In his recent Speculative Whiteness (2024), the scholar Jordan S. Carroll argues that the alt-right uses science fiction to imagine the “white ethnostate or imperium that would better protect hierarchies of race, class, religion, and gender” (Speculative Whiteness, p. 23). What many of us would see as dystopia, Carroll argues, is what the alt-right views as a political programme (p. 9). We can see conservative values, fears, and hopes playing out in many Western science fiction works—and patriarchal ideals around motherhood, reproduction, and family are everywhere. In the Star Wars prequel trilogy, for example, Padmé Amidala—first introduced to us as a headstrong leader of her people—is reduced to a woman who simply loses the will to live during childbirth because of her husband’s actions. In this essay, however, I want to focus on how these ideals feed into the portrayal of a technology that could significantly alter the reality of human reproduction: ectogenesis, or the artificial womb.
A language note: in this essay, I use the terminology of “pregnant people” and “people capable of becoming pregnant” to be inclusive of trans, non-binary, and gender-expansive people who may have this experience, but I also refer to “women” in the context of reproductive norms that have been attached to those viewed through the lens of womanhood.
The Horrors of Ectogenesis
The use of the term “ectogenesis” to refer to the gestation of a human fetus outside of the body came from J. B. S. Haldane, a scientist who was based at the University of Cambridge, in 1923. In his paper “Daedalus, or, Science and the Future,” Haldane made several predictions for our technological progress: He said that it would become possible to synthesize a chemical to “prolong a woman’s youth” (in “Daedalus, or, Science and the Future” [1924], p. 74); and he prophesied that, in a future where ectogenesis becomes universal, “less than 30 per cent of children are now born of woman” (p. 65). Haldane also claimed that ectogenesis would allow for “the separation of sexual love and reproduction” (p. 65). These proposals were his utopian dream—but for his friend, Aldous Huxley, they were horrifying.
Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) was a response to Haldane’s predictions, and portrayed ectogenesis as dystopian. In Brave New World, babies are mass engineered in “The Hatchery” and are assigned a social class. The concepts of marriage and the family no longer exist, and one of the main characters, Lenina, is portrayed as sexually promiscuous. Huxley contrasts this dystopian “New World” with the “Savage Reservation” where social relationships mirror those of 1920s Britain and the US. One character from the Reservation, John, is horrified by Lenina’s sexuality, instead desiring her courtship. Upon visiting the New World, and participating in an orgy, John ends his life. The novel clearly reflects Huxley’s anxieties about women’s sexuality and his views of ectogenesis—the removal of reproductive, and therefore marital, responsibility from women—as the cause of social decline. Huxley is telling us that without marriage, sexual restraint, and natural birth, men like John can have no place in the world.
S. Trimble writes that horror “taps into the white patriarchal nightmare” (“A Demon-Girl’s Guide to Life” in Joe Vallese (ed.), It Came From The Closet [2022] pp.13-24, 17). I think the same can be said of science fiction. Barbara Creed identifies the association between women and the monstrous, almost always in relation to mothering or reproduction, as a common trope within horror and science fiction (The Monstrous-Feminine [1993], p. 7). The Matrix (1999) shows one of the most horrifying examples of ectogenesis, with its “fetus fields” where human babies are synthetically grown and harvested for the Machine’s simulation. The pods that humans are transferred to also resemble artificial wombs: The body is plugged in to the pod chamber using umbilical-like plugs, keeping it alive but unconscious. In The Matrix, reproductive technology is not merely the source of social decline, but enables the total domination of humanity. In the Alien franchise, external gestation is again part of the horror. The way that the Xenomorphs breed is itself a form of ectogenesis, only it is a human body and not an artificial one that acts as the gestational device. In Alien: Resurrection (1997), we are shown a laboratory full of strange fluid-filled vats containing the failed Ripley/Xenomorph hybrids. These vessels are growing clones not fetuses, but they are what science fiction imagines ectogenesis to be: highly technological, repulsive, and capable of creating monstrosities.
Eugenics and the Artificial Womb
In many science fiction stories, ectogenesis becomes bound up with eugenics and genetic manipulation. Depending on the way you read them, these eugenics narratives either reveal conservative anxieties about reproductive technologies, or they feed into alt-right hopes for the future. Gattaca (1997), for example, shows us a dystopian future in which artificial wombs are used to produce the “valids”—humans with a longer life expectancy, greater strength and stamina, and a lower risk of illness. Those that are conceived naturally—the “in-valids”—are deemed to be genetically inferior and are therefore subjected to discrimination. The movie follows the protagonist, Vincent, through his attempts to hide his “in-valid” status.
