Over the last five years, calls sounding the alarm on U.S. and global birth rates have increased. The topic of fertility decline and its causes regularly goes viral, not least due to the repeated warnings of prominent figures like Elon Musk. Recently, the White House has been fielding proposals aimed at persuading Americans to have more children, with President Trump considering a $5,000 ‘baby bonus’ for mothers.

In 2024, the U.S.’ total fertility rate (TFR), or the number of children a woman is predicted to have during her lifetime, was 1.63 children per woman. In China, it was 1.2. In France, where birth rates are highest in the EU, it hovered around 1.62. In Russia, it tapered at 1.41. In South Korea, it cratered to 0.75. All of these fall short of the replacement rate, which is the TFR required‬‭ to‬‭ keep a population from decreasing; in industrialized countries, that TFR is 2.1 children per woman. While media outlets have argued for years that weakening birth rates might not constitute a problem or might even be a positive signal, the reality is undeniable: global fertility has been plummeting since the 1960s. At this pace, most Western, East Asian, and even Latin American nations are below replacement rate and will face demographic decline in the coming decades, barring radical intervention. 

Meanwhile, a parallel conversation is unfolding in Silicon Valley, where technologists like Vitalik Buterin and Brian Armstrong imagine a world where birth rates are rebooted by the creation of artificial wombs. Although mechanized gestation seems like a radical proposal, it is an expression of Silicon Valley’s engineering reflex—an impulse to solve demographic shifts through code and glassware.

While gestation outside the body, or ectogenesis, is often touted as a futuristic pipe dream, partial artificial wombs already exist in clinical practice. On one end of the ectogenesis spectrum, babies born as early as 22-26 weeks—barely over halfway through term pregnancy—are kept alive in neonatal incubators and intensive care units (NICUs). On the other end of the gestational period, embryos formed through in vitro fertilization (IVF) are maintained in specialized media for five days before uterine transfer. Since 2016, research labs have also extended embryo culture up to two weeks, the equivalent of four weeks in gestational age. These technologies function like primitive artificial wombs, supporting life outside the body. Between them lies an eighteen-week gap which, if closed, would enable full ectogenesis from the embryo to the term infant.

But what if artificial wombs were unlikely to solve depopulation? Would they remain a moonshot worthy of realization?

Why Artificial Gestation Won’t Spark a Baby Boom

Fertility decline in the West is neither novel nor sudden. Between 1800-1900, European TFR fell from seven children per woman to less than four. This reproductive downturn endured well into the 20th century and was curbed only by the Baby Boom in the wake of the Second World War. Since 1960, however, dwindling fertility has again dominated the Northern Hemisphere, scarcely offset by a short-lived “baby bump” during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Most authors agree on the causes of fertility decline prior to the Baby Boom: industrialization and urbanization made children economic dependents rather than farm labor; female literacy and wages raised the opportunity cost of motherhood; and the diffusion of Enlightenment values normalized birth control and weakened religious pressure to have large households. As for the recent demographic transition, which has affected even developing countries such as India and Sri Lanka, scholars vehemently disagree on its causes.

Demographer Lyman Stone thinks the story starts at the altar. He notes that Americans still tell pollsters they want two or three kids, but many fall short of that aspiration. Married couples are more likely to reach their desired family size than unmarried ones; with marriage rates falling by half since 1980, fewer weddings mean fewer babies. Meanwhile, Peter McDonald theorizes that the bottleneck isn’t vows, but roles. When women enter universities and workplaces but are also left to shoulder childcare and household duties, parenting becomes a second shift. Unless social institutions catch up, he says, many couples will quietly settle for a “one and done.” Belgian sociologist Ron Lesthaeghe pushes the lens back even further. In his view, the West increasingly values self-actualization as a precondition to family formation. Taken simply, fewer children are the collateral damage of meaningful careers, personal growth, and “finding yourself.” Melissa Kearney says we should look at the budget instead. With eye-watering housing costs, precarious job security, and the expectation of college and extracurriculars, every additional child feels like a luxury good.

Notably, no author has identified biological infertility—the lever addressed by artificial wombs—as a major constraint. By and large, couples unable to conceive despite actively trying to are not considered the bottleneck to a second Baby Boom. Governments’ policies reflect this view. Most countries pursuing pronatalist measures have prioritized tax exemptions for large families, housing grants, and subsidies spanning maternity leave, childcare benefits, and daycares. So far, only a few countries have subsidized fertility services in part or in full. They include Hungary, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Israel; offerings include specialized clinics to investigate and treat infertility, egg freezing, and IVF.

