The Disobedient Future of Birth

On Saturday 3rd June 2023 I ventured into the cafe of the Wellcome Trust building on London’s Euston Road. I went there to buy a coffee, cake, and check-out the books on offer in the gift shop.

As is usual with my too infrequent visits to the Wellcome Trust, I was rewarded with the sight of an interesting book. This one was entitled “Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth” Authored by Claire Horn (Killam postdoctoral research fellow at the Health Law Institute of Canada’s Dalhouse University) and published by Profile Books Ltd, in association with the Wellcome Collection in 2023.

Now I’m probably jumping the gun, as I’m not too many pages into Ms. Horn’s book, but to provide you with a flavour of what it contains, I’ll quote that words on the back cover jacket: “We are closer than ever to the first pregnancy outside the human body … but are we ready for the radical future of birth?”

Now something struck me, almost immediately, on reading only a few pages of Chapter One: “Of Incubators, Orchids and Artificial Wombs”, and that something was, that in order for the SCIENTISTS to experiment, Doctor Frankenstein like, on unborn babies outside of the womb, in transparent sacks, they are going to need women to volunteer-up fetuses — aka unborn babies — over 21-weeks into a pregnancy. And, as if by magic, isn’t that what women in the United States…