Here was Haldanes
ectogenesis, only with the insertion of the resulting embryo into a woman's womb.
(33) In total, the AHR Act prohibits the following activities: compensation for gametes and surrogacy, the creation of animal-human hybrids and chimeras, putting human reproductive material into a non-human life form for the purpose of creating a human being, reproductive and non-reproductive human cloning, creating an embryo from part of another embryo or fetus, embryonic sex selection for non-medical reasons, the creation of embryos solely for research, germ-line engineering, maintaining an embryo outside a woman's body for more than 14 days (
ectogenesis), the posthumous use of reproductive material without consent, and the use of gametes obtained from a minor.
Most scientists whose research could lead to ectogenesis are focused on developing treatments either for infertility or for the complications of premature birth.
Even medically indicated ectogenesis would be available only to the relatively well-off, as is true today for expensive treatments for neonates and for infertility.
The only possible solution to this problem is Haldane's notion of ectogenesis:
If ectogenesis were even possible, we could play all the tricks we liked on the early development of man ...
thereof." (8) A child of
ectogenesis, having never been carried in
Feminist Concerns about
Ectogenesis, in Healing Technology: Feminist Perspectives in Medical Ethics (Kathryn Strother Ratcliff ed., 1989).
The process - known medically as
ectogenesis - has already been used to give birth to a goat in Japan.
*
ectogenesis (maintaining an embryo outside of the human body; i.e., in an artificial womb)
In spite of severe theoretical contradictions, Squier adds O'Brien into her own edifice, claiming that "it is from this core of anxiety over human reproductive asymmetry that the image of
ectogenesis [reproduction outside the womb] speaks." This statement, set practically alongside her claim that "the cyborg originates in
ectogenesis," simply doesn't add up.
The CNB unanimously recommended that practices of artificial reproduction inspired by racial prejudices be banned; that the practice of using gametes or embryos for artificial reproduction without the interested parties' consent be prohibited; that any commercial or industrial exploitation of gametes, embryos, or fetal tissues be banned, along with any form of compensation, brokerage, or advertisement; that embryo splitting, cloning, and
ectogenesis with the object of procreation be forbidden; that the production of hybrids or chimeras and interspecific implantations be legally prohibited; that producing embryos solely for scientific purposes be forbidden.