While modern-day feminists are so constantly terrified of women losing their rights, it seems that there may be something they should be a little more concerned about these days.
As of April 2017, scientists successfully developed an artificial womb that grew a baby sheep. Sheep are mammals. Humans are mammals. The differences between the wombs of the two species can only be so significant. How long will it be before humans can be grown in artificial wombs?
If you are at all concerned about saving babies who are born prematurely, then artificial wombs probably sound like a wonderful idea to you. The goal is to create a system that replicates a mother's womb closely enough to allow a prematurely born child to continue to grow and develop outside of the actual mother. This would greatly increase the survival rate of babies born before 37 weeks. According to the World Health Organization. there's about a 1:10 ratio on babies born early each year. Almost a million of those babies will die. An article from The Guardian states, "80% of babies born at 23 weeks and younger do not survive" and goes on to explain that the very few that do will deal with severe issues, likely for the rest of their lives. Most of these issues are because the baby's organs are not given the proper amount of time to develop inside the womb. The artificial wombs used for the lambs kept them alive and growing for what is equivalent to weeks 22-24 of a human pregnancy term. These artificial wombs could eventually have the potential to change things entirely.
At the moment, doctors and fetal surgeons are claiming that it would be absolutely impossible to grow a baby without the mother having at least some sort of role. However, I am sure that a couple hundred years ago, doctors would have also claimed that technology and medicine would never have advanced enough to treat and cure certain forms of cancer like they have now. How long will it be before that claim is also proved to be false?
Therefore, exactly how long will it be before women are actually needed for reproduction? Yes, human eggs will probably still be needed, but it seems certain that if scientists and doctors can create an artificial womb, they can probably find a way to freeze and preserve enough eggs to at least promise human survival for a few hundred more years. At some point, could men find a way to survive entirely without women? Why are feminists not as worried about this reproductive issue as they are about abortion? And furthermore, why are they more concerned about the right to kill unborn children than the possibility of keeping them alive?
Works Cited
Prasad, Aarathi. "How Artificial Wombs Will Change Our Ideas of Gender, Family and Equality | Aarathi Prasad." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 01 May 2017. Web. 30 July 2017.
"Preterm Birth." World Health Organization. World Health Organization, n.d. Web. 30 July 2017.
