Biotechnology, Gestation, and the Law

Abstract Gestation is the process of which each of us are the result. The very nature of human gestation, however, has shifted and will continue to shift as a result of technology. Uterus transplantation, the transplant of a functioning uterus into the body of a person absent a uterus, enables a person who was previously unable to sustain a pregnancy to do so. Gestation as we have known it has been confined to the uterus of a person assigned female at birth. Uterus transplantation makes imaginable pregnancies in bodies that were not assigned female at birth, such as cis men. Thus, it has the capacity to ‘unsex’ pregnancy. Ectogestation, the partial or complete facilitation of gestation in an artificial device (outside the body), more drastically alters the nature of gestation as we know it: by enabling gestation without pregnancy, that is, gestation beyond the body. These novel possibilities raise important conceptual questions. Are pregnancy and gestation the same thing? Who are these technologies for and when? Who are the parents when novel forms of gestation are used? How do these technologies disrupt our notions of reproductive biosex? And are they tools of emancipation? In exploring these and other questions, this book explores the implications of novel technologies enabling gestation.