Can Babies Be Born From Biobags?
VISION: To allow anyone to create a child, design an artificial womb that can be set up in a living room or other part of the house.
TEAM: Lovisa Minkiewicz, Jeroen van Kempen, Jasmijn van der Weide
SCHOOL: ArtEZ (2017)
In 2017, scientists who hoped to prevent the deaths of babies born very prematurely created an artificial womb, or “biobag.” By mimicking conditions in the natural gestation process, they were able to nurture a healthy premature lamb for up to four weeks.
Students at the Dutch arts university ArtEZ took the idea further, to reimagine human parenthood. Someday, they speculated, babies could be grown in an artificial womb that sits in the living room.
Someday, the students speculated, babies could be grown in an artificial womb that sits in the living room.
Parents-to-be would be able not only to select traits for their offspring, but also to buy special accessories to care for it in the womb. These would include a phone-like device enabling the owners to coo to their little one while they’re away at work, a portable care bag to mimic pregnancy, and a feeding device complete with a tracking system to monitor the embryo’s health.
Rather than solving a problem, Parturient is a provocation about how biotechnology and consumerist desires could conspire to transform pregnancy. The project became wildly popular on Facebook, receiving over 22 million views and 63,000 comments, sparking a dialogue about rapidly shifting birth technologies.
Parturient is both outlandish and eerily familiar. In a video documenting a fictional encounter between a couple and their birth counselor, the would-be parents describe how they’d like to customize their baby:
Birth Counselor: Have you considered eye color?
Wife: Yes, purple? Because … I like it.
Husband: Yes, it’s her favorite color. Oh! Can you make him a bit taller than me? Because I had issues growing up. Kids can be cruel, you know. I would like him to have a better life, play basketball.
