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>Even what to call the entities in these devices is fraught, says Chloe Romanis, a biolawyer at Durham Law School, UK. They’re not fetuses in the conventional s

>Even what to call the entities in these devices is fraught, says Chloe Romanis, a biolawyer at Durham Law School, UK. They’re not fetuses in the conventional sense because they are no longer in the womb, she says. Is this an attempt to nullify all existing laws that use the word "fetus"?

cinntaile 3y ago
It's a lawyer pointing out that we're headed into uncharted territory. It's not an attempt to nullify anything.
- Supply5411 3y ago
  Except not in this case. Elizabeth Chloe Romanis has written dozens of articles[1] arguing for new classifications for these unborn children. This is not a person saying "we're going into uncharted territory." This is a person arguing a very clear and opinionated perspective on the classification of human beings. >Artificial womb technology and the significance of birth: why gestatelings are not newborns (or fetuses)[2] In this abstract[3], she argues that a new classification is needed to determine what can and can't be done with each "entity", because it will impact the freedoms of women. How does a fetus in an artificial womb impact the freedoms of a woman? 1. https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-c-romanis/#publications https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-c-romanis/#publicat... 2. https://jme.bmj.com/content/45/11/728 https://jme.bmj.com/content/45/11/728 3. https://academic.oup.com/medlaw/article/28/1/93/5510054?login=false https://academic.oup.com/medlaw/article/28/1/93/5510054?logi...
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    Let's not repeat the errors we made with SpyWare, when we allowed crooks to define new terms that led to us allowing practices we all knew were wrong. There are common sense crossovers between a baby inside her mother and a baby in side her artificial womb. An embryo is an embryo, regardless of whether it is in a mother's body, in an artificial womb, or in a freezer. A fetus is a fetus whether it is in a biological mother's natural womb, in a surrogate mother's natural womb, or in an artificial womb. Birth is when the fetus exists the womb and presumably starts to breathe on its own. This can be vaginal delivery, caesarian section, or delivery from an artificial womb. Humans are humans, regardless of whether they were delivered vaginally, through caesarian section, or were delivered from an artificial womb. I hope we do not go back to the days of legalized slavery. The USA still has scars from a war that mostly ended slavery. The UK took until 2015 to finish paying off the debt incurred from compensating slave owners when they freed the slaves. Now of the uncomfortable topic of abortion. I remember an L. Neil Smith book where a woman found herself unintentionally pregnant, and had the baby taken out and stored frozen for a few decades until she was ready to become a mother, then she had the baby incubated in as artificial womb. In a world with that level of technology, where unplanned babies could be incubated in artificial wombs and easily adopted, abortion would serve one of several purposes: 1. Eliminate severely deformed or genetically defective people from society. (I wonder if genetic engineering will raise our collective IQs and athleticism until one day everyone in this conversation would be aborted for being too stupid or too weak to live?) 2. When all the people who want to adopt are overloaded with kids, when all foster care facilities are overflowing, and and the government does not want to raise kids in group homes, eliminating the excess children could be a final solution. I wonder what the long-term economics would be when AIs can raise children very cheaply. Would the children be cheap to raise and very productive, or would they be useless eaters overpopulating a crowded planet? I think contraception is a kinder solution. I would not put it past some authoritarian regime to demand they get to decide what unborn babies are incubated and which are aborted for the purpose of eugenics. 3. Maybe someone just wants to kill a kid? I see posts about wanting to get pregnant to have an abortion for the joy of killing a child on social media, but I have a hard time taking them seriously. I have known people who would take part in a human sacrifice for the fun of it if it was legal. I don't talk to them any more. I typed this wall of text, and never mentioned clone armies. I'm a failure.
waterheater 3y ago
I wrote an excessively detailed comment on the implications of an artificial wombs from a legal perspective in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37308675#37314083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37308675#37314083 TLDR: it's not as simple as just "fetus", but there is much disagreement around when a developing clump of cells becomes protected under the law.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  In the post You link to, You say that in Georgia they define an unborn person as being in a womb, then You say an artificial womb would not apply. Why not? Is an artificial womb not a womb?
  - waterheater 3y ago
    Obviously, this is just my opinion, but no, I believe it's possible that the Georgia definition may be exploited, particularly because the intent behind the law was to protect mothers (a natural person), not an artificial womb owned by a corporation (an artificial person).
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      I expect any law that defines a "womb" as being inside a woman will change once artificial wombs become possible.
      - waterheater 3y ago
        One can hope, though that's my main point in talking about it. The paradigm of artificial wombs will be a literal "brave new world". I wonder what the downstream effects will be when a company offers BaaS (Babies as a Service). Seems studying the present-day cloud may serve as an effective foil.
- verisimi 3y ago
  Perhaps, like many phones or cars, children of the future would be leased not owned, with full ownership (or at least a share of ownership) belonging to the corporation, state, etc. Further to this, there could be agreements that there would be an annual "service" of the child, with it being a requirement to have some ongoing medical treatment or gene therapy, that might be written into the terms of service. If any of that, at what point would the child 'own itself'? Does it ever? Will there be lifetime contracts?
jimbob45 3y ago
That was kind of my takeaway from this as well. They're no longer fetuses and these aren't wombs in any sense of the word. If these are wombs then everything else we currently use to promote the health of preterm births in the NICU would be "wombs" as well.
raffraffraff 3y ago
There is an interesting phenomenon in some (many?) philosophical schools where words are given too much power. It is as if they "are" the things that they describe. And yet, with all that magical power granted to words by academic philosophers, words are really just slippery labels that can be distorted on a mass scale quite quickly these days. And yet we still treat words like magic spells. We live in a world where saying that the meaning of a word has changed, somehow means that you have "changed reality", and everybody seems to march along saying the mantras. They forget that words are used in legal documents and in "common knowledge" inside our heads. I really wish that human language was strongly typed. You shouldn't be allowed to hijack a word for your own political ends. But to even suggest that the original concept or article deserves it's own distinct word puts you at risk of being accused of some thought crime. Why? Because that makes the incoming bait-and-switch easier to spot. The warping of the word is a magic spell, designed to manipulate reality. Edit: misspellings and ramblings
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I really wish that human language was strongly typed. I don’t think “strongly typed” even makes sense in reference to human language, except in the sense of grammar where words can only be used in the place where a the particular part of speech they are is called for, in which case formal writing is pretty close (though it responds to linguistic drift that results from informal language not being “strongly typed”.) What I think you mean is you wish that definitions of words were precise and fixed and that adherence to strict and literal use according to those precise, fixed definitions was universal and compulsory. Which, well, would be convenient for some things but really bad for others, and in any case is irrelevant because there is no way for it to happen. > But to even suggest that the original concept or article deserves it’s own distinct word puts you at risk of being accused of some thought crime. Does it? People make suggestions like that all the time, and while they are often disputed, its rarely about anything like “thought crime”.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > I really wish that human language was strongly typed. You shouldn't be allowed to hijack a word According to my one true definition of "strongly typed" it already is--how dare you try to hijack those words. /s
mock-possum 3y ago
Yeah I wouldn’t have expected a fetus to only be called a fetus while it’s inside a human being. ‘Fetus’ is a stage of development, not a context or a location.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
No. I imagine the lawyer is erring on the side of amplifying the rights of the child (now somewhere between a foetus and a newborn) rather than diminish them.
RecycledEle 3y ago
Look up "Chloe Romanis, a biolawyer at Durham Law School, UK" and see what her bias is: Available for media contact about: Ethics: Abortion Law & Crime: Abortion English Law: Abortion Gender and law: Abortion Ethics: Reproductive Technologies Law & Crime: Reproductive Technologies https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-c-romanis/ https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-c-romanis/

