By Anna Nelson & Elizabeth Chloe Romanis During the COVID-19 pandemic pregnant and birthing people saw significant changes to the services they were offered. From March 2020 substantial restrictions were introduced in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus, with some notable examples including bans on partners attending scans, limitations on the number […]
Category: Reproduction
NICE Draft Quality Standards on FASD: A misplaced focus?
By Rachel Arkell. In early March, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) launched the consultation period for the first draft of their Quality Standards on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), which covers the assessment and diagnosis of those affected by FASD. It is, of course, vital that diagnosis and support services are […]
Reconceiving the womb in medicine, law and society
By Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, Dunja Begović, Alex Mullock and Margot Brazier. Our new JME article, Re-Viewing the Womb is a collaborative endeavour from the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy at Manchester, which was established over 30 years ago by Professors Margot Brazier and John Harris. Our centre has always had an active interest in repro-ethics […]
Ectogenesis, medicalisation and difficulties for the doctor
By Victoria Adkins. In the literature concerning ectogenesis – the process of gestating a foetus outside of the human body (in an artificial womb) – discussions have been concerned with its possible implications for pregnant women. However, in order to consider these implications effectively we must also look at the relationship between pregnant women and […]
Imagining a Different Future: Ectogenesis and Self-Determination
By Claire Horn Like other academics who write about artificial wombs, much of the work I’ve done in the last few years has required me to operate at least in part on a speculative level, tracing the problems that present themselves in our contemporary context to understand what the impact of this technology in development […]
What can contraceptive justice teach us about coronavirus?
By Arianne Shahvisi A disease sweeps through the population, and is transmitted between people through ordinary social interaction. One group of people are particularly vulnerable, and infection has very serious consequences for them. Another group is able to transmit the disease, but has little risk of being harmed by it. Measures can be taken by […]
Partial ectogenesis in context
By Elizabeth Chloe Romanis. Sci-fi stories about the artificial womb abound – from Brave New World to the Growing Season, and now that scientists are seemingly making progress towards technology that might be partially capable of facilitating the process of gestation ex utero, there has emerged exciting academic debate about the potential implications. There is […]
After death let men donate sperm to infertile people
By Nathan Hodson and Joshua Parker Of all the revolutionary advances provided by artificial reproductive techniques, few would have imagined that it would allow men to have their sperm removed after death and used to successfully produce offspring. Yet recent cases show that it is possible and apparently safe. In these cases it is the loved ones of the man […]
Ectogenesis as a Political Perspective
By Giulia Cavaliere I’m at that age. The age where close friends start talking about having babies, are having babies or are thinking about number two. Courtesy of these conversations, and YouTube ads being extremely concerned about my fertility, I too have begun pondering baby-related questions. As a certified nerd, the ‘pondering’ led me to […]
Birth and “Birth”: Why Human Subjects in Artificial Wombs Should be Treated as Neonates
By Nick Colgrove. Recently, I argued that human subjects in artificial wombs are newborns (or, at least, should be treated as newborns). This is because the subject of partial ectogenesis—which has been extracted from a pregnant woman’s body and placed in an artificial womb—is a newborn, full stop. The subject of complete ectogenesis—which is created […]