In a recent Nature Genetics article on the film, Greenbaum and Gerstein argue that Gattaca cautions us about the impacts of genetic determinism (“GATTACA Is Still Pertinent 25 Years Later,” Nature Genetics 54 (2022): pp. 1758-1760, 1760). The eugenicist future in Gattaca is particularly problematic from the perspective of disability and reproductive rights, but the movie does not address these issues. Whilst Vincent is disabled, the movie is not concerned with the value of social diversity and the lives of people with disabilities; what makes Vincent valuable is, by the end of the movie, his ability to transcend his physical limitations. Disabled writers critique the common trope of characters defying disability by sheer willpower or perseverance, which suggests that disabled people could overcome their disabilities if they tried (for example, see Marieke Nijkamp’s “The Trope of Curing Disability” in Disability in Kidlit [2014], and Fay Onyx’s “Respectfully Depicting a Character Adapting to a Disability” in Mythcreants [2021].) With the focus on Vincent, the impact of curtailing the reproductive choices of people capable of becoming pregnant—whose pregnancies would be condemned in favour of the artificial womb—is ignored. David M. Higgins has highlighted this prevalence of “alt-victimhood” in science fiction. In Reverse Colonization (2021), he has shown that this is a trope which “enables subjects who occupy positions of social advantage to inhabit an imaginative space of besieged victimhood” (Reverse Colonization, p. 31). In Gattaca’s future, it is not those that have historically been subjected to reproductive violence and oppression that are shown as victims of genetic discrimination. Gattaca does not consider the impact of controlled reproduction on people capable of becoming pregnant, people of colour, or people with disabilities. Rather, our victim is the Western white man.
Gattaca’s anti-ectogenesis politics contrast the dystopia of the artificial womb with the promise of natural birth, as Vincent overcomes his genetic limitations by the end of the film. In some iterations of the Superman mythos, Kal-El is born from an artificial womb—the Kryptonian Birthing Matrix—just like every other Kryptonian. In others, however, he is conceived and born naturally. In the movie Man of Steel (2012), Henry Cavill’s Kal-El is the first natural birth in generations, a fact that enables him to be free from genetic manipulation as well as facilitating his escape from the destabilising Krypton. We again see the presence of eugenics and control in conjunction with ectogenesis in this movie: The social class of Kryptonians is genetically predetermined and, as a result of this technology, there is no free will. While the eugenics of Gattaca is meant to make humans stronger, Vincent is able to prove himself just as capable as his “valid” counterparts; while Superman, of course, is extremely powerful—and in Man of Steel, it is his natural origins that enable him to fulfil his destiny as Earth’s hero. In both stories, then, ectogenesis—through its extension into genetic manipulation—is shown to hold men back.
For the alt-right, however, Gattaca has also worked as a pro-ectogenesis (and pro-eugenics) story. In recent years, Silicon Valley tech billionaires have been investing millions of dollars into the development of reproductive technologies including fertility testing, genetic screening for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), and even the development of artificial wombs. Their concern with pre-implantation diagnosis—the genetic testing of embryos before IVF as a means of avoiding genetic disabilities—blurs into Gattaca’s idea of the “superbaby” and the ability to “design” one’s offspring. The movie has inspired Gattaca Genomics, a company specialising in “next generation genome screening” which is currently engaged in a study to enhance embryo selection for IVF through the use of AI timelapse imaging. There are numerous companies offering similar services—such as Genomic Prediction, a company that has previously claimed that their genetic scoring system can be used to select for intelligence and improved health. Elon Musk has already expressed the desire for more “smart people” to have children. Of course, only the wealthy can afford to use this technology: Genomic Prediction charge a fee of $1,000 and an additional $400 per embryo on top of the costs of IVF treatment; Orchid charges much more, at $2,500 per embryo. The inaccessibility of reproductive technologies for the majority of society is itself a part of the alt-right eugenicist future: They believe that only wealthy, intelligent super-humans belong there. As Carroll also highlights, this future is racialized; these super-humans will almost always be imagined as white (see Speculative Whiteness, pp. 57-58).
It’s Just Fiction… Isn’t It?
