in my opinion creating life is miraculous. beyond inventing some piece of tech or rocket or business. you are breathing new beings into our reality. what can be higher than that?
I think it's wonderful to find purpose in creating and nurturing a life, but framing it as the best makes people who cannot or choose not to do the thing seem inadequate.
We can create life de novo in a laboratory [1]. We’re approaching the point where we can replicate a womb artificially, and do a better job at that than natural ones. (Interstitial attachment in humans is evolutionarily recent and inefficient [2]. The size of the human brain, too, is evolutionarily recent, which makes human childbirth evolutionarily recent and uniquely deadly among primates [3]. These aren’t difficult to improve on, which is why IVF, C sections, NICUs and lactation inducement are a thing.)
Parenting is rewarding, necessary and noteworthy. Calling it miraculous in literal (versus figurative) terms puts it on a glass pedestal. That’s dangerous if you believe parenting should be respected.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology
There is constant feedback between mother and child, and any mother will tell you how they got cravings where their body/baby told them exactly what it needed. The baby, still in the womb, gets to hear the parents and experience their life. This all carries into the child's life and is inherently unable to be replicated in a lab.
What are you basing this on? Children conceived through IVF already have nearly identical long-term outcomes to naturally conceived babies. (You have to adjust for income and intent. Otherwise, the IVF babies do better on some measures.)
I tend to agree that we won’t be able to create an arrival womb that outperforms a natural one under ideal circumstances in our lifetimes. But most circumstances aren’t ideal, even when the parents and their doctors have the best intentions.
> haven’t even figured out how to make formula that will leave children as healthy as a breastfed child
Formula isn’t trying to replicate breast milk, it’s trying to be cheap and convenient. Lab-grown breast milk is still decades away, but it’s in the same vein of biochemistry. (The joining factor being our increasing ability to control immune factor production.)
Again, I don’t think it will be better than the best natural breastmilk. (It won’t be fresh, for one.) But OP didn’t say a perfect mother is doing her highest calling. They created a paragon for all women.
> most circumstances aren’t ideal
Yes when women are forced to treat having and raising children as a disease (no children allowed in "professional" settings, dont take time off for family, etc) instead of a normal part of life to be celebrated and encouraged.
Doctors don't have the children's best interests in mind. They need to avoid liability at all costs, which largely means 'avoid death and disfigurement even if the kid isn't as well off long term'. As a bonus, doing unnecessary things gets them paid more.
> What are you basing this on? > we won’t be able to create an arrival womb that outperforms a natural one under ideal circumstances for some time.
Ever. Because factory made, lab grown, and mass produced products have never and inherently can never have the biodiversity of the real thing despite what the marketers might tell you. Even our 'natural' food mass produced in monoculture fields is devoid of nutrients compared to small farms.
> Formula isn’t trying to replicate breast milk, it’s trying to be cheap and convenient
Junk food for infants.
IVF replicates a critical part of making a baby, conception, and artifically steers another, implantation. From a miraculousness perspective, conception is high up there. Certainly one that a hundred years ago someone would have similarly scoffed at being able to be done in a lab not only at all, but almost as well as in nature.
> Even our 'natural' food mass produced in monoculture fields is devoid of nutrients compared to small farms
Sure. What do you think most mothers are eating?
Except for the dozens of fetuses that are not brought to term and flushed because they would not survive to birth.
One, zygote or blastocyst; it's not technically even an embryo until the amniotic sac develops [1]. Definitely not a fetus.
Two, "at least 40% of [natural] human pregnancies are lost before implantation" [2]. With assisted reproduction, that's 75% [3].
But "total loss from fertilisation to birth is 40-60%" in natural births [4]. About 65% to 80% of IVF implanted embryos result in a live birth [5], or about a total loss of 80%. (And improving.)
When ART results in a lower total loss from fertilisation to birth than natural conception, would you argue for banning the latter?
[1] https://www.medicinenet.com/embryo_vs_fetus_differences_week...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6053685/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670474/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5306416/
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5306416/
[5] https://www.pfcla.com/blog/frozen-embryo-transfer-success-ra...
Parenthood is a wonderful thing for people that want it. Not everyone does and ascribing absolute value to it for a whole sex is weird.