What happens when technology designed to save premature babies begins to make pregnancy itself seem optional? In this episode, Samantha Stephenson revisits her 2024 essay Artificial Wombs, Artificial Love and explores what has changed in artificial-womb technology—and what we risk losing if machines begin to replace the maternal womb. From maternal touch and fetal development to surrogacy, genetic selection, and the virtue of parental sacrifice, she asks whether technological progress can ever fully substitute for the embodied reality of pregnancy.
In This Episode
What artificial-womb technology can actually do—and where the research is headed
Why the maternal womb cannot simply be reduced to a mechanical environment
Maternal touch, fetal development, and the ethics of experimentation
Artificial wombs, surrogacy, and the growing desire to eliminate pregnancy
What we lose when we replace the sacrifices of parenthood with technological convenience