Artificial Wombs Create Individuals
 Joel Cox, Saint Louis University

As reproductive technologies continue to advance, our relationship with our humanity progressively morphs. Take artificial wombs; researchers are developing this technology in part with the goal of improving care for extremely premature infants. However, the possibility of gestating human fetuses, hereafter protonates, outside of human wombs engages existing questions about the status of protonates and raises new ones about whether it is right to deprive protonates of the intimate gestational connection with the people bearing them. With this in mind, I contend that the use of artificial wombs relies on a misconception about protonates as burgeoning human persons. Specifically, the use of artificial wombs on protonates assumes protonates are individuals, fundamentally socially and biologically separable from the women carrying them. In this paper, I argue that, while the use of artificial wombs assumes that protonates are individuals, artificial wombs actually make protonates into individuals, making them separable by separating them. To make this case, I first explain how artificial wombs function. Next, I pull from Charles Taylor’s understanding of individualism to unpack the modern assumption that human beings are individuated and separable from their social contexts. I then apply this reasoning to protonates, arguing that they are socially embedded members of relationships and communities. Finally, I look directly at artificial wombs, showing how these technologies – mired in a culture of individualism – in fact make protonates into individuals. My aim is to uncover how our modern assumptions about individualism inform our use of technology at the beginning of life. When all is said, we may discover that the intimate connections at the beginning of life reframe our understanding of ourselves as human persons even long after we are born.​