When Making Babies Goes High Tech: A Future Tense Event Recap

November 25, 2014

(Slate) – In vitro fertilization was originally intended to help a very specific young, married, and female demographic to conceive. But a lot has changed since Louise Brown, the first test tube baby, was born in 1978. The explosion of single mothers and same-sex parents using the procedure has attracted a lot of attention, but society also needs to grapple with the questions of control, regulation, and access that other emerging reproductive technologies could raise.  From pre-implantation genetic screening to exo-wombs, these changes could even evolve our most basic notions of family and society.