Ectogenesis is on our horizon. In 2017, researchers in Philadelphia created an artificial womb system called the “Biobag” which successfully supported the development of fetal lambs at the end of their gestational period (see Emily A. Partridge et al., “An Extra-Uterine System to Physiologically Support the Extreme Premature Lamb,” Nature Communications8 [2017]). Researchers in the Netherlands are now working on a prototype which they estimate could be ready for human trials within the next five years. The idea behind these prototypes is to support extremely premature infants by continuing their gestation artificially; this is a technology that could save many lives where infant mortality is caused by issues such as the underdevelopment of the lungs. It could revolutionise neonatal care. As artificial womb technology improves, allowing for the gestation of a fetus for longer and longer, it could one day be possible to have children entirely by ectogenesis. This could have significant benefits in terms of enabling biological parenthood for people who either cannot or do not want to become pregnant. Feminist scholars have written about the emancipatory potential of the artificial womb, as women would no longer be tied to their reproductive capacity (see, for example, Kathryn MacKay’s “The ‘Tyranny of Reproduction’: Could Ectogenesis Further Women’s Liberation?” in Bioethics 34(4) [2020], pp. 346-353; or Giulia Cavaliere’s “Gestation, Equality and Freedom: Ectogenesis as a Political Perspective” in Journal of Medical Ethics 46(2) [2020], pp. 76-82).
This is not the perspective on ectogenesis that we see in science fiction, and it is not the perspective on ectogenesis held by the tech billionaires likely to influence this technology. While the development of the artificial womb is being undertaken by medical research teams, we have already seen corporate influence over IVF and the fertility industry. Prominent figures in the tech industry such as Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Peter Thiel are investing in the development of artificial wombs in conjunction with genetic testing. These figures are highly pronatalist, believing that the future of humanity relies on “the trillions unborn” that will inhabit the future (again, see Speculative Whiteness, p. 57). Musk has pushed fears of population collapse in order to encourage women to have more babies, and he himself has used IVF and surrogacy to have children. Ectogenesis, then, is a means to mass produce the super-humans of the future—a future that does not need to inconveniently rely on pregnant people.
These tech billionaires, and the alt-right more generally, have adopted “longtermism”—the belief that the long-term future is more of a moral priority than the present. This is why those with the wealth and power to tackle pressing issues such as climate change are instead putting their resources into generative AI, space flight, and reproductive technologies: In this philosophy, a high-tech science fiction future, and its imagined master species, matter more than today’s citizens. The longtermists have written their own science fiction to this effect: venture capitalist Bryan Johnson has a self-published novel about children who have achieved “untold enhancement” of the mind and body (see Johnson’s We the People [2023]; you may know Johnson as the man who injected his seventeen-year-old son’s blood plasma into his own body as part of his quest for extended life expectancy). On the more overtly eugenicist front, the French alt-right politician Guillaume Faye wrote about the use of “incubators and ‘supersperm’ […] as means of increasing birth rates and especially improving the genetic performance of the ruling elite” (Faye’s Archeofuturism [1997, 2010], p. 245). The elite are the ones to benefit from ectogenesis. Ari Schulman asks us to “imagine the headlines if the first baby born from an artificial womb is not to a sympathetic middle-class couple unable to conceive after a hysterectomy but to a polycule of tech gurus with designs of populating a seasteading colony.”
The longtermist narrative is a part of mainstream science fiction, not just the writings of the alt-right and tech billionaires. Carroll points out that the alt-right are not merely interlopers into science fiction, as the genre has never been innocent of these ideas (Speculative Whiteness, p. 19). In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the Star Child represents the dawn of a new age for humanity. As Dave Bowman transcends his aged human form, he becomes a fetus in an orb of light floating above space—rebirth among the cosmos, exactly what the tech elites aspire to. In 2001, we see three monoliths appearing at key moments in the evolution of humans, the first appearing at the point where apes discover how to use tools and the last appearing just before Bowman is transformed. Cosmic transformation is, the movie tells us, a natural part of our evolution; an inevitability, even. Palmer Rampell has critiqued the movie for its “implicitly pro-life imagination of birth that does not include women”—but this is what the longtermists imagine (see Rampell’s “The Science Fiction of Roe v. Wade” in English Literary History 85(1) [2018], pp. 221-252). They are not concerned with humanity’s current struggles, not to mention women and pregnant people’s reproductive rights.
