The future of Child Birth

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I believe that in the future, the vast majority of babies will no-longer be born naturally, but rather they will be grown in artificial wombs from the moment of conception. I believe most people will choose this route to avoid pain and possible death from childbirth. In other words the procedure will be marketed as the best option to avoid health risks, and i imagine that companies or hospitals that run these programs will make a lot of money.

However this idea, much like the idea of designer babies, is so removed from nature that i imagine many will feel uncomfortable with the idea or may perceive it as a sinful act because it is unnatural.

How do you feel about this idea?
 
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IWantGod said:
it as a sinful act because it is unnatural
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One can readily see the Catholic teaching by reading the Catechism:
2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that "entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children."168 "Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses’ union . . . . Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person."169
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Since control of human life from cradle to grave is a desire I think will be satisfied I see farming human life a probability. The height of that technology I think is what you are envisioning…
 
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As far as I know, there is no prospect of this happening anytime soon. Unfortunately, conception outside the mother’s body (In Vitro Fertilization, or IVF) does happen, and is associated with much loss of developing life.
 
This subject has far-reaching implications for humanity that should give every thoughtful person pause. This touches upon not only the the abortion debate, but upon parental rights, and even slavery - the owning, selling, and killing of human beings.
But some ethicists are suspicious of this view. In a paper published recently in the journal Bioethics, Joona Rasanen, a graduate of the University of Helsinki, argues that even when the fetus has been removed from the mother, parents still have a right to genetic privacy and property rights. These rights in turn give them a “right to the death of the fetus”.
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Somehow, I think the billions of people living outside the 1st world bubble will continue to have kids the old fasioned way.
 
IWantGod said:
I believe that in the future, the vast majority of babies will no-longer be born naturally, but rather they will be grown in artificial wombs from the moment of conception. I believe most people will choose this route to avoid pain and possible death from childbirth. In other words the procedure will be marketed as the best option to avoid health risks, and i imagine that companies or hospitals that run these programs will make a lot of money.

However this idea, much like the idea of designer babies, is so removed from nature that i imagine many will feel uncomfortable with the idea or may perceive it as a sinful act because it is unnatural.

How do you feel about this idea?
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Genetic engineering of human beings is in the very near future. This will obviously mean removing diseases, but it will also mean Einsteinian intelligence (or much, much higher) will be the new norm. This might be doable not only for newborns but also for adults.

The transition will seem odd, but imagine a person from the early 1980s being told that within his lifetime, the entire world & the information therein is going to be connected and accessible not only through desktops, but through computers that you carry around in your pocket or on your wrist.

Ultimately, life will go on and in a very short period of time nobody will give it a second thought.

The impregnation of the child must occur during conjugal relations and ideally within the sacrament of matrimony between a mother and father that are dedicated to one another and to their future children for life. As far as transferring children into artificial wombs as a routine procedure, I don’t see any reason why this would conflict within Catholic sexual ethics, although the Vatican would likely release a statement if (and when) such technology was developed just to confirm it.
 
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This will have little bearing on how developed countries experiment with gentically enhanced humans. It will have the effect of creating more divisions between those humans who are “wild” and those who are “designed.”

Brave New world, indeed.
 
There’s much more that goes on in the womb besides physical development. If it was all about physical development than we could have babies at 25 weeks and they would all survive with the womb-like technology we have today.

But there’s so much we don’t understand. Like it or not, there are properties in breast milk that are not found in formula. A breast-fed child who is starting to get ill actually introduces that bacteria into his mother’s breast and within 24 hours receives antibodies to fight that illness. Sometimes the milk has a higher quality than the “liquid gold” colostrum produced, typically, only right after birth.

Babies also introduce stem cells into their mother’s bodies and those cells are being studied as to why woman who have had full-term pregnancies often have better outcomes health-wise.

Then you have the psychological factor that the human brain needs so many things that cannot be provided externally.
 
I don’t think that any experts believe that a person’s intelligence is entirely predestined in their DNA. Intelligence is most greatly influenced by a child’s exposure to language during their developmental phases. I don’t think you can produce a race of super-geniuses by genetic engineering alone.
 
" It is hard to see how ectogenesis, if widespread as a social choice, will not lead to an increased commodification of children."

"We have really only just begun to reflect seriously on the place of artificial wombs in society, despite the huge changes – good or bad – they might bring. Hence, we need to reflect intensely on the meaning of pregnancy, and its profound significance for the mother and child who are bound in a kind of communion.

As Christians, believing in a Saviour who “abhors not the Virgin’s womb”, we should be particularly well-placed for this task. That Christ, born of woman, is Deus ex homo is by no means incidental to our faith. That should give us reason to think that, however much we must strive towards greater equality for women, artificial wombs would scarcely be a deus ex machina for that fight."

 
I just pray that my descendants will have a firm enough grasp on their faith to stay away from this.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
There’s much more that goes on in the womb besides physical development.
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This is true. I think science needs to explore the effect of mother-to-child and child-to-mother physiological interaction and even the psychological effects of the cascade of hormones that are released between them during pregnancy and birth. Take the bonding hormone oxytocin that is released during pregnancy and childbirth for instance. Would the bond be less strong in mothers who never actually carried their child? If there is no pregnancy, then there is no breast milk and that process also releases oxytocin. There are probably many more chemical reactions that science has yet to discover about this process that aids proper human development (of both mother and child) and that would never be able to be duplicated by machinery.

Look at how breast feeding and pregnancy reduces certain cancer rates for women.

My two cents is that science needs to focus more of their research on actual pregnancy and childbirth rather than on how to grow humans without it.
 
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TK421 said:
The impregnation of the child must occur during conjugal relations […] As far as transferring children into artificial wombs as a routine procedure, I don’t see any reason why this would conflict within Catholic sexual ethics
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Sorry, but this is monstrous. It would not conflict with Catholic sexual ethics to routinely (as you say) reduce women to conception-stage-only carriers, after which they are robbed of the embryo, given no chance to experience the growth of their child inside their own body, and given no chance to experience natural child-birth in an environment of their choosing? Thus divorcing the experience of having children utterly and totally from nature? There is no reason this would conflict with Catholic sexual ethics??
 
I know this question diverges a bit from the initial post, but would artificial wombs be considered moral in extraordinary situations. For example, to allow the child in an ectopic pregnancy to grow in an artificial womb?
 
IWantGod said:
How do you feel about this idea?
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It’s science fiction. Today’s technology is not even close to an artificial womb. Even in the area of fertility medicine, there is so much that is not known, and all of man’s proud technology can’t make a baby grow in a woman’s real womb unless all the natural factors are just right.
 
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It IS sinful as it directly contravenes the natural order of things. Not only does it separate sex and procreation, it also deprives the mother and child from the necessary time for bonding before birth.
It would also create a great schism in society: the rich would be able to buy their manufactured children; while the poor would have to continue naturally. Production-line-children would have a higher social standing than Natural-borns causing an ever greater divide.
Unfortunately, I have to agree that such things are not only possible but very likely as advancements will be made to perfect IVF and the like.
 
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