Formula feeding can help illuminate long‐term consequences of full ectogenesis

Abstract

Breastfeeding is analogous to pregnancy as an experience, in its exclusiveness to women, and in its cost and the effects it has on equitable share of labor. Therefore, the history of formula feeding provides useful insights into the future of full ectogenesis, which could evolve into a more severe version of what formula feeding is today: simplify life for some women and provide couples with a more equitable share of work at the cost of stigma, guilt and a daily diet of studies purporting to show the benefits of natural pregnancy. Making pregnancy an optional route to motherhood would make women's life trajectory more similar to men's and thus put pressure on women to compete with men on the ground shaped by men's preferences. Despite being a treasured experience of many women today, bearing children could become the luxury of the few, the province of the very poor and a choice working women will pay a high price for as women who choose pregnancy become stigmatized as self‐indulgent or unprofessional and penalized for it in the workplace. At the same time, scarce societal resources that could be used to support pregnant women and working mothers would instead be directed toward proving to women or even forcing them to gestate children “the right way.” While not necessarily threatening on its own, when added to formula feeding, IVF, stem‐cell produced ova and sex robots, full ectogenesis could diminish men's stake in women's wellbeing and even existence.

Does ectogestation have oppressive potential?

“…This case is relevant to our ongoing discussion because, as Zelkja Butrovic points out, it is possible to draw a moral analogy between breastfeeding and ectogestation. While ectogestation represents the potential to replace pregnancy in the way that formula could substitute human milk, ectogestation may invite a similar backlash "where higher classes initially embrace the exclusivity of ectogenesis only to abandon it as it becomes more widely available and the luxury of natural pregnancy gains esteem" (Butrovic, 2020). This analogy is telling of the fact that overvaluing embodied aspects of reproduction can cause further oppression by pressuring people to physiologically endure these gendered bodily expectations as an ideal.…”

Android Noahs and embryo Arks: ectogenesis in global catastrophe survival and space colonization

“…MacKay (2020) noted that complete ectogenesis could liberate women from societal pressures in reproduction generally and thus reduce certain negative practices, such as surrogate motherhood and uterine transplantation. On the flip side, complete ectogenesis could accelerate a trend towards making women's life trajectories more similar to men's and thus pressure women even more to compete with men on men's terms (Buturovic, 2020). The most difficult and perplexing bioethical and legal issues, however, concern the status of embryos themselves (Schultz, 2010; Hammond-Browning, 2018).…”

Voluntary sterilisation of young childless women: not so fast

“…Accounts of denied sterilisation requests reveal that many women in this situation feel pressured by societal expectations and pronatalist societal bias; they understandably oppose the idea that they should be judged primarily on whether they have become mothers. While these complaints contain important truths they fail to take into account the upsides of these societal attitudes for those women (certainly a large number and by all appearances a majority in many places) which relish the role of motherhood 34. Regardless of whether one focuses on the upsides or downsides of motherhood and the status it confers on women in society, however, these should not be confused with individual physicians’ reasonable reluctance to jump at a serious elective procedure at fairly mild expression of interest.…”