Now my argument here is not that science fiction has directly shaped the development of reproductive technologies. However, as Jake Casella Brookins has argued in his “Anti-Defense of Science Fiction,” “it’s been part of it, been produced by those social and material conditions and fed back into them.” Science fiction (along with its writers, producers, and directors) is capable of shaping people’s attitudes towards technology, and of perpetuating harmful gendered, racialised, and ableist stereotypes. Casella Brookins therefore invites us to ask, “what conditions SF has averted, and what conditions it has, actually, inspired, what it tolerates and condones.” The science fiction I have discussed in this essay simultaneously condones the development of reproductive technologies which could have significant positive effects, whilst also encouraging pronatalist and eugenicist uses of the artificial womb.
This has real policy implications. When IVF was first developed, concerns were raised over “test tube babies” and the potential effects on those children, with Huxley’s Brave New World repeatedly referenced in policy and lawmaking contexts. Now, blog posts and articles on the potential development of the artificial womb almost always reference Gattaca to talk about the dystopia that could come with reproductive technology. (I write more about all this in “Reproductive Justice: The Final (Feminist) Frontier”—see Law, Technology and Humans 2(4) [2022], pp. 95-108). IVF is, of course, now very common worldwide—but as a profit-making and often pronatalist tool, encouraging biological parenthood and valuing the eggs and sperm of some people (based, often, on race and class) over others (see Donna J. Drucker, Fertility Technology [2023]). The fearmongering over ectogenesis sits alongside its neocapitalist promise, and this is likely to have real implications for how the artificial womb is regulated. When the Alabama Supreme Court classed embryos as children in 2024, it was met with as much opposition from the right-wing as from pro-choice movements, because of the impact the ruling would have on the fertility industry. As a result, Donald Trump—despite being open about his anti-abortion attitudes—has expressed support for the availability of IVF. Once artificial wombs are ready for human use, they may be restricted or they may be available for profit—but it seems like at no point will pregnant people (or those that would meaningfully benefit from the technology) be part of the conversation. Instead, this future technology will be shaped by wealthy tech entrepreneurs and the science fiction they look up to.
Reclaiming Our Reproductive Futures
Not all science fiction depicts ectogenesis in such problematic ways. Feminist science fiction, both utopian and dystopian, has introduced nuanced perspectives on future reproductive technologies. Marge Piercy’s 1976 novel Woman on the Edge of Time gives us a glimpse of a utopian future where artificial wombs are part of a post-capitalist community. In this future, children are raised by three “mothers” of any gender and the biological family as we know it no longer exists. People are polyamorous and sexually liberated, and children, no longer tied to a set of parents, are encouraged to be independent. The novel mirrors the radical feminism of Shulamith Firestone, whose 1970 manifesto The Dialectic of Sex proposed a socialist gender-liberated future in which ectogenesis would free pregnant people from the “tyranny of reproduction.”
More recent speculative fiction that explores ectogenesis is more pessimistic about its potential. Helen Sedgewick’s The Growing Season (2017) imagines an alternative present with an artificial womb system called the “pouch” that is based within a patriarchal, capitalist background against in which a corporation is responsible for the creation of the technology. In Tlotlo Tsamaase’s Womb City (2024), the infertile protagonist Nelah is able to have a baby using an artificial womb, the “Wombcubator.” The technology is expensive, however, and Nelah is warned that the fertility centre may switch off the device, or requisition the baby for another family, should they fail to keep up with the monthly payments. What makes these dystopias fundamentally different from those of Brave New World is that the horror does not stem from the technology itself, but from those that can control and influence it. These feminist novels act as a critique of the direction in which we are heading, of the current conditions for reproductive technologies, and how this would shape the use of artificial wombs. Most importantly, these novels explore the impact of this on those that experience pregnancy. The technology could be life-changing for many people, but this promise is hampered by patriarchal capitalism.
Critics of science fiction such as Carroll and Casella Brookins speak of reclaiming the genre, to imagine a future that belongs to us all. Feminist science fiction operates as a critique of current patriarchal structures, but also as a way of imagining new reproductive futures. For ectogenesis, this means reclaiming it in feminist thought—portraying the artificial womb as something other than horrific and repulsive, considering the impacts that it could have on people capable of becoming pregnant, and imagining a context where the technology could be emancipatory. To borrow a phrase from Firestone, this requires us to “seize the means of reproduction” from the tech billionaires and alt-right politicians, and dismantle the patriarchal norms that science fiction (re)produces. However, as N. K. Jemisin has argued in relation to the whiteness and racism of US science fiction, it “is not enough for the SF world to have an Octavia [Butler], or even three or four. It is not enough for the SF world to passively wait for PoCs, and women, and all the other groups that currently disdain SF—because SF has disdained them—to come to it.” The genre must (and as Jemisin argues, will eventually have no choice but to) evolve.