Last few days there’s been some discussion hereabouts about “artificial wombs,” and how they’d play with the legal and social aspects of abortion. Some have suggestion that *if* artificial wombs become practical and *if* the extraction of a fetus and implantation into an artificial womb becomes easy and reliable, then there may be a shift towards looking at natural pregnancy as irresponsible. This may be true.
But another thought occurs. If arti-wombs are easy and practical, then there could be some interesting *politics* developed. The western industrialized nations are currently undergoing a severe drop off in the birth rate, such that a lot of people are suggesting it’s a good idea to import millions of third worlders to replace the native ethnic group and the local culture. For those who see this replacement as an intentional act, a replacement of, say, white Christians with brown Muslims, this is known as “white genocide.” And boy howdy is that an easy way to start a flame war between the SJWs and the alt-right.
Setting aside the conspiracy theories about whether “white genocide” is an actual goal, artificial wombs coupled with fertility treatments – artificial insemination – would play a major role in the discussion. How much of the dropoff in western birth rates is due to women being too busy, to wrapped up in their careers to take the time to get pregnant? If modern western women/families could convert baby-making into something that’s not a whole lot more complex than a visit to a fertility clinic and then a second visit nine months later to pick up Junior, would that simplification be enough to raise the birth rate to replacement levels or even beyond? How many westerners – or indeed anybody – would look at this new convenient approach to babymaking and decide to not just have one or two extra kids, but to have a *lot* of kids? Artificial insemination often leads to half a dozen or more “excess” fertilized eggs. How many people would decide “Great. Grow ’em all!”
Would this led to a “baby race?” Would there be enough white supremacists cranking out platoons of decanted rugrats to counter the rise of black supremacists growing large numbers of test tube arti-womb babies? Would this baby race be a private thing, or would you perhaps have nations – Japan, say, or Denmark – starting up their own modern “Lebensborn” movements to promote the continuation of the native ethnic group and culture? This might be done by having the government explicitly growing babies, but it might also be done by government simply encouraging it on the private level, providing substantial welfare benefits to locals who are growing “approved” crops of kids.
Religious aspect can’t be ignored, either. I once worked with an evangelical feller who planned to have not just a couple of kids with the missus, but a *lot.* Their plan was to have as many kids as they possibly could, because of that “be fruitful and multiply” thing. Well… something along the lines of twenty kids seems to be the approximate limit, if the Duggars are anything to go by. In that case, the wife is kept more or less permanently pregnant, which to my mind is a “what, really? No, really?” sort of situation. But if the artiwomb comes on the market, “being fruitful” could take on a whole new meaning. A family into this sort of thing could easily have a crop of half a dozen kids a year for, say, ten years. *Affording* all that might be a bit of a chore, but if you honestly hold to the notion that God wants you to make as many kids as you can, then how could you ignore this technology?