US they have people refusing to serve a woman an alcoholic drink, even coffee. Women are now being recommended to avoid bozze fags etc while they are TTC and some more extreme elements in the US think that as a woman might become pg at any time of her reproductive life that women of those ages shouldn't drink or anything full stop ever.

I saw a warning on a bottle of wine the other day that said avoid alcohol if you are pg or TTC and this was here in the UK.

The lists of things not to do which are so prescriptive and based not on risk assessment but on choosing the least risky path for the foetus irrespective of the impact this has on the woman. Women are told on here all the time why wouldn't you do x y and z it's only 9 months blah etc.

So given this sense that women are basically not up to the task - I think the idea of taking the job away from women starts to look appealing to the general population even here. The call would be "If it saves even ONE BABY from FAS/exposure to cigarettes/risk to foetus from DV then it's WORTH IT".

I can imagine that very easily indeed, I'm afraid to say. Frame it right and it'd be done.

It's funny how warnings aren't put on to one of the biggest dangers to pregnant women and their babies.

(sort of in a if you don't laugh you'll cry way)

Also men drinking smoking etc can reduce sperm quality but strangely I have never seen a 6 pack of Fosters bearing that warning

Like how the RISK of TTC when you are an older woman are well known and older mothers have a special place in the heart of rags like the DM. But they have now found out that older men producing substandard sperm can lead to miscarriages etc. So when women are having miscarriage after miscarriage they ought to be looking at the man as well but strangely the doctors have only just realised this and it's not in the public consciousness at all. Strange that, isn't it.

Hmm. So when a poster makes a sweeping statement like "Men don't even fancy women" anyone who disagrees is automatically "boring"? I don't see how that is "not taking the discussion anywhere" while posting "oh, yes, Sakura, you're so right, men don't fancy women at all" presumably would be?

Oh who has agreed with sakura on that point?

And this constant harking back to sakura's posts is moving the discussion away from the topic and I'm finding it really interesting so that's a shame.

I just can't believe there are so many women here who are doing the patriarchy's job for them.
Men have been obsessed, literally obsessed with creating artificial wombs, and with usurping women's biological powers from them. There are reams of literature on the subject. In the Elton John case, does anybody here think it's a coincidence that
a) women being poor benefits men and enables them to rent wombs from women and
b) it's a coincidence that they transfered an egg from one mother and implanted it in another woman so that neither woman could claim the child.[

In the UK (thankfully) if a birth mother changes her mind she gets to keep the child. Not so in the litigous US. Over there a woman can carry a baby, give birth and have no claims over it. It's fucking disgusting, is what it is, and it's where men have been driving us, and I can't believe there are women embracing it!

Do any of you honestly think women's status will improve when the one thing men need us for is gone?

What will happen in this utopian future is that men will create males. Lots and lots of males. Armies of males. Then they'll keep females to serve them:sexual service, mainly, but also to do the shit work. Females will be treated appallingly, even moreso than they are now.

IF technology usurps women's wombs it will basically then be men in the driving seat, not women. Male scientists. I hope this is clear to everyone who is arguing for artificial wombs.

Mother nature gave women power over reproduction for a reason and that reason is she knows we can handle it. Men rape babies FFS. You really want to give them power over something so important! I can't believe we're having this discussion!

For the women who are worried about pain in childbirth, not all women need to reproduce, you see. That's the main lie the patriarchy peddles. IN a non-patriarchal society I'm certain that many women would not bother, and only those who are interested in doing it out of curiosity would risk their life to bring a child into the world. Having a child is nice, but because women's options are so limited for many childbearing is the best and most pleasurable route they can take in life. If women had real economic and political power this would not be the case.
In such a society, of course, mothers and the work they do would be valued. Not put on a pedestal, but actually valued.

And what about unwanted pregnancies? How are artifical wombs going to stop men raping women? THat is the real question we need to ask here.

How are artificial wombs going to protect prostitutes, for example? Or will men do away with women altogether in the sex department and just shag other men dressed up as women (transsexuals) or immerse themselves in cyberspace?

Do women here despise the female body so much that you think it's entirely defunct and faulty? Would you have hysterectomies?

While I agree with the posters who are concerned about replicating some of the effects of a real womb, it's also interesting to note that historically similar concerns were raised about the first heart transplant and about the first IVF babies. With the heart transplants there were worries the person's personality would get 'transfered', with the IVF babies there were worries the babies would be psychologically damaged.

Sakura, I am still very much learning about feminism, but when I look at my life, my friends, my family, my work colleagues - I just do not see this bunch of evil men who want woman to be subservient to them, who rape and just see women as objects and walking wombs....

I know that there ARE men who are like this - god, you read about them everyday on here. But not ALL men are like this.

Got to go out now but was going to say - porto I find sakura's posts challenging to say the least! and they always give me food for thought. These issues are global though and it is useful to remember parts of the world where terrible things are endemic and ask yourself not how these things will work if applied to you and your family, but what about in rural pakistan or the parts of the world where raping babies and children is something that goes on eg thinking it's a cure for HIV

sorry that was short and not as well thought out as i'd like but have to go

I agree with whoever said ^ thread. Individually, for a woman who can't carry to term etc, it would be great. Collectively for women I suspect it would be a bad thing.