However, outcomes do not markedly differ between nations that have deployed reproductive treatments as part of their pronatalist arsenal and those that haven’t. In fact, results for fertility-boosting policies are mixed and often unpredictable. Hungary, which has pursued pronatalist policies since 2010, saw its TFR rise from its nadir of 1.2 children per woman in 2010 to approximately 1.6 in recent years, but progress has stalled following a peak in 2022. South Korea has broadly experienced a free fall in its TFR despite pouring over $100 billion since 2021 to promote fertility. Likewise, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore have registered a steady decline in birth rates despite reproductive technology subsidies—a trajectory not dissimilar to much of Southern and Eastern Europe. 

Israel, for now, stands out as an exception among developed countries, touting an above-replacement TFR in spite of a gradual reduction since 1960. It joins France as a relative success story; its continental counterpart has long boasted the highest birth rate in the European Union even as this remains below replacement. 

It is entirely possible that biological infertility is currently overlooked as a cause for reproductive decline and that artificial wombs, if they existed today, would radically reverse demographic trends. However, the general consensus is that drivers of reduced fertility—be it later marriage, economic insecurity, values shift, or women’s changed role in society—have led to a narrower fertility window. As couples meet and begin having children later, they hit a biological ceiling before achieving their desired family size. Reproductive technologies, from IVF to surrogacy, likely offset some of these forces by extending the fertility window, but they palliate the causes rather than address them directly. Currently, it is estimated that up to 10% of all children are born with the help of fertility care in certain countries. It is difficult to determine to which extent these births are “true additions” as opposed to births that would have otherwise occurred if it were not for parents’ infertility issues. 

The adoption curve for artificial wombs might begin with capturing the surrogacy market, which is only about 0.1% of all births in the U.S. currently. Assuming adoption would be similar to that of C-sections—another elective procedure—artificial gestation could eventually contribute to 10% of births twenty years after its introduction. Prospective parents would primarily be women who suffer from high-risk pregnancies, as well as some proportion of older or more career-focused parents. 

After a few generations, this number could climb as safety and efficacy are further established, helping reach families who currently stop at one or two children due to the inconveniences of pregnancy and childcare. This might help close the gap between Americans’ desired and actual fertility, which is currently about 0.3-0.5 children per woman. Even in such an extremely optimistic scenario—one in which artificial wombs become as routine as epidurals—they might raise America’s TFR by half a child per woman at most, nudging it to 1.9-2.1. While meaningful, this is nowhere near the Baby Boom many techno-optimists imagine. The workforce would continue to grow older, and many populations would continue to shrink because generations of demographic momentum means a larger proportion of people are already past the age where they would choose to have children.

There is also the possibility that greatly relaxing age-related biological barriers to fertility will result in people choosing to postpone fertility even later. Many people today plan fertility around their personal biological constraints as they understand them. The same social tendencies and outcomes that drove lower fertility—such as later marriage, shifting values, and economic competition—might simply continue to obliterate any technological gains. If the unpredictable link between policies and results means all bets are off, invoking artificial wombs in debates over falling birth rates remains misguided, as this framing ignores their core merit: health and safety. 

Nature, Red in Tooth And Claw

Childbearing is the most significant medical event most women will ever experience. It also represents a profound transformation, one that leaves mothers uniquely vulnerable. While many embrace the transition, pregnancy, by its very nature, wrests control from the woman—dictating the physiological shifts in ways she can guide but never fully command. 

At the turn of the 19th century, childbirth routinely carried a 1% chance of killing the mother and a 15-20% chance of losing the baby before its first birthday. Puerperal fever, postoperative hemorrhage, and all-too-common infections were considered acts of God, not failures of care. In the following decades, medical and public health breakthroughs like water sanitation, smallpox inoculation, and handwashing halved maternal and child mortality. Crucially, these technologies curbed Nature, giving countless children the opportunity to lead full lives.

Nonetheless, obstetric advances are never handed over—they’re hard-won. The battle pits science against the naturalistic fallacy and the notion that pain, especially when experienced by women, is inherently meaningful. This cult of martyrdom was likely developed for much the same reason we once valorized death on the battlefield for men: it was a necessary cultural adaptation for the survival of a society. Long before birth control and IVF, anesthetics were condemned by clergy and physicians as meddling with the natural ordeals of childbirth. The moral panic melted in 1853 when Queen Victoria herself requested chloroform during Prince Leopold’s delivery. Her royal example transformed anesthesia from taboo to triumph virtually overnight. 

Medicine extends our sovereignty when it steers the body’s own machinery toward greater safety and health. What are glasses, prosthetic limbs, or organ transplants, if not a rebellion against Nature having the last word?

Artificial wombs could radically improve the quality of life for women and infants by enabling safer gestation from the embryo to the term infant. Their value proposition: offering hitherto unknown control over the uterine environment to promote healthy development. 

