Cloudbirths

Ubbquittious

This will be a thing in years to come.


Fed up with the pain, danger and hardship of pregnancy couples will outsource reproduction to a company that specialises in it. They'll be located mostly on the outskirts of cities in industrial estates. Banks of glass bowls with foetuses in various stages of development along dark corridors in the basement. A bored technician walks in every now and then to make sure all the wires and tubes are properly attached if an error message shows up in his office.

Every now and then a foetus will fail and an email full of apologies go out to the customer before another bowl gets primed with some surplus genetic material.

You might go to Blackrock Clinic and some nice smartly dressed doctor will welcome you and give you nice brochures, you'll have a friendly chat in his office while you finish the Nespresso you got in the lobby and soon after you'll be putting your debit card into their machine to give them about €50,000. 9 months later a nurse hands you a baby whose development you've been closely following by repeatedly pressing F5.

Then some crowd in Eastern Europe or China will massively undercut them once it becomes commonplace. You'll get a handy USB device sent in the post for collecting and uploading your genetic material to their servers and when the baby is ready they'll deliver it to your door.

It will be like ordering Printed circuit boards off JLCPCB or Aisler except you won't have to go through the trouble of designing them. Unless you want to.

KungPao

I must watch Black Mirror again. Great show.

Purple is a Fruit

... with a fresh supply of desperate women in impoverished, politically unstable countries at all times (they're not mothers btw - they carry the foetus/baby for the pregnancy, their bodies nurture and nourish it, their bodies experience all the changes and sometimes difficulties - but not mothers, surrogates).

Ubbquittious

Purple is a Fruit wrote: »

... with a fresh supply of desperate women in impoverished, politically unstable countries at all times.

The failure rate of desperate women and the logistical nightmare of dealing with politically unstable countries will make the (initially) woefully expensive cloudbirthing technologies more attractive. The first unit will run at a loss, funded by some billionaire or VC capital angel from San Something-or-other in California before economies of scale and technological improvements make it break even

Ubbquittious

They're getting there

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0bmqfk9/what-if-women-never-had-to-give-birth-again-

BattleCorp1

You are about 17 years too late.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_%282005_film%29

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118612066#Comment_118612066

Seen it. Not a terrible film

mariaalice

Pregnancy and birth are profoundly wonderful experiences so no.

goldenmick

Ahh... it's been a long lockdown.

Badly Drunk Boy

But if women opted for this, they wouldn't be able to use the whole "We're great because of the pain of childbirth" argument to downplay or belittle the effect of a kick to the male groin, for example. 😉

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118615378#Comment_118615378

They'll do away with women altogether - because men cant get pregnant, and with no pregnancies theres no maternity leave which is bad for productivity.

Effects

Can this get moved to the creative writing/sci fi forum?