Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic research in Spain, this paper shows how the Artificial Womb Technology reconfigures reproductive temporalities and generates polarised tensions around viability and care in neonatal medicine.

Paper long abstract

In between the realms of gynecology and neonatology, a novel device known as Artificial Womb Technology (AWT) is currently being developed to improve the survival of preterm newborns born at the limits of viability -between 21 and 24 gestational weeks-. In contrast to existing neonatal technologies, its novelty lies in maintaining preterm infants in a fetal state, sustained through a technological extrauterine life in which the patient is suspended within a hybrid reproductive temporality - neither fetus nor neonate-. This liminal state disrupts binary conceptions of intra and extra-uterine life and generates polarized tensions among potential users and healthcare professionals.

Drawing on ethnographic observations in a neonatal intensive care unit and on AWT trials in Spain, as well as interviews with parents of preterm infants, health professionals, and the AWT research team, I show how the temporal interval opened by the AWT generates frictions in how care and decision-making are conceived in relation to this technology. By extending gestational time through technology, AWT creates tensions at three interconnected levels: concerns about the possibility of lowering the limits of viability; the legal and ontological liminality of the AWT patient; and the destabilisation of the reproductive autonomy of the pregnant person, all of which are entangled by imaginaries of ectogenesis and science fiction that frame AWT both as a promise and a threat. I argue that the new reproductive temporalities of AWT desynchronise existing clinical practices, reshaping moral values related to viability, personhood and responsibility in neonatal medicine.