Abortion and Technology

There’s an important article on the abortion issue in the August 18/25 issue of The New Republic . Though written from a pro-choice perspective, it shows how advances in technology are likely to undermine Roe v. Wade. The main breakthrough has to do with the development of ectogenesis, an external womb or “process by which a fetus gestates in an environment external to the mother.” If researchers can successfully create this artificial womb environment, the issue of viability of the fetus moves onto completely new ground, since with ectogenesis viability moves back to 10 weeks. The author of the article, Sacha Zimmerman, concludes with this concise summary of the issue: “41 states ban abortion after viability; if ectogenesis is achieved, will abortion then become illegal in each of those states?”

Pro-choice forces, Zimmerman reports, have barely begun to deal with the issue. Those who address it stake out ground that even pro-choicers will find uncomfortable. Zimmerman quotes a book by Christine Overall that argues that “fetal extinction — not just extraction — is the aim of women seeking abortions and that forcing a woman to submit to a fetal extracton is like forcing her to donate organs against her will. The pregnant woman, Overall writes, is the ‘most appropriate person — perhaps the only one — to decide the disposition of the fetus.’” At the very least, ectogenesis puts the pro-choice lobby in a difficult rhetorical position. And it might, as Bernard Nathanson has argued, actually spell the collapse of Roe.