Hacker News Reader

Comment by spondylosaurus | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like any widespread use is still a ways out if we're in the "setting rules for trials" phase now, but I'm curious what impact artificial wombs would have on abortion laws in the US, if any.

The non-religious aspects of the abortion debate partly hinge on this idea of fetal viability (specifically, the time at which most fetuses have a high chance of survival outside the womb), and I could imagine artificial wombs bringing that viability threshold down a bit. Which then opens the door to a whole other debate about whether terminating a pregnancy could (or should) involve transplantation. I know some current bioethics argue that abortion is currently permissible because the death of the fetus is merely a side effect of terminating a pregnancy, rather than its goal...

View on HN

Copying from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_womb,

Artificial uteri may expand the range of fetal viability, raising questions about the role that fetal viability plays within abortion law. Within severance theory, for example, abortion rights only include the right to remove the fetus, and do not always extend to the termination of the fetus. If transferring the fetus from a woman's womb to an artificial uterus is possible, the choice to terminate a pregnancy in this way could provide an alternative to aborting the fetus.

Refs:

1. "Built in Obsolescence: The Coming End to the Abortion Debate" https://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&c...

2. "Artificial Wombs Could Outlaw Abortion" https://web.archive.org/web/20191012213054/http://www.mattle...

its really leads to all sorts of question. when markets for eggs and sperms to be sold directly to interested (the layman) are there and the buyer funds the rent of the artificial womb and the food/nutrition + bio conditions. will he be the father or the owner? if more over the buyer have a farm (so to speak) of wombs?

Perhaps whatever policies exist around surrogate pregnancies now would apply there also.

This already exists just with surrogacy as there are both egg and sperm banks available to those who need them.

A lot of Hollywood stars these days are using surrogacy, it is quite common: https://people.com/parents/celebrities-who-have-used-surroga...

> This already exists just with surrogacy as there are both egg and sperm banks available to those who need them.

True, and if you saw what played out during COVID you'll realize there is a massive market for this: during COVID healthy, viable sperm supply outstripped supply significnatly, and the market dynamics went into effect. Some so brazen as to advertise on FB to do so [0].

Surrogacy continued to thrive during COVID and was only hampered because of the Russian invasion, it is hoime to perhaps one of the biggest fertility/surrogacy countries on Earth. Lots of children were born during the war and have not been reunited with their families yet, either.

It's one of the many stark and bleaker parts of the War and ultimately about the Human Condition that make me think that while we are likely inching closer towards a Brave New World situation, with all the dire implications that go along with it, that when it comes to fertility this might be the best of all bad solutions.

Personally, I have chosen to delay having children for what will likely be another decade, after not following in my parent's or siblings footsteps of having children in their 20s. Its a conscious decision but ultimately a forced one: namely political strife, environmental factors and climate change are at the forefront but there are more. And seeing fertility rates absolutely crater in the 21st century in anything but the most economically dire of places (namely Africa and India) I think having the framework ahead of the device might be wise as we will have to eventually kick-start a new baby-boom in order just to reach a semi-parity as millennials like myself enter as the larger cohort with similair delays in childbirth--I''m an outlier in having children, most of my friends over 30 just don't even want children if they haven't already had them.

0: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/business/sperm-donors-fac...

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/world/europe/ukraine-surr...

> I have chosen to delay having children for what will likely be another decade

I would recommend to anyone who eventually wants children someday to not delay. Fertility worldwide will get worse before it gets better.

I mean, this regulatory effort, centered around rules for trials of artificial wombs for use as NICU alternatives for very-premature infants, don’t really raise that issue; they would basically be medical gear like incubators (but, presumably, only get approved if thet offer an improvement in outcomes.)

ppl can already have arbitrary amounts of kids either in a nuclear family setting or “spreading their seed everywhere”. given they’re still responsible on paper, but that doesn’t stop someone from doing it in the first place

I'm wondering what the legal ramifications would be if parents refused to pay for the completion of a gestation in an artificial womb.

Can the lab force the parents to pay the costs and have the child anyway?

Can the lab terminate the pregnancy? Would they run afoul of abortion laws?

