Considering the Developing Entity in an Artificial Womb as a Patient.

Abstract

Artificial womb (AW) prototypes are currently being developed with the aim of improving the medical care of extremely premature infants. Despite the seemingly imminent reality of partial ectogenesis (i.e., gestation partially outside a human womb), there is persisting debate about the moral status of the fetus transferred in an AW-henceforth, the "developing entity." For some, AWs are simply another neonatal intensive cares' technology. Thus, developing entities in AWs should deserve the same protections as newborns in incubators. Others consider that AWs are fundamentally different technologies than incubators. Therefore, they believe that developing entities in AWs are new moral entities. These differences in perception generate disagreement about how developing entities in AWs should be treated and how decisions about them should be made. We argue that developing entities in AWs should be considered patients by transposing Chervenak and McCullough's "The fetus as a patient" proposition to the context of partial ectogenesis. As pregnant persons will have to consent to transfer their fetuses in AWs, and this technology will ultimately present itself as a beneficial medical intervention for viable developing entities in AWs, these latter would be patients, even if they are not legally and morally recognized as person. Thus, the moral obligations of beneficence and non-maleficence owed by physicians to their patients would apply to entities in AWs, ethically guiding their treatment and decision-making toward them.