Technological developments continue to hit the news, captivating the human imagination with great hopes as well as unsettling concerns for the future. Grave abuse can be envisioned. Of course, artificial intelligence is often the technology that most quickly comes to mind. Many of us use it daily as we wonder where it is headed. However, equally troubling technological advances are surprisingly close to being realized. For the Christian aware of developments in the biological sciences and health care, artificial gestation—a.k.a. artificial wombs or ectogenesis—is a developing technology that brings both hope and dystopian fears at the same time.
The idea is to assist with late-term high-risk pregnancies, some of which could lead to spontaneous miscarriage or even therapeutic abortion. If the technology is in place, the high-risk premature fetus could be removed from the mother and incubated in an artificial womb in the clinic or hospital until closer to the natural 40-week term of development. Or, the pregnant mother who needs to undergo risky unexpected surgeries or treatment that would put her preborn baby at risk, could have the fetus, or even an embryo, transferred to an artificial womb to continue development while the mother undergoes treatment. Also, if the pre-term baby needs surgeries or medications, they could be administered while the baby develops in the artificial womb.
Admittedly, this sounds risky, but if the technology is properly developed, many mothers and babies could benefit. This is the stated vision of centers like the Duke University School of Medicine that claim artificial wombs will ensure safe neonatal development and avoid risky premature delivery. Recent articles in Journal of Pediatric Surgery make similar claims.
However, there is a raft of concerns associated with developing technology. For example, the challenge of transferring a fetus to the machine and preventing a life threatening pre-mature breathing reflex is not inconsequential. Further, current artificial womb technology cannot be used on a fetus less than 20 weeks old (about halfway to delivery) because blood-vessel development is not mature enough to allow transition to the machine. Such challenges can conceivably be overcome as technology matures. And we can be sure that the researchers are working to eliminate these technological shortcomings. Human experimentation can be largely avoided as other mammals like sheep are used to perfect technology. Yet, the FDA is slated to approve clinical trials in the United States soon for 20–28-week fetuses. That reality raises troubling concerns for potential human experimentation under the guise of safety trials.
Given the modern crisis in bioethics, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision almost unimaginable abuses. A recent article in Springer Nature by Alexis Heng Boon Chin of Singapore suggests that the artificial womb could be used to remove a fetus slated for abortion, transferred to an artificial womb, brought to term, and to be put up for adoption. That would be well and good until full-term children are born with no prospect of adoption. The current acceptance of late-term abortion could easily make the situation nightmarish, backfiring on pro-life hopes for technology. It is hard to envision any culture across the globe advancing artificial gestation in a biblical pro-life context. One might envision select hospitals or healthcare providers proceeding with this in an ethical way, but such groups would likely risk marginalization.
Chin’s article goes on to suggest a minefield of ethical concerns troubling for any secular society. Artificial gestation will probably not change the widespread desire to eliminate the congenitally handicapped or disabled child. In fact, given global trends in bioethics, one can see that technology would often be withheld from individuals at risk because of convenience and expense.
Another situation that can be foreseen is affluent career women farming out the inconvenience of pregnancy to the machine while they continue to remain fully productive in the work force, being spared of the typical effects of pregnancy and loss of work time. Or, the development of HR policies could require women to use the technology or forego insurance coverage for pregnancy since it always has risks.
In the present context of human commodification and the use of surrogacy for a range of people wanting children, it is easy to see artificial gestation exacerbating an already troubling situation. Singles, same-sex couples, and child exploiters of various types will likely see the technology as a great resource able to provide the “product” of their desires.
There is another concern that is alarming. The current global decline in total fertility rate (TFR) has many demographers and economists concerned about global population decline and its societal and cultural effects as we move through the 21st century.
For example, Eurostat reports that the EU’s population will likely peak this year at 453 million, dropping to 447 million by 2050 with an average age of 44. The decline is expected to continue to 2100, and by then the average age will be 50. China’s situation is even worse. Due to its current total fertility rate (TFR), which is likely below 1.3 children per woman’s lifetime, China will lose nearly 3.5 million people from its population this year. As its population ages over the next several decades, the decline will accelerate to about 10 million per year by 2100; at that rate, China’s population will be cut in half from 1.4 billion to about 750 million. The average age will be over 60. Along the way, in 2050, its average age will be about 54. This portends economic disaster, an aging population that requires more care with less working-age people to support them and eventually replace them. North America’s situation, with a TFR of about 1.6, isn’t much better off.
So, how will these declining societies survive? Immigration is really a stopgap solution. The TFR of most of the high-emigree societies is also falling and will soon likely be below replacement TFR (2.1 children per woman); that is, if it isn’t already, as is the case with Mexico (TFR of 1.8). The declining societies, whether in the secular West or the Far East, have diminished the value of the nuclear family or they have repudiated it altogether. As a result, natural reproduction is unlikely to rebound.
They need people.
They need babies.
Will they look to the new gestational technology to deliver the answer? Are they envisioning that the state will raise the children? For communist China, it’s an easy answer. Of course. For much of the secular West, many would be fine with it. The right thinking biblically informed Christian will always be opposed, and increasingly marginalized.
Recently, China’s Dr. Zhang Qifeng, CEO of Kaiwa Technology, has announced that the first-ever pregnancy robot will be available in 2026. The robot, called GEAIR, will be available for about $14,000. The technology is designed to replace human pregnancy, freeing a woman from pregnancy, as if it were a disease.
I am not encouraged. A society that is avowedly atheistic, that has produced the first GMO children, that rejects the restraining Christian doctrine of humans in the Image of God (Imago Dei), that persecutes Christians endlessly, and is losing population like a punctured tire loses air, yet desires to dominate the global scene, has found its solution: make babies. And, they are delighted to have the central authorities raise them. Communists disdain the nuclear family. However, this situation is not just China’s. Much of the West, with its rejection of importance of the nuclear family, may welcome users of such technology, especially as the price comes down, as is invariably the case with new technology.
Convergent global trends are unsettling. The progressive left’s preferential interest in coalitions with Islam and radical socialism against Christianity and its products, AI tech giants’ desire to be emancipated from the biblical-creation limits of the incarnated human, and various developing biotechnologies that assault the Imago Dei, are converging to create challenges for the Christian that have never been experienced on such a massive scale.
The future is troublingly uncertain. But we have seen troubling times before, and God loves to save His people. Critical biblical thinking is needed now as much as ever to confront these trends with counter-cultural Christian responses. We need to be able to understand and act upon the implications of the Truth that is the best hope for the world.