If the lab completes the gestation, are they the guardians of the child? Is it an orphan, and ward of the state? Can the company request reimbursement?

> I'm curious what impact artificial wombs would have on abortion laws in the US, if any.

EDIT: Holy cow, this post got way, way longer than I expected.

The first step in the analysis is that, since no abortion law has been enacted by the US government, each State has its own set of abortion laws. Because killing a person is clearly illegal, the legality (not morality or ethics) of abortion hinges on when a developing clump of cells becomes protected under the law.

States have severe disagreement on that point. For example, consider the state of Georgia. The following is their definition of a person:

> There are two classes of persons: natural and artificial. “Natural person” means any human being including an unborn child. Corporations are artificial persons. They are creatures of the law and, except insofar as the law forbids it, they are subject to be changed, modified, or destroyed at the will of their creator. Unless otherwise provided by law, any natural person, including an unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat, shall be included in population based determinations. As used in this Code section, the term: “Detectable human heartbeat” means embryonic or fetal cardiac activity or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the heart within the gestational sac. “Unborn child” means a member of the species Homo sapiens at any stage of development who is carried in the womb. [2]

By law in Georgia, the status of personhood applies to a member of the species Homo sapiens at any stage of development who is carried in the womb with embryonic or fetal cardiac activity or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the heart within the gestational sac. The preposition "in the womb" clearly indicates a womb present in a human being, as it doesn't say "in a womb." As such, I do not expect legal personhood will automatically extend to a human being gestated in an artificial womb in Georgia.

On the other hand, consider the state of Massachusetts. The very beginning of their code is:

> All persons who are citizens of the United States and who are domiciled in this commonwealth are citizens thereof. [3]

Now, does the state of Massachusetts define in the state code what a "person" is? As far as I can tell, no, they don't (if someone else knows better, please chime in). A ballot initiative is trying to do that right now [4]. It seems that what constitutes a person in Massachusetts is less clear than in Georgia and is more a function of general consensus in society. As such, it's possible that a human being gestated in an artificial womb in Massachusetts would have legal personhood, and it's also possible that legal personhood is granted by governing authority. It's difficult to state.

What about at the federal level? The US code speaks on personhood as follows:

> [For the federal government], the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development. As used in this section, the term “born alive”, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion. [1]

At the federal level, the status of personhood is attained when an infant homo sapiens is completely removed from his or her mother.

So, by these laws, abortion becomes murder in Georgia after the heartbeat of a homo sapiens in the womb is detected, in Washington DC when an infant homo sapiens is completely removed from their mother, and in Massachusetts...well, it's complicated. Because the attainment of personhood is unclear, it's unclear precisely when abortion becomes murder. As such, Massachusetts specifically legislates when abortion is and isn't permissible without reference to personhood [5]. EDIT: In Wisconsin, before Roe and now post-Roe, abortion is murder.

So, on artificial wombs, based on current laws, I'd wager: Georgia will say you're not a person, Massachusetts will be the Wild West, Wisconsin says you're a human being but not born alive, and the federal government says you're not a person.

In my personal opinion, clear definition of legal personhood is the best approach, particularly because personal rights under the law stem from recognition as a legal person. From there, it becomes simple to state the precise conditions of when a clump of cells gains legal rights, be that at conception, presence of heartbeat, or live birth.

This is obviously hypothetical and should not be done, but I wonder if an evil company could exploit Georgia's laws to set up artificial womb farms and produce non-person human beings who exist solely as property. Georgia could easily prevent this by explicitly banning artificial wombs.

I believe these FOUR (not three, see edit) perspectives capture the essential elements of artificial womb legality across the USA.