cinntaile 3y ago

It's a lawyer pointing out that we're headed into uncharted territory. It's not an attempt to nullify anything.

Supply5411 3y ago
Except not in this case. Elizabeth Chloe Romanis has written dozens of articles[1] arguing for new classifications for these unborn children. This is not a person saying "we're going into uncharted territory." This is a person arguing a very clear and opinionated perspective on the classification of human beings. >Artificial womb technology and the significance of birth: why gestatelings are not newborns (or fetuses)[2] In this abstract[3], she argues that a new classification is needed to determine what can and can't be done with each "entity", because it will impact the freedoms of women. How does a fetus in an artificial womb impact the freedoms of a woman? 1. https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-c-romanis/#publications https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-c-romanis/#publicat... 2. https://jme.bmj.com/content/45/11/728 https://jme.bmj.com/content/45/11/728 3. https://academic.oup.com/medlaw/article/28/1/93/5510054?login=false https://academic.oup.com/medlaw/article/28/1/93/5510054?logi...
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  Let's not repeat the errors we made with SpyWare, when we allowed crooks to define new terms that led to us allowing practices we all knew were wrong. There are common sense crossovers between a baby inside her mother and a baby in side her artificial womb. An embryo is an embryo, regardless of whether it is in a mother's body, in an artificial womb, or in a freezer. A fetus is a fetus whether it is in a biological mother's natural womb, in a surrogate mother's natural womb, or in an artificial womb. Birth is when the fetus exists the womb and presumably starts to breathe on its own. This can be vaginal delivery, caesarian section, or delivery from an artificial womb. Humans are humans, regardless of whether they were delivered vaginally, through caesarian section, or were delivered from an artificial womb. I hope we do not go back to the days of legalized slavery. The USA still has scars from a war that mostly ended slavery. The UK took until 2015 to finish paying off the debt incurred from compensating slave owners when they freed the slaves. Now of the uncomfortable topic of abortion. I remember an L. Neil Smith book where a woman found herself unintentionally pregnant, and had the baby taken out and stored frozen for a few decades until she was ready to become a mother, then she had the baby incubated in as artificial womb. In a world with that level of technology, where unplanned babies could be incubated in artificial wombs and easily adopted, abortion would serve one of several purposes: 1. Eliminate severely deformed or genetically defective people from society. (I wonder if genetic engineering will raise our collective IQs and athleticism until one day everyone in this conversation would be aborted for being too stupid or too weak to live?) 2. When all the people who want to adopt are overloaded with kids, when all foster care facilities are overflowing, and and the government does not want to raise kids in group homes, eliminating the excess children could be a final solution. I wonder what the long-term economics would be when AIs can raise children very cheaply. Would the children be cheap to raise and very productive, or would they be useless eaters overpopulating a crowded planet? I think contraception is a kinder solution. I would not put it past some authoritarian regime to demand they get to decide what unborn babies are incubated and which are aborted for the purpose of eugenics. 3. Maybe someone just wants to kill a kid? I see posts about wanting to get pregnant to have an abortion for the joy of killing a child on social media, but I have a hard time taking them seriously. I have known people who would take part in a human sacrifice for the fun of it if it was legal. I don't talk to them any more. I typed this wall of text, and never mentioned clone armies. I'm a failure.

