Jennifer R. Povey
1 min readDec 29, 2022

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Artificial wombs might have made me want children.

But we're a long way from cracking it. What we do have in fairly late development is a late term "bridge" womb, basically a bag, into which they are hoping we will be able to place a premature infant to nurture it until its lungs are fully developed, avoiding many of the complications associated with premature birth. This has not yet reached human trials, but does work in sheep. Closest we have for now and likely for a while.

It does bring up something I'm making note of as an SF writer. If a couple did choose an artificial womb, they would need to make lots of recordings that could be played to the fetus. Or perhaps stream their every day life's audio to the facility, along with the kind of music they listen to, to help the child's development.

(Btw, if you want science fiction that deals very well with the implications of artificial wombs, Lois McMaster Bujold goes into this extensively, especially her novella Ethan of Athos).

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Jennifer R. Povey
Jennifer R. Povey

Written by Jennifer R. Povey

I write about fantasy, science fiction and horror, LGBT issues, travel, and social issues.

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