The most likely outcome would be women n general encouraged to have test-tube babies as it would be cheaper, less litigious and easier than the unorganized mess of giving birth. Specifically I'm thinking about a parallel between artificial wombs and the rise of c-sections in the us for anything at all outside of the ordinary.

I find this topic interesting too. I think there's a lot of truth in the idea that artificial wombs are seen in purely mechanistic terms and neglect the (for want of a better term) nurturing role of the mother, and that that ties into a more pervasive conception of women as "lesser" and "What Women Do" as less important.

However, I also don't think that there's the smallest chance of an artificial womb (in the conception-> birth sense) ever actually being created. I do think that much of the research in this area is ultimately likely to result in improved incubators for preterm infants so that survival rates increase and rates of serious disabilities go down. If we had an "artificial womb" that could sustain a 23- or 24- week baby for even two or three extra weeks that would be amazing. A full 38 week pregnancy? Not going to happen. It just isn't. Because even viewing it mechanistically it's just too massively complicated to simulate.

And I think focusing on the technology is massively counterproductive. The technology to carry out gender selection (with pretty good accuracy rates at the sperm-sorting stage, or with perfect accuracy rates at the blastocyst stage) has been around for a good while. Has that had an impact in (for example) parts of rural India or Pakistan? No. Unwanted girl babies are still disposed of by old-fashioned low-tech means (suffocation, drowning, crushed skulls, abandonment...). It's the attitudes that need to be tackled, because the technology is largely incidental -- both because it's unavailable to the vast majority of the world's population and because there are always lower-tech means to the same end. Putting energy into fighting the technology spectacularly misses the point, IMO.

That's a general rule, but even more particularly the case when the only potentially practical use for the research is the beneficial treatment-for-prem-babies option. I am not going to take against that because of a completely imaginary spectre of hordes of evil scientists with penises creating armies of little boy babies.

Mother nature gave women power over reproduction for a reason and that reason is she knows we can handle it.

I'm afraid I can't take any arguments seriously (no matter how sensible they may be) if this is in the middle of them.

I think that there are two ideas here

The idea about this happening in practice in the real world now and the fact that it would be hugely expensive and only available to a few etc which a lot of people have made good points about

And a thought experiment about what might happen if this were freely available tomorrow, which a lot of people have also talked about

They are two different conversations really, although interesting to explore both here

Trills it is a shame you let one posters posts put you off the whole topic.

I'm not put off the whole topic, just responding to one post there.

I agree that there are definitely two very different arguments.

If someone invented an artificial womb tomorrow then it would have to go through years of testing (on animals to start with), and the first tests on humans would presumably have to be on very premature babies who would die otherwise. This in itself would be a difficult test to interpret, as there's likely to be something different about babies that are born very prematurely (either something different in them or something different in the environment they have grown in) compared to the average baby that is not born prematurely.

The initial usage would not be for growing babies from scratch, it would be for the cases where people had trouble incubating full-term, simply because that's where we have "spare" babies to test it on.

Clearly "spare" is not the right word here, but for an untested technology you need embryos/foetuses that:
1 - don't have a better option
2 - are wanted
This rules out using embryos created during IVF for testing simulating an entire pregnancy because if you have gone through IVF and you have the choice of using your own womb or borrowing one from a surrogate or using a machine that may or may not work you will choose a real womb (for now, anyway).

Ah you're being too practical there trills

I have clearly read too much SF...

You said about reality vs them suddenly being freely available and my brain travelled down the path of reality...

I think that there are three ideas -- the two you've outlined plus a "what do the terms in which this tends to be discussed tell us about the way in which women are viewed" (which sort of cuts across both).

And the thought experiment itself shades into a question about "Are women's life choices/chances restricted specifically by their (actual or potential) role as gestators of children (so that patriarchal attitudes to women have, to a great extent, origins in women's reproductive status), or do patriarchal attitudes towards women have a separate origin so that, women's reproductive status is the main thing they have protecting them in a patriarchal society?" Or something like that, anyway. I suspect the answer may be "both, to an extent", although that seems paradoxical.

yes I agree with you that the reality is this is a very long way off and will be terribly expensive.

I do wonder if it were being developed what sort of reaction there would be from the public? Whether people would be keen or see it as interference. Would there be calls to ban it? I guess it would depend on what the press decided to think of it, and what it could actually do.

Tmesis excellent questions to think about. I am going to think about them!

Just to clarify, artificial wombs actually exist, although in a primitive state. Currently scientists in separate experiments have been able to get fertilised eggs to implant in the artificial lining for up to 10 days. They are restricted by the HFEA to only experimenting with human embryos up to 14 days but as there is initial promise a number of teams are hoping to try for much longer with animal embryos.

How do they replicate the umbilical cord? That would be a bit of a problem I would imagine! While the embryo is running on it's own steam so to say it's less of a problem (although still fairly tricky I imagine!).

Tmesis I am still foxed by your question

Embryos make their own placentas (placentae?) and umbilical cords. They are a part of the embryo not a part of the parent.