Wednesday, August 31, 2005
BRAVE NEW PREGNANCIES
The Guardian of London reports the prospect of an end to pregnancy within a generation"
Artificial wombs will most likely first be used as intensive care units for foe- tuses in cases where either the mother is ill and can no longer carry the child or where the foetus is ill and needs to be removed from the mother's womb and cared for where it can be easily monitored. We can already keep foetuses alive in incubators during the last three months of gestation. And researchers routinely fertilise eggs and keep embryos alive in vitro for the first three to four days of their existence before implanting them in a womb. Scientists like Kuwabara are attempting to fill in the time between the beginning and end of the gestation process - the critical period where the foetus develops most of its organs.
Eventually, say many scientists working in the new field of foetal molecular biology, being able to grow a foetus in a totally artificial womb would make it easier to make genetic corrections and modifications - creating designer babies. The artificial womb may even become the preferred means of producing a child. Women could have their eggs removed and men their sperm taken in their teen years when they are most viable and kept frozen until they are ready to have a child. Mothers could spare themselves the rigours and inconveniences of pregnancy, retain their youthful figures and bring the baby home when "done".
Far fetched? Thousands of surrogate mothers' wombs have already been used to gestate someone else 's fertilised embryos. The artificial womb seems the next logical step in a process that has increasingly removed reproduction from traditional maternity and made of it a laboratory process.
When I read stories like that one, I start to look more closely at the doctrine surrounding the Antichrist and the end of the world. How far will God the Father Creator allow us to go in usurping His prerogatives?
Hat tip to a reader.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
