Mens Rights Pakistan is excited about the potential of the development of an artificial womb. For those who haven’t been following this development, researchers have developed a system for keeping prematurely born mammals alive in a fluid filled sac. It’s been tested on sheep, and they’ve got little lambs living inside this ‘biobag’ for the last month of gestation.
When I heard about this, the last thing on my mind was to wonder what anti-feminists woud think about reproductive biotechnology, but they’re quite vocal and have strong opinions. They’re for ’em. Not for the reasons I approve, though.
Artificial womb is coming and human fetuses will be grown in artificial wombs. Now where does religion stand on this is of course up to the respective religion’s guardians. However, I would like to point out something that this technology can help save a lot of babies from abortion. Here at anti-feminism pakistan, we are unequivocally anti abortion, pro adoption and libertarian in our approach towards social
commentary.
OK! Thank you for your clarity! They don’t like women, but they also hate abortion. It’s amazing how often those two opinions come together.
I don’t like you.
The first question that will come before pro-abortion Pakistanis whether they belong to Islam or any other minority religion or are averse to religion like atheists, is that if fetuses can be saved with this technology is their argument for choice to kill babies still about betterment of the society through avoiding birth of human beings who are predicted to have significantly worse quality of life and indulge in criminality or just an escape for women from consequences of their action?
Clarity…fading. But they seem to have decided that there are only two reasons for abortion: women are choosing to abort fetuses that they think will become criminals (how do they know?) as a kind of informal eugenics, or they’re just hedonists who won’t accept the natural product of their lusts.
I don’t think any women get abortions for the bizarre reason of the “betterment of society”. It’s a personal choice.
Children are a huge commitment, and they can constrain a woman’s life a great deal. Women get abortions because they plan their families, which means that they don’t want children. That’s OK. MRAs don’t seem to be very interested in supporting children either.
But this artificial womb doesn’t really impinge on the abortion debate at all, anyway. It’s a technology that will allow for better survival of premature babies, for families that want children. It’s only going to be useful in the last month or two of a pregnancy when the only time an abortion occurs is when severe life-threatening disease is present, or the fetus is so abnormal that it has no chance to live. The biobag does not save those fetuses.
The second question that I would like to ask strict traditionalists is whether their argument for protection of women still hold when a part of their traditional role is taken over by a machine? Now let it be said, I am not saying that women have no other role beside bearing the baby, as countless research has shown that a child with both father and mother in his/her life ends up doing much better than a child without either one or both. However, think about it. Why should a man provide for and protect a woman who can circumvent a supposed difficult part of her life?
Again, the artificial womb is not a technique for allowing a woman to circumvent the last month of pregnancy with elective surgery. It is not a strategy for replacing parental roles, traditional or otherwise. Are you stupid or something?
Also, maybe you should get over this notion a woman is someone you “provide for and protect”. Start thinking about respectful partnerships, instead. It’ll change your life for the better!
The third question is a more of a conjecture on my part, I wonder if artificial womb can be the death knell for the concept of ‘Mamta’ which can loosely be defined as the kind of love mothers have for their babies. If they do not experience the growth of the baby inside of them, is the baby anymore even hers beyond the obvious biological DNA provision.
I know it’s hard for you to think outside your biases, but try this. Men do not get pregnant at all, generally; they do not have babies growing inside them. What kind of hissy fit would you throw if someone said your children aren’t even yours, beyond the obvious biological DNA provision? Are you really trying to argue that a father’s love can’t exist, in an attempt to deny maternal love?
The final question is, can this be the ultimate in male emancipation?
It’s just getting juicy and weird, and he plops this question out and doesn’t follow through! No fair!
The answer is…no. MRAs already treat women as biobags, so this technology doesn’t change a thing.
Funny they say they are pro-Adoption, when adoption is forbidden in Islam. True adoption is not allowed (since Mo annulled system so he can marry the divorcee of his adoptee). Only guardianship is permitted, keeping the child outside the sphere of the family in many legal aspects. They’d do better focusing their resources on fixing that aspect rather than fret over technology meant to save preemies.
Yawn… this sort of nonsense was a stereotypical part of extreme misogyny two and a half thousand years ago. It seems these attitudes are the same throughout time as well as space. In the Greek theatre if you wanted to show a character was some kind of misogynistic extremist then you had him say something about how he wishes men could find another way to have children and do away with women altogether. Euripides was especially fond of this trope – most famously with Jason in Medea and Hippolytus in the play of the same name. Even the very patriarchal Athenians regarded this kind of talk as the mark of a deeply unstable and antisocial person.
It’s no wonder they misunderstand the technology – they’ve been waiting literally millennia for a way to replace in vivo gestation, driven entirely by their misogynistic world view. That something vaguely similar has now come along just makes them rehearse the same tired old tosh once more.
So how exactly is it possible to be both unequivocally anti abortion and libertarian?
Or is this the kind of libertarian that is all about not taxing the rich, and not at all about liberty?
No, but it has to be the ultimate in male mental wankery.
“Bottle of mine, it’s you I’ve always wanted!
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
Skies are blue inside of you,
The weather’s always fine;
For there ain’t no Bottle in all the world
Like that dear little Bottle of mine.”
@cartomancer
It cuts both ways
Let me say that this has the potential to be a great thing for women and their families. Not because it will replace gestation (I wished…), but as PZ said, because it can be a life saving method for wanted babies. I have friends who lost their first child because the baby was way too early and the baby was way too early because she developed HELLP and they had to end the pregnancy. Such a thing could have given him the time he needed. It could give many babies the time to develop and avoid serious health complications.
As for the MRAs, they seem a bit vague on whether they now like it or not. I suppose that deep inside of them there’s the understanding that such a thing would not finally put women back into their place. Apart from them not understanding what this actually is.
What would be the consequence of such an artificial womb? Oh, right, they would finally have to put up or shut up. Right now women and other people with uteri are pretty unwilling to go through a pregnancy if they have no intention of having a child. That’s why anti choicers can wank on about adoptions (of cute healthy white babies). If all unwanted fetuses could be grown into babies without any detriment to the person who conceived, there would be a huge number of babies and who would now care for them*? What about all the MRAs who go on and on about spreading their seed? They know what they would do if a woman they impregnated stood on their doorstep and said “hey, I was pregnant. I got the fetus transferred into this growing bag. You guys always wanted a say when it comes to abortion, now you got it. It’s all yours. Raise a child or throw the fetus into the garbage.”
*Now, many of them would say it still had to be the woman who conceived because she needs to be punished for having sex)
@Athywren
No, this is the modern libertarian, the kind where simple mental gymnastics as believing mutually contradictory concepts simultaneously is merely a Demonstration of their Logic, Reason and Innate Superiority.
The US Libertarian party has had anti-abortion planks in various presidential elections, because apparently Freedom and Liberty are for Men.
I predict that the MRA’s will eventually turn against this technology because it’s not as satisfying to
rape“have sex with” compared with human bio-bags.Somehow, this supposedly Pakistani writer manages to produce idiomatically American drivel. I suspect he’s not actually Pakistani. Does “libertarian” mean the same thing there that it does here? I don’t think so, and as someone pointed out, adoption is a no-no in Islam.
Possible consequences have been speculated on in SF for ages. I particularly like Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan universe. I’d be quite happy for all the MRAs and MGTOWs to go to Athos where they wouldn’t bother us.
Giliell
Yeah, I feel like calling it an “artificial womb” without some heavy caveats is leading a lot of people to assume it’s doing things it can’t do. It doesn’t replace gestation. It would be fucking amazing and world-changing if it did. But it doesn’t.
If this ends up working for humans the way it should, it’s wonderful and I’m thrilled for all the families out there who will be helped and saved a lot of suffering, loss, and long-term health problems. It’s a life-saving tool, not a life-making one.
so in practice it is a better incubator a wet one
that critique posted here is really kind of perverse, I just have a hard time with such irrational dislike for women at the same time declaring the desire to protect and honor them
ei yiyi stay away from me!!
uncle frogy
I’ve actually heard references to this attitude before, but I’ve never actually seen someone holding it directly.
I doubt they ever considered the possibility that it could.
Athywren (#3)
I think they meant they’re only “libertarian” for their “approach towards social commentary.” As in, they’re not claiming to be “libertarian” in anything else, like respecting bodily autonomy.
It’s easy. You just take a libertarian viewpoint on property rights and human rights. And consider women to be property, not humans.
Back in the 90s when they first gestated a goat in vitro I had a more feminist version of this fantasy.
If artificial wombs were invented, every woman wanting an abortion could put the zygote in an aquarium, dump it on the door of Operation Rescue and say ‘now you pay for it’. The anti-aborters would have to choose between going bankrupt supporting thousands of fetuses or drowning in their own hypocrisy.
Or rather, everyone should have the right to transplant their unwanted pregnancy into the body of Mitch McConnell or Mike Pence.