ABSTRACT
Although artificial wombs may seem fanciful when first considered, it is difficult to know what scientists will invent. If artificial wombs were made available, relatively affordable, and the procedure was no more intrusive than present day abortion, would abortion defenders be satisfied with abortion extraction (removing the living human fetus for implantation in an artificial womb) or would they insist on the right to abortion termination (ending human fetal life)? Would the use of an artificial womb in lieu of abortion be morally permissible for ardent critics of abortion? Or, would religious teaching, if only implicitly, exclude this practice? Depending on how these questions are answered, it could be the case that most ardent critics of abortion and most ardent defenders of abortion could both be satisfied, and that the abortion debate, as we know it now, would change profoundly, if not end altogether. Needless to say, my remarks here are necessarily speculative insofar as they try to reason about non-existent technology. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, beforehand to explore in depth the political, social, and economic ramifications of an artificial uterus, and yet an admittedly incomplete consideration of the ethical dimensions of this possibility may better prepare us, if this possibility ever becomes a reality.
