Fertility has been declining the world over. The population growth rate in resource-rich but population-deficient countries has fallen below the replacement-level fertility rate. Population-enhancement mechanisms, such as surrogacy and in vitro fertilisation, are now popular.
But commercial surrogacy is an expensive proposition in the developed world, leading to a phenomenon called ‘fertility migration’ wherein couples appoint surrogates from Latin America and South Asia. India is known as the ‘surrogacy capital of the world’. But irregularities have forced the government to pass the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021.
Surrogacy has become an empowering tool for women to fight back against nature and biology. As social norms evolve, the business of human reproduction is changing as well. Unsurprisingly, fiction had preceded fact in this instance.
Science fiction, such as the Matrix series and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, has imagined humans being brought into the world, but not from the mother’s womb. The dystopian — or is it utopian? — vision of a futuristic world where natural childbirth remains unknown has been needling mankind’s fantasies even before science fiction came into being. Mythology bears evidence of this. In the Mahabharata, Draupadi was born out of a ritualistic fire; Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, materialised from Zeus’ head fully formed and armed; Adam, the first man on earth according to Christianity, was created as god blew air into his nostrils; Eve was created from Adam’s ribs.
In Huxley’s novel, human reproduction is facilitated in the ‘Hatchery’ — in incubators where embryos are given hormones and chemicals that place them within a certain social strata, all of this done in a carefully organised, mechanised and efficient manner. But the plot got twisted as the decades went on; films like The Matrix showed humans being born for the benefit of machines in pods that act as artificial wombs.
How far are we from this situation? Innovations in modern reproductive techniques would suggest that we are not that far. In 2019, a baby was born to a woman who received a uterus transplant from a deceased donor. At least a dozen children have been born in Sweden, the United States of America and Serbia to women who have had transplanted uteri donated by others. In 2017, Nature Communications published a study led by the researcher, Emily Partridge, that demonstrated the most successful exhibition of an artificial womb yet. According to some estimates, animal studies will be concluded within the next couple of years and, if approved, such artificial wombs will be tested on extremely premature human foetuses.
Several governments, including ours, have strict regulations in place when it comes to surrogacy. Artificial wombs, therefore, are seen to be a more efficient solution. Some argue that the artificial womb is also a more transparent template that can display every vital sign and data of the foetus.
When the first IVF baby was born, it seemed like a miracle. Today, given the power of the scientific imagination and the speed of innovation and metamorphoses, many such miracles await mankind.
