‘The law is very, very outdated and not keeping up with the technology’: novel forms of assisted gestation, legal challenges, and perspectives of reproductive rights advocates in England and Wales

Abstract

Abstract A growing body of literature examines the ethico-legal challenges resulting from novel forms of assisted gestation like uterus transplantation and artificial placentas (also known as ‘artificial wombs’). However, there has not yet been consideration of reproductive rights organizations/advocates’ understandings of novel forms of assisted gestation and their challenges. These perspectives provide critical insight into how novel procreative practices are understood and the problems and pressures that might arise from their use. This is the first legal article to engage with reproductive rights organizations/advocates and thus it provides important contextual grounding to existing scholarship about assisted gestation. Focus group discussion epitomized the need for legal reform in key areas surrounding reproduction. Themes were constructed that exemplify what participants highlighted as critical: the need to re-evaluate the fundamentals of legal parenthood, consideration of how novel technologies could further enable the policing of gestation, and the space and time needed for law-making.