I'm sure 99% of people here are guys and are older, but I think this is a topic that is interesting. Like automation, AI, green energy and EVs, this type of technology would be transformative. As someone who completed their mother/child nursing (MCN) course last year and will be getting my RN in a month, this subject is relative to my profession, even if it is not personal, as my wife and I don't want to have kids, and on a even more personal note, I have a planned vasectomy a few months away.
With Elon Musk and others talking about a population collapse on the horizon, this subject might be more relevant now more than ever. Of course, there are the obvious dystopian fears that artificial wombs and genetic engineering will lead to corporations producing obedient, subservient, super-human armies, but I think that can be mitigated with regulations, where the technology will come no matter what, so we should discuss this topic and plan for the future instead of waiting like we always do and having a knee-jerk reaction. The benefits of having artificial wombs would be significant for everyone.
Besides women and infants dying from child birth, far more typically are women experiencing complications that are physically and emotionally damaging, while also incurring a huge cost on society. Just in my MCN rotation, multiple pregnant women I came into contact with were having to go through cesareans, were having to deal with hemorrhaging and were dealing with gestational diabetes. Women's bodies are most often forever changed by pregnancy, having their GI systems rearranged with changes to their suspensory ligaments, scars from stretch marks, lacerations through their stomach muscles, tearing of their perineum, cervix, urethra, vagina, potentially making sex unenjoyable or numb, or causing them to be incontinent of urine or bowel. Many babies can't fit through the pelvis of a woman resulting in the need to fracture clavicles, misshapen heads or having to have induced preterm babies or cesareans.
Babies are a foreign object in women, so a woman's immune system can react to kill a fetus, or fetal cells can circulate in a woman and cause a deadly immune response. This was especially true before we had RhoGAM for Rh incompatibility when mother were Rh negative. Babies can get diseases from mothers or infections. Diabetes will affect a babies weight and metabolism.
Mothers incurring a wage penalty too. They have to take time off work. They have to sometimes choose a career over a family. This results in lose of wages, time off work, greater reliance on social programs, loss of banked PTO, loss of advancement, etc.
For society, elective, artificial wombs could potentially decrease healthcare costs and related complications (mortality and morbidity), depending on the price and whether it was an elective/private cost. GDP would go up by decreasing time away from work. Population could go up if that became an issue (I don't think it is an issue, outside of the fact that some couples may have had children given the means to stay home to raise them and afford to house them, or for women to not have to deal with the complications of being pregnant). As the video discusses, this technology could also pave the way for tissue and organ regeneration/growth for organ transplants, something that is greatly needed for all types of patients including cancer patients, aging people with heart disease, lungs for smokers, kidneys for dialysis patients, etc. Organ transplants would be significantly cheaper than dialysis 3-4 days/wk and related ED visits for complications (14x cheaper).
For those who are pro-life, and for those wanting to adopt, or for those that can't have children, this would be a transformative option instead of abortion, adoption and infertility.
What do you think?