The Political Hat

     The main argument for legalized abortion is that it is all about a “woman’s right to choose” what happens to her body and that the personhood of the natal child is just being used as an excuse to “control women”. But what if the pregnancy can be terminated while still allowing the removed child to live and develop in an artificial environment ex vivo of the mother? If recent research in developing artificial wombs that have so far successfully nurtured mammalian embryos.

“The mouse embryos looked perfectly normal. All their organs were developing as expected, along with their limbs and circulatory and nervous systems. Their tiny hearts were beating at a normal 170 beats per minute.

“But these embryos were not growing in a mother mouse. They were developed inside an artificial uterus, the first time such a feat has been accomplished, scientists reported on Wednesday.

“The experiments, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, were meant to help scientists understand how mammals develop and how gene mutations, nutrients and environmental conditions may affect the fetus. But the work may one day raise profound questions about whether other animals, even humans, should or could be cultured outside a living womb.

“In a study published in the journal Nature, Dr. Jacob Hanna described removing embryos from the uteruses of mice at five days of gestation and growing them for six more days in artificial wombs.

“At that point, the embryos were about halfway through their development; full gestation is about 20 days. A human at this stage of development would be called a fetus. To date, Dr. Hanna and his colleagues have grown more than 1,000 embryos in this way.”

     Some on the right have raised serious concerns, not just about how women don’t just want to end their pregnancy or have control over their body but to kill their kid, but also qualms about more “mad scientist” possibilities.

     Why, this makes it sound that all mad science is evil mad science, which is quite prejudicial. Why, this prejudice is seen with the qualms some are having about successfully creating mammalian hybrids such as the human/monkey embryos recently created.

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