What should be on everyone’s mind is, “How does all this technological tinkering affect the kids?” We are only beginning to be able to address this question.
The first time I stepped inside a Chinese orphanage, I grabbed a tiny girl and held her tight. I was working for a Chinese adoption agency at the time, and even though I wasn’t a mother yet, I began rocking and swaying on instinct. Within a few minutes of initiating eye contact, the baby’s formerly empty countenance transformed into grins and coos as I conversed with her and copied her replies. Oddly, in a room with maybe 100 children placed head-to-toe, two or three per cot, the infant I was holding was the only one making a sound. After approximately five minutes, I set her down and turned my attention to another abandoned soul.
The infant has lost it. Her piercing wail rang out across the quiet room as soon as her back struck the cot, and I hastily picked her up again. It gradually dawned on me that the children’s quietness was not due to an organised programme. They were sobbing because their appeals had not been heeded. They stopped weeping.
Without Mothers, Babies Suffer
These abandoned children had given up on finding a response. They had never heard their mother talk to them, soothe them with a song, or rock them to sleep. The lack of human touch—maternal touch—had disrupted their emotional circuitry.
My orphanage story should sadden and horrify everyone. We naturally weep when children are denied their basic needs, particularly human touch. That is undoubtedly true for the newborns at the orphanage and others like them, who may suffer from “delayed physical growth and brain development, dysregulation of the neuroendocrine systems, delayed cognitive development, and deviant attachment and/or attachment disorder” as a result. However, it is also present in less severe instances of human deprivation. The world is currently being coerced.
Artificial wombs, mother deprivation, and commercialization are a lethal mix.
Artificial wombs are on the way. You may recall the Matrix-esque “Ecto Life” video that circulated late last year. While factories producing custom-ordered children are currently science fiction, they may not be so for much longer. The technique has already demonstrated some effectiveness with preterm lambs. China is creating robot nannies that will be able to “adjust the carbon dioxide, nutrition, and other environmental inputs” for children in artificial wombs once the technology is ready. Conveniently, these AI “nannies” may “rank” embryos and stimulate or stop their growth based on an algorithm. Between now and then, we continue to experiment with how children are born through the trifurcation of motherhood via surrogacy and by dabbling in womb transplants for women (and potentially males as well).
Many idealists believe that artificial wombs will alleviate a variety of reproduction problems. Some, including transhumanist Zoltan Istvan, consider the development of artificial wombs as a solution to the abortion controversy. Many people believe that this is a win-win situation since the lady does not have to bear the undesired pregnancy and the infant does not have to die. Some believe the device will assist preemies in reaching full-term development by moving the undeveloped foetus to a Biobag—problem solved. Others, such as the Cato Institute, see artificial wombs as a way for “women to have biological children without the health risks, pain, or other physical and psychological inconveniences often attendant to pregnancy and childbirth.” Wired writers envision the mechanisation of pregnancy as the ultimate equaliser for sexual minorities.
The introduction of artificial gestation will result in some or all of those “solutions.” However, a more practical use of artificial wombs will be to replace the most elusive component in the three-part—sperm, egg, and womb—baby assembly process. #BigFertility is always looking for accessible wombs, whether in war-torn areas, among economically needy women, or in places where brown bodies give birth to white offspring. It would be much easier and cheaper if we could simply remove women from the gestation process entirely.
Without a certain, the introduction of artificial wombs will excite a wide range of adults: those who want their kid to gestate past the start of preeclampsia, celebrities who prefer not to damage their bodies, and career women who refuse to leave the office. Gay couples will no longer need to seek a surrogate through their Buy Nothing Facebook group. Of course, traffickers will rejoice, since they will no longer have to use capital or capture to separate children from their parents.
Technological Tinkering with Toddlers
What will happen to children if they are completely cut off from human contact? I would say that this is significantly worse than the newborns at the orphanage. For the first 9 1/2 months of their lives, the orphanage infants were completely immersed in their mothers’ warmth, voice, scent, music, language, sleep habits, food preferences, and activity. sole during the first stage of human development did they experience what many adoptees refer to as a “primal wound,” the loss of their sole bond from the moment they were born.
But what about infants created in artificial wombs? Because humanity has never experimented with human development at this level, the results for infants conceived in a bag or by a bot are totally hypothetical at this time. What we do know is that we have been digitally experimenting with children for decades, and thus far, interrupting the normal processes of how children develop has only harmed their physical, mental, and relational health.
In 1978, it began with the creation of infants in a petri dish, which is known as IVF or in vitro (glass) fertilization. IVF now accounts for around 2% of births in America and the United Kingdom. While more research is needed, we do know that infants born in a laboratory rather than via sexual reproduction are more likely to have premature birth, birth deformities, cardiovascular problems, cancer, brain damage, and intellectual disability.
under addition to curating children under glass, the reproductive technology industry has incorporated “third parties” into the baby-making process. While the first “artificial impregnation” using alien sperm occurred in the womb in the late 1800s, the introduction of IVF made baby-making with strangers’ gametes more common. Children born from third-party eggs, removed laparoscopically and after weeks of hormone injections, arrived in 1983. The first kid born to a “gestational surrogate,” who was not genetically linked to the infant, was born in 1985.
We don’t know how many children are born each year as a result of sperm and egg “donation” due to the reproductive industry’s lack of recordkeeping and sharing obligations. However, the best estimate is that 30,000-60,000 infants are born each year from third-party sperm and around 3,000 via third-party egg.
