If a woman decides to abort her child, but chooses to put the child up for adoption using an artificial womb, does that make it a pro-life decision? A challenging question to be sure. The very kind of issue that comes under scrutiny at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (CBHD) in Deerfield, Illinois.

Several days ago, IFI published my first article on the subject of ectogenesis—enabling life to develop outside of a natural womb. Today, the conversation continues with Dr. Matthew Eppinette, the Executive Director of the CBHD.

When I asked him if the ectogenesis debate involves moral or ethical issues he simply replied, “Yes.” He noted that

the important thing is that in both [moral and ethical] we are concerned about how to live, which, as theologian James William McClendon said, “is a question no one can escape.”

Dr. Eppinette read the article I sent to him titled, “Artificial Wombs will Change Abortion Rights Forever.” He was impressed that the writer did a good job of working through various scenarios. Despite a more generally liberal slant to the publication Wired, he felt they offered strong questions about the headline they chose.

Will artificial wombs change abortion rights forever? Doubtful. As Dr. Eppinette says, “Perhaps most women would be unwilling to have their unborn child placed in an artificial womb rather than continue their pregnancy.” He adds, “Technological advances do change ethical conversations simply by creating additional options.”

The Wired article makes clear that ectogenesis will not ultimately upend abortion debates.

Okay, but… could ectogenesis advance the cause of the pro-life community? Or might it work against us? Dr. Eppinette is concerned that by embracing the ectogenesis technologies as an alternative to abortion, we might be alienating human beings from one another.

How so? We might find ourselves leaning heavily “into cultural narratives of radical individual autonomy rather than acknowledging the deep dependence that human beings have on one another.” That would likely happen no matter how much we might want to avoid acknowledging it.

He cites on this point Carter Snead’s book What It Means to be Human. This work considers the “Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence”—things like justice, generosity, hospitality, compassion, gratitude, humility, and openness, among others.

Dr. Eppinette explains that caring well for mother and child both during pregnancy and long after, are “far more important to pro-life work than technological solutions.” And thus we see why, like most issues surrounding “life,” complexity remains.

But how might this birthing option change opportunities for parents hoping to adopt? In other words, some women might choose to forego abortion and instead transfer the baby into an artificial womb so that someone could adopt the baby. To which Dr. Eppinette replied,

It does not seem possible to know whether or how often that might happen, but I am skeptical that this will be a frequently chosen path.

Finally, I asked if the CBHD has a position paper on ectogenesis. While they do not, Dr. Eppinette recommended this 2021 article: “Artificial Wombs: A Theological-Ethical Analysis about Partial Ectogenesis.”

In reading the aforementioned article, one paragraph personally troubled me. A reference was made to a 1971 essay on A Defense of Abortion by philosopher Judith Thompson. She argued this:

That even if a fetus is a person at the moment of conception, a woman’s bodily autonomy…means that it is morally acceptable to remove the fetus from her body. The ensuing death of the fetus is an inevitable consequence of ending the pregnancy, rather than the woman’s intention. This means that abortion is more an act of self-defense on the woman’s part than an intentional killing.

My, what ludicrous lengths we will go to to justify our actions. And to attempt to absolve ourselves of the guilt that often results.

Those who seek the wisdom of the Divine should consider these words in Job 10:11-12: “You clothed me with skin and flesh, and you knit my bones and sinews together. You gave me life and showed me your unfailing love. My life was preserved by your care.” (NLT)

May those who love God be of like mind and do the work of preserving life.

The website CBHD.org offers a wealth of information on a wide variety of bioethical issues.

Americans are big on choice. We can choose restaurants, automobiles, our clothing, and even where to live. We can make good choices and bad choices. Our prisons are packed with those who’ve chosen the wrong path. Leaders in government often make us wonder, “What were they thinking?”

One of the saddest of choices millions of Americans have made is the decision to terminate a human life through abortion. In bizarre fashion, we even call this a “pro-choice” decision. Frightening.

The progressive “choice” crowd is always looking for an out—a way to justify the gruesomeness of killing a baby. But there is a secondary issue at play in the discussion: the term “unwanted pregnancy.” This raises the question, what if there were a way for a woman to end her pregnancy without ending the life of the child?

Sound a bit twisted? I recently came across an article describing the growing interest in ectogenesis. It was in an April 2023 edition of Wired magazine and titled, “Artificial Wombs will Change Abortion Rights Forever.” Now THAT caught my attention.

To get a better grasp on the subject, I contacted Dr. Matthew Eppinette, director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity (CBHD) at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. He graciously provided helpful answers to several of my questions.

Before we discuss “artificial wombs,” you should know a bit about the CBHD’s work. Dr. Eppinette explains,

CBHD addresses a full range of bioethics issues—what to pursue and what not pursue when it comes to matters of life and health. Said simply, issues involved in Taking Life, Making Life, Sustaining Life, and Faking Life.

Obviously, “Making Life” issues include questions arising from reproductive technologies that allow for the creation of human life in laboratory settings. Thus this issue of artificial wombs (ectogenesis) is in their wheelhouse.

Dr. Eppinette explains,

Ectogenesis is the process of gestating a baby outside the body of a woman. To some degree, a version of ectogenesis occurs in IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), where eggs are fertilized in Petri dishes and allowed to develop briefly before being transferred into a woman’s uterus, placed into frozen storage, or discarded. In general, though, ectogenesis has to do with bringing a child toward full term in some technological device, outside of a womb.

Stages of this are currently being done. Most labs hold to the “14-day rule,” which forbids keeping human embryos alive in laboratories for more than 14 days.” Dr. Eppinette notes, however, there is increasing pressure “to extend the 14-day rule to 21 or even 28 or more days.”

Some of the experimenting has been done on lambs showing that a developing lamb fetus can be removed from the ewe’s uterus and gestated in an artificial womb until ready for birth. A gap exists between 14 or so days and several weeks in humans. So, to Dr. Eppinette’s knowledge, this line has not yet been crossed. Thus, no successful removal from an animal embryo from conception to birth has taken place entirely in an external womb. That, by defintion, is ectogenesis.

But wait…there must be some positive, real-life value to this “technology.” And there is. Dr. Eppinette offers this scenario. Consider a child being born very prematurely. (No child has survived in under 21 weeks of gestation). In this case, the baby spends weeks to months undergoing very intensive care. This child often faces significant developmental delays and even continued challenges throughout life.

However, a child reaching 18-24 weeks gestation could be transferred into an artificial womb. This would allow the baby to continue to develop for several more weeks before being fully delivered. Dr. Eppinette terms this “partial ectogenesis” and would be the most likely scenario in which this will be used.

But like any emerging technology, there are downsides. Among them, as Dr. Eppinette explains,

are all of the unknowns that go on between the body of the mother and the body of the child during pregnancy. We are only at the beginning of understanding the interplay between the two bodies and perhaps even more, between the mother’s body and the child’s mental and emotional development.

There’s more to be said on this. My next blog will include Dr. Eppinette’s answer on “will artificial wombs change abortion rights forever.”

For now, let’s ponder in amazement what King David wrote in Psalm 139, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Verse 14 (ESV)

For more information, contact The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity.