For many, the concept of the artificial womb is associated heavily with Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World, which connects the prioritization of science in reproduction with inevitable eugenics. The book warns of a nightmarish future where society revolves around science and efficiency, with no lasting relationships between individuals. The novel begins with an explanation of how children are born at a "hatchery," created outside a human body and cloned in order to increase the population. The artificial womb used is heavily implicated in the class system of the world, where embryos are sorted before birth and given the hormones and chemicals associated with either their privilege or lack thereof. This vision for the future of ectogenesis (or birth outside of a human body), is mainly one of harm.

Not all contemporaries of Huxley's shared his concern, though. Many thinkers of the time considered the prospect of the artificial womb positive. According to JBS Haldane, disconnecting reproduction from any individuals physical body could bring about radical social change — if women no longer needed to be pregnant to create children, sex and reproduction would be uncoupled, changing the inherent power imbalance in society. Dora Russell agreed, imagining a world where women were not expected to bear children and perform a maternal role that "kept them servile, house-bound, and outside the public sphere."

Although current scientific developments in the area have been enough to sustain a pre-term lamb in a "biobag," and some lambs have survived delivery from said artificial wombs (one even living to a year with a normal brain MRI), there is still a ways to go before extrauterine systems can safely be used for pre-term human infants. One of the stated goals of the researchers involved is to address maternal risks in pregnancy and improve pre-natal care. Preterm birth, before 37 weeks gestation is the leading cause of death among newborns globally, and although current NICU procedures in developed countries are incredibly successful, neonatal intensive care development has been stagnant for some time, with health issues continuing through childhood for many neonatally at risk children. For more, read on in The Pursuit of Parenthood.

Some believe in just a few decades, sex won't be necessary or normal to reproduce anymore. With a combination of IVF, embryo selection, and artificial wombs, the door will be open to genetically edited babies, babies with a single genetic parent, and "their own" babies for same sex couples. This opens up moral quandaries — what about cloning? Or so-called designer babies? The right to abortion may also be even further at stake, were artificial wombs to be an option, which puts American women in the position of emotionally choosing to "give up" their babies rather than terminating a pregnancy.

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