EDIT: I kept doing some research, and Wisconsin's perspective distinct from those three:

>[Concerning an abortion]...“unborn child" means a human being from the time of conception until it is born alive. [8]

> Live birth: In this subsection, “breathes" means draws air into and expels it out of the lungs one or more times. “Live birth" means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother, of a human being, at any stage of development, who, after the expulsion or extraction, breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, a cesarean section, or an abortion, as defined in s. 253.10 (2) (a). [6]

> An individual who undergoes a live birth is born alive. If a statute or rule refers to a live birth or to the circumstance in which an individual is born alive, the statute or rule shall be construed so that whoever undergoes a live birth as the result of an abortion...has the same legal status and legal rights as a human being at any point after the human being undergoes a live birth as the result of natural or induced labor or a cesarean section. [The preceding] may not be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract a legal status or legal right that is applicable to a human being at any point before the human being undergoes a live birth. [7]

Wisconsin doesn't designate personhood like Georgia does but instead says a human being comes into existence at conception and is born alive when undergoing a live birth or born during a failed abortion procedure. Note their "live birth" definition's alignment with the federal government's. However, an artificial womb in Wisconsin may create a situation where you're a human being but never born alive, meaning the definition of "unborn child" is not satisfied, meaning you can do anything you want to a human being created in an artificial womb.

Interestingly, the long-existing Wisconsin definition of "unborn child" was unworkable under the Roe v. Wade paradigm.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/8

[2] https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2022/title-1/chapter-2/...

[3] https://law.justia.com/codes/massachusetts/2022/part-i/title...

[4] https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Definition_of_a_Person...

[5] https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massachusetts-law-about-ab...

[6] https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/statutes/990.01(19...

[7] https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/statutes/990.001(1...

[8] https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/statutes/940.04(6)

> applies to a member of the species Homo sapiens at any stage of development who is carried in the womb with embryonic or fetal cardiac activity

The text of the Georgia statute you cited only uses detectable human heartbeat as an example ("including"), not a requirement for personhood.

> “Unborn child” means a member of the species Homo sapiens at any stage of development who is carried in the womb.

This would seem open-ended enough to apply to individual eggs.

> The text of the Georgia statute you cited only uses detectable human heartbeat as an example ("including"), not a requirement for personhood.

Yes, an unborn child is as you state, but the state will count an unborn child in "population based determinations" only if the heartbeat is present. That's a big threshold, and it's my understanding that abortions in Georgia may be freely performed if no heartbeat is present, so it's in effect stating "no heartbeat = no personhood".

> This would seem open-ended enough to apply to individual eggs.

Hmm, not sure about that one. The definition of "unborn child" is not met if the gestating egg is not "in the womb."

> > This would seem open-ended enough to apply to individual eggs.

No sources here cuz I just got home and I'm tired, but I swear there was some press recently(?) about IVF clinics fretting about egg storage/disposable for exactly this reason. I don't remember if anything came of it, but I think some IVF technicians were worried about going to jail if they, for instance, forgot to put an unfertilized egg back in the freezer and it went bad.

And then when you get to fertilized but non-implanted embryos, of course, that's when the "life begins at conception" crowd starts having their say.

Those IVF technicians seem a bit paranoid. Obviously, forgetting to put an unfertilized egg back in the freezer will hurt trust in your business, but I can't imagine anyone could successfully sue the IVF clinic on the basis that an illegal abortion had occurred.

The issue of fertilized but non-implanted embryos is already well-understood, as that is the entire basis behind opposition to embryonic stem cells and derived products. The interesting part will be to see how various religions will react if you tell them the fertilized egg will grow in an artificial womb.

There's a finite demand for babies to adopt. In a world where it was easy to transfer a few-week-old fetus to an artificial womb as a back-up method of birth control, the supply of babies would exceed demand. That would be a bad situation.

No, the right to abortion is not hinged on "fetal viability", it's "can the state force someone to undertake a medical procedure". Slapping "fetal viability" just means "can the state force someone to undertake a medical procedure to save someone else's life".

Very simply, every "a fetus is a person and the state should force it to be carried to term" is no different from "if a person needs a kidney or they will die, and you are a match for that person, then you are required to give them your kidney".

Adding an artificial womb to this does not change that. All that changes is what medical procedure is being forced.

Artificial wombs would allow people who for whatever reason are unable to get or remain pregnant, to have a child without having a surrogate involved. It does nothing more than that.

This is a bit disingenuous. "A fetus is a person and the state should force it to be carried to term" is generally not the argument, the argument is "A fetus is a person and you should not be allowed to actively kill it."