What everyone should be thinking about is, “How does all this technological tinkering affect the kids?” We are only now beginning to understand the answer to that question. My work entails gathering tales from children who grew up in “modern” households, that is, children who had to give up a complete or partial contact with their mother or father in order to be a part of that family. Given the very early integration of sperm “donors” in the
What do the kids have to say?
So, what do we know about the “donor” kids? The greatest research was undertaken (among very few) on outcomes for infants of sole sperm “donation” discovered that
Young adults conceived by sperm donation are more distressed, confused, and estranged from their relatives. They perform worse than their biological parents’ peers in key areas such as depression, delinquency, and drug misuse. Almost two-thirds say, “My sperm donor is half of who I am.” Nearly half are upset that money was used in their conception.
The children in this research were comforted and cradled by their mothers’ presence during pregnancy, and they maintained a link and connection with her after birth. However, listen to how the purposeful loss
I am a non-biological daughter of two mothers. I adore them both, but there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t wish I had a father. It is especially difficult for children like myself who are different. regardless of how welcoming society is. I have men in my life who are my mother’s friends, but it’s not the same. I like my parents, but I disagree with the idea that I will never know half of my biology or my siblings. That is something I will never do to a child.
The statistics on children born through egg donation are significantly smaller. The few research we have focus solely on early childhood and only use parental interview replies. Unsurprisingly, their experiences reveal a similar desire for a relationship with their biological mother:
Every day, I wonder about my biological mother. Is she wondering about me? Do we look similar? Do we have comparable personalities, preferences, and dislikes? Do I have half-siblings? Do my grandparents know about me? That hardly scratched the surface. I can’t express how painful it is not to know who my biological mother is and to be unable to have/have had a relationship with her. I actually think about this at least once a day,
Even if a surrogate baby is genetically connected to his two “intended parents,” when he is born, they are merely two strangers among eight billion others. For all he knows, the surrogate is his mother. Even brief separation from one’s biological mother inflicts pain on a child, causes long-term psychological suffering, and leads to the basic wound that adoptees have been dealing with for decades. Such traumas can show as melancholy, feelings of abandonment and loss, and emotional disorders throughout an adoptee’s life.
While it may take decades to adequately analyze the consequences of surrogacy-created children, we already know that the link we make with our mothers in utero is important. A few surrogate-born youngsters have been ready to speak forward.
Children of surrogacy, like children of traditional adoption, experience all of the traumas associated with adoption. We want to know where we are from. We want to find out who our biological mothers are. We want to know who gave us birth and what they’re like. Why are we purposely generating children [by surrogacy] to go through adoption traumas when there are already children in need of homes?
The mother-child link formed during pregnancy serves as the foundation for trust, attachment, and long-term relational health. So it’s difficult for me to think that the arrival of artificial wombs, in which newborns will not only be separated from their birth mother—because there will be no birth mother—but would be starved of a mother entirely, can be anything other than devastating for children’s mental well-being.
Never-Before-Seen Risks to Kids
Even with surrogacy, the “intended” parents may not feel as close and protective as the unrelated woman bearing the kid. There have already been cases in which the surrogate chooses to raise a disabled child abandoned by the intended parents: more specifically, these are cases in which women refused to abort perfectly healthy babies when the intended parents demanded it, in violation of the surrogacy contract.
In certain circumstances, the only bond preborn infants have—their relationship with the surrogate mother—could be the difference between life and death if the commissioning parents are unhappy with the kid’s result.
Even her pleading isn’t always effective. Last year, one surrogate asked the child’s two fathers for an early birth.
In addition to hazards to their lifes and emotional health, excluding women from the gestation process would expose children to a new type of danger: unimaginable exploitation and abuse. Even when actual women sign legitimate surrogacy contracts, it can be difficult to separate surrogate pregnancies from child trafficking. Whereas adoption bans payment to the birth family—the bright red line that separates adoption from baby-buying—third-party reproduction and surrogacy are based on this. My Google “surrogacy” alert is full of articles about ring after ring of traffickers caught for selling children in the name of “family building.” Frequently, the only difference between the two is the time of the contract. Signed before conception? “Surrogacy.” Signed after conception? “Baby selling.”
Even without fully automated gestation, the commercial separation of children from their mothers through surrogacy has already enabled men to mass-produce surrogate babies, handed over several children to paedophile “intended parents” who would never have passed an adoption screening, and place children with unstable men against the surrogate’s wishes. The celebration and normalization of surrogacy by the Kardashians, Kidmans, and Cohens of the world pave the way for greater acceptance of manufactured offspring, which the predatory Adam Kings of the world are happy to walk through.
Separating gestation and parenting poses a risk to the child. Separating gestation from humanity will be extremely perilous.
Children’s Lives at Risk
What will happen to youngsters who are reared without human touch for the first nine months of their lives? Children born in artificial wombs may perish, as did the thirteenth-century children in King Frederick’s experiment to see what language they would speak if never touched or spoken to.
If they don’t, and if these youngsters express their difficulties, they, like many donor-conceived children today, may be asked whether they’d rather not be alive. However, much as in situations of rape, we may accept and care for any new life while condemning the circumstances behind the child’s creation. A just reaction requires both. Children born using reproductive technology, including potential artificial wombs, have dignity, worth, and rights. That’s exactly
That first day at the orphanage, I didn’t hold another infant. When it was time to go, I put her to sleep and practically ran down the hallway and out of the room to avoid hearing her helpless cries. Understandably, infants born in artificial wombs will suffer considerably more. Will they live? Will they be able to laugh, or cry? Will they vanish into the trafficking underworld? No child will find out if a society values the rights and welfare of the most vulnerable members of society.