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What if technology could eliminate the need for anyone to go through pregnancy and childbirth to have a baby? This article is an installment of Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Thursday morning by subscribing here. It takes nine months for a fertilized egg to develop into a roughly 7-pound baby, and during that time, the person carrying the baby gets to feel the miracle of life growing inside them. They can also expect to experience a slew of unpleasant side effects, from nausea and vomiting...

In late 2021, Elon Musk tweeted his fears about the end of humanity. “We should be much more worried about population collapse….If there aren’t enough people for Earth, then there definitely won’t be enough for Mars,” he opined. Musk’s statements brought the world’s falling birthrate to the forefront of social consciousness. For nearly a century, fertility rates have been decreasing globally. The result is what scientists are describing as a “worldwide infertility crisis.” But there’s a solution looming on the horizon — artificial wombs. In 2017, scientists created a “BioBag” that functioned as an artificial womb, and they used it...

Quivering with life, the developing mice moved ever-so-slightly in their vials. Just a few days since they were fertilized, the rodent embryos were minuscule—smaller than an Aspirin tablet—but their existence a is monumental feat: they developed in an artificial uterus, a first in early mammalian science and a big step in improving scientists’ understanding of embryonic development. The research, published today in the journal Nature, describes how the scientists took new embryos and developed them over the course of six days, about a third of the total mouse gestation period, outside of a rodent uterus. “If you give an embryo...

An artificial womb designed to support critically premature babies has been demonstrated successfully in animals for the first time, in an advance that could transform the lives of the most fragile newborns. Lambs born at the equivalent of 23 weeks in a human pregnancy were kept alive and appeared to develop normally while floating inside the transparent, womb-like vessel for four weeks after birth. Doctors said that the pioneering approach could radically improve outcomes for babies born so early that they cannot breathe, feed or fight infection without medical help. Alan Flake, a foetal surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of...

HONG KONG: Scientists in Japan have created a “womb” for incubating artificially fertilized eggs in their earliest days, helping them grow nearly as fast as they would in the uterus, a researcher said on Friday. Currently, test-tube human embryos are kept in “microdroplets” — a mixture of mineral oil and culture fluid to keep them from drying out. But that lags the superior conditions provided by the womb and artificially fertilised embryos tend to grow a lot slower in microdroplets compared to naturally conceived embryos. This is not ideal because larger, faster-growing embryos are believed to stand a better chance...

<p>Back in January, the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America held a dinner in Washington to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision.</p> <p>But the event was far from celebratory, with speaker after speaker warning that a woman's right to choose is in grave danger. "For the first time since Roe vs. Wade, anti-choice politicians control the presidency and both houses of Congress," NARAL Pro-Choice America President Kate Michelman said in a typical speech. "The Supreme Court is one vote away from dismantling the right to choose."</p>