In an ordinary pregnancy, the placenta—a temporary organ linking mother and fetus—must constantly recalibrate the temperature, nutrient composition, oxygen levels, and amniotic fluid volume to match the fetus’ changing needs. When that adjustment falters, consequences can range from growth restriction to birth defects and even miscarriage. The placenta is also a leaky filter: alcohol, nicotine, heavy metals like lead and mercury, endocrine-disrupting “forever chemicals,” microplastics, and common viruses can all reach the fetal bloodstream. Compounding these hazards, maternal conditions, from diabetes and high blood pressure to psychological stress, can further disrupt fetal development. An artificial womb would allow clinicians to measure and tweak every variable in real time: draining or replenishing amniotic fluid on demand; delivering precisely formulated nutrients and oxygen; screening out toxins the natural placenta cannot block; and insulating the fetus from maternal comorbidities.

The benefit to the world’s babies would be immense. Every year, roughly 15 million infants are born too early. Worldwide, complications of prematurity outrank malaria, HIV, and traffic accidents as the leading cause of death in children under five, not to mention lifelong disability associated with prematurity itself or life-saving medical interventions. Most preterm births are mediated by maternal or environmental factors—in other words, disturbances of the uterine environment. By mitigating these disturbances, artificial wombs could eliminate prematurity as we know it and even sustain infants born preterm from biological wombs. 

Because the mother’s body would no longer be the only life support system, a host of long-standing dilemmas would also fall away as care can fully focus on her welfare. A woman with epilepsy could take the most effective anti-seizure drug without weighing fetal side effects; an oncologist could treat first-trimester cancer aggressively instead of delaying therapy. Even routine pregnancies would become less fraught: no pre-eclampsia, no postpartum hemorrhage, and virtually no delivery trauma. Removing the fetal-maternal conflict could empower mothers to better care for themselves and their children.

Gestational command also opens doors beyond crisis care. Couples facing uterine factor infertility could skip surrogacy. Long-term missions to Mars or distant planets could ensure continuity without exposing embryos to radiation or micro-gravity. These are side benefits, not the main promise, but they flow from the same principle: when you can tune the environment molecule by molecule, biology becomes much more forgiving.

Midwives and physicians have long wrestled with Nature to safely shepherd mother and child across the veil. Artificial wombs wouldn’t replace traditional pregnancy any more than epidurals have replaced natural childbirth, but they could become a standard, opt-in option for families who need extra safety—or just extra certainty—in bringing a child into the world.

A Noble Wager

Beyond their technological and regulatory challenges, perhaps artificial wombs’ biggest issue is that they are weird. But technology itself is weird. Flying across the Atlantic Ocean in a tin can is weird. Making sand talk in Python is weird. Defying death by removing parts of our own bodies that have turned malicious, reprogramming our cells, and treating a dozen conditions with a miracle weight loss injection is weird. Even more, what is strange today becomes routine tomorrow. Cars themselves were once viewed with hostility.

Yet our unease with artificial wombs stems from more than novelty or strangeness. If control is the promise of artificial wombs, the automatic retort is: “Should we have that much control? Aren’t we playing God?”

Even in the best-case scenario, with entirely proven technology and wide social acceptance, artificial gestation rewrites intimate rules. What does mother-child bonding look like when Baby hears Mom’s voice through a sound-conductive membrane instead of a belly? Would maternal bonding become similar to paternal bonding in this context, or would it remain comparable to that of an adoptive mother or the parent of a surrogate infant? How would artificial wombs impact the abortion debate? Would commercial surrogacy fade away in response or morph into something else entirely?

History has shown that every new tool trades one form of mastery for another form of uncertainty. In a way, we would surrender the familiar protections of pregnancy even as we gain the power to tune gestation, exchanging known unknowns for unknown unknowns. 

In Our Posthuman Future (2002), political theorist Francis Fukuyama argues from secular humanist premises against gene editing, warning that it alters the very same human nature that underwrites conceptual political equality in liberal democracy. These fears are likely not unfounded: until recently, our biological constitution might have served to define our politics in unseen ways, outlasting the influence of any written constitution by eons. 

Similarly, the dial of artificial wombs promises precision, yet the wider its range, the more dangerous it becomes if a single hand clamps down. Science fiction reflexively casts artificial wombs as state property, from Brave New World’s hatcheries to The Matrix’s human factories. While perhaps a stereotyped failure mode, history gives us plenty of raw material for such futurism, from the Soviet Union’s conscription of women’s bodies to China’s one-child dragnet. Once gestation can be mass-produced, what stops a single institution from monopolizing it?

At their core, artificial wombs are weird because they represent a shift in the locus of control of reproduction: from the private sphere of women’s bodies and the family to the public one of a technology regulated by the state. This, however, can be understood as another leap toward the medicalization of pregnancy itself, which has continued uninterrupted since around Queen Victoria’s time when modern medicine earned its authority. 

While we can’t predict the world where artificial wombs will come, their potential to save millions, if not billions, of lives makes them a noble wager. Childbearing has always been Nature’s final veto. Artificial gestation would flip the balance of power, offering us fine-grained control over its variables. But control cuts both ways: the more we seize, the more we must trust whoever holds the dials.