I mean, under current circumstances, "not allowed to terminate the pregnancy" does work out to "be forced to carry the fetus to term," because those are the only two outcomes here. Which is why artificial wombs throw an interesting wrench in things by suggesting the possibility of terminating a pregnancy while maintaining fetal development (and there's still a whole host of questions about whether forced artificial womb transplantation is ethical or ideal).

If you can donate a kidney to save someone's life, and you choose not to, you have killed them, by your definition.

Alternatively, say you donated blood, and that blood is used to keep someone alive. Then they run out of that blood and need more, and you are the only option, but you've developed anemia or something, so no longer want to donate blood, by your own definition the state can now require you to keep giving blood anyway: This person is only alive now because of your actions, and your attempt to change those conditions would kill them.

Also the policy is "you should be forced to carry it to term", because abortion bans also come with a variety of bans on access to emergency contraceptives that would prevent it from even getting to the point of being a fetus in the first place, and the women-aren't-people crowd fight anything and everything else that would prevent many abortions occurring in the first place (access to contraceptives, actual sex ed, etc)

It changes that instead of killing a person you can carry the pregnancy to completion even if the mother wants to kill her unborn son/daughter.

Right now abortion consists often in dismembering the fetus, killing him/her and then scraping him/her from the womb.

Hopefully in the future we can extract them from the womb and put them in an artificial womb instead.

It's also great for surrogacy and the Men Gone Their Own Way movement.

At the same time I fear it will be weaponised by governments to create humans at will and create armies (before robots are more viable)

[ed: just noticed I'm replying to a throwaway account. Real great how these pro-birth commenters aren't willing to back their statements with their actual accounts]

> It changes that instead of killing a person you can carry the pregnancy to completion even if the mother wants to kill her unborn son/daughter.

If you can donate a kidney, and not doing so results in a person dying, there your decision not to kills them. More to the point, no one can force you to give up your kidney against your will. What you are saying is very clearly that the state should be able to just that.

> Hopefully in the future we can extract them from the womb and put them in an artificial womb instead.

Hopefully we can just force people to have a different forced medical procedure unlike the current one. After all, they're just women, it's not as if they have rights.

Also: embryos aren't people, the burning building test is really simple. Say a building is on fire, and you're running to escape and you come across a room containing a child and a load of fertilized eggs. Do you have to hesitate about grabbing the actual child?

> Very simply, every "a fetus is a person and the state should force it to be carried to term" is no different from "if a person needs a kidney or they will die, and you are a match for that person, then you are required to give them your kidney".

Not sure if you're intentionally referencing Judith Jarvis Thompson's most famous (and in my opinion, greatest) essay with this comparison, but yeah, this is a common metaphor. The sick violinist and all.

But I think you may be discounting the role of viability too quickly, both in theory and in practice: in theory, because some bioethicists (I can't remember if JJT specifically falls into this camp, it's been a while) draw a distinction between terminating a pregnancy and actively destroying a fetus. They'd argue that it's fine to remove a gestating fetus from your body, but not so fine to tell the doctor performing the d&c "and make sure it's good and dead afterwards!" Under current medical practice, there's no practical difference between removal and "killing," simply because it's impossible for an underdeveloped fetus to survive outside the human womb... for now... dot dot dot...

And in practice, because fetal viability is often used to draw abortion boundaries in more permissable jurisdictions who don't restrict it outright. "Late term abortion" is a complicated issue, probably ill-suited for this forum, but viability is generally why you can't abort a healthy fetus three weeks before its natural due date.

It's worth noting the idea of "late term abortion" because that's an easy choice is super dismissive and harmful to the people who undergo it.

A late term abortion is something that happens by someone who intended to, and presumably wanted to, carry to term. Pete Buttigieg had an interview on the subject in which he rightly pointed to the fact that in the context of "late term abortion" we're talking about a case where someone (or couple) are intending to bring a child into the world, and have likely chosen a name, arranged a room, got clothes and such lined up. For such people the choice is unlikely to be easy or desired, just the least awful of myriad terrible options, in which case why should state legislation be involved? Certainly the state has no involvement on removing life support from others, why is it involved here? (Let's look at the Schiavo case where conservative politicians tried to force a husband to keep his dead wife "alive" because with sufficient technology that was "possible")

Reply on news.ycombinator.com