Social Issues
Surprisingly, many religious groups
that are strongly against abortion and
stem cell research have come out in
favor of artificial wombs. The reason
is that abortion laws tend to rely on the
non-viability of the fetus outside the
womb. Forty states and the District ofColumbia restrict abortion to within
the first 24 weeks, after which a fetus
could likely survive birth(5). An artificial
womb could significantly extend
fetal viability outside the mother’s body,
and thereby, some would argue, not
infringe on the mother’s rights. Scott
Gelfant, the director of the Ethics
Center at Oklahoma State University in
Stillwater explains, “some might think
that it could meet the test of Roe vs
Wade – that it protects the privacy
of the woman while preserving the
rights of the fetus. If
an artificial womb
were developed, the
government could
pass a law that required
people who
have a termination
of pregnancy to put
the fetus into one
of these wombs...
There are around
1 million abortions per year in the
United States and there would have
to be labs throughout the country, but
if we put all these in artificial wombs
and then put them up for adoption we
would have one million more babies.
It would be a nightmare”(1). At the
very least, if women were given the