Hugin & Munin Journal

In Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels, the uterine replicator—an artificial womb capable of sustaining fetal development outside the human body—does more than spare women the physical work and risk of pregnancy. It removes gestation from the evolutionary arrangement that produced the human newborn: large-brained by primate standards, physically helpless and still at the beginning of an unusually long period of neural development. Caesarean delivery already allows some infants to bypass the dimensions of the birth canal. Complete artificial gestation would go further. It would remove fetal development from the pregnant body, loosening not only the mechanical problem of delivery but some of the placental, metabolic and physiological constraints that shape growth before birth. The obvious speculation follows quickly. Without a pelvis to pass through, could babies develop larger heads and brains? Could gestation continue for twelve or sixteen months? Combined with embryo selectio...

In Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels, the uterine replicator—an artificial womb capable of gestating a fetus outside the human body—is rarely treated as an isolated marvel. It becomes part of the ordinary machinery of civilisation, changing family formation, gender relations, inheritance and the political organisation of entire societies. In Ethan of Athos , it allows an all-male colony to reproduce without women carrying pregnancies or participating in the society, although the colony still depends on ovarian cultures originally derived from women. Bujold described the uterine replicator as one of the technologies she had thought through carefully, while preferring to display its implications rather than burden the story with technical explanation. That is also what makes the invention useful outside fiction. The machine matters less as a spectacular device than as the centre of a new social arrangement. Artificial wombs are usually imagined through familiar scenes: an ext...