waterheater 3y ago

I wrote an excessively detailed comment on the implications of an artificial wombs from a legal perspective in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37308675#37314083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37308675#37314083 TLDR: it's not as simple as just "fetus", but there is much disagreement around when a developing clump of cells becomes protected under the law.

RecycledEle 3y ago
In the post You link to, You say that in Georgia they define an unborn person as being in a womb, then You say an artificial womb would not apply. Why not? Is an artificial womb not a womb?
- waterheater 3y ago
  Obviously, this is just my opinion, but no, I believe it's possible that the Georgia definition may be exploited, particularly because the intent behind the law was to protect mothers (a natural person), not an artificial womb owned by a corporation (an artificial person).
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    I expect any law that defines a "womb" as being inside a woman will change once artificial wombs become possible.
    - waterheater 3y ago
      One can hope, though that's my main point in talking about it. The paradigm of artificial wombs will be a literal "brave new world". I wonder what the downstream effects will be when a company offers BaaS (Babies as a Service). Seems studying the present-day cloud may serve as an effective foil.
verisimi 3y ago
Perhaps, like many phones or cars, children of the future would be leased not owned, with full ownership (or at least a share of ownership) belonging to the corporation, state, etc. Further to this, there could be agreements that there would be an annual "service" of the child, with it being a requirement to have some ongoing medical treatment or gene therapy, that might be written into the terms of service. If any of that, at what point would the child 'own itself'? Does it ever? Will there be lifetime contracts?

jimbob45 3y ago

That was kind of my takeaway from this as well. They're no longer fetuses and these aren't wombs in any sense of the word. If these are wombs then everything else we currently use to promote the health of preterm births in the NICU would be "wombs" as well.

raffraffraff 3y ago

There is an interesting phenomenon in some (many?) philosophical schools where words are given too much power. It is as if they "are" the things that they describe. And yet, with all that magical power granted to words by academic philosophers, words are really just slippery labels that can be distorted on a mass scale quite quickly these days. And yet we still treat words like magic spells. We live in a world where saying that the meaning of a word has changed, somehow means that you have "changed reality", and everybody seems to march along saying the mantras. They forget that words are used in legal documents and in "common knowledge" inside our heads. I really wish that human language was strongly typed. You shouldn't be allowed to hijack a word for your own political ends. But to even suggest that the original concept or article deserves it's own distinct word puts you at risk of being accused of some thought crime. Why? Because that makes the incoming bait-and-switch easier to spot. The warping of the word is a magic spell, designed to manipulate reality. Edit: misspellings and ramblings

dragonwriter 3y ago
> I really wish that human language was strongly typed. I don’t think “strongly typed” even makes sense in reference to human language, except in the sense of grammar where words can only be used in the place where a the particular part of speech they are is called for, in which case formal writing is pretty close (though it responds to linguistic drift that results from informal language not being “strongly typed”.) What I think you mean is you wish that definitions of words were precise and fixed and that adherence to strict and literal use according to those precise, fixed definitions was universal and compulsory. Which, well, would be convenient for some things but really bad for others, and in any case is irrelevant because there is no way for it to happen. > But to even suggest that the original concept or article deserves it’s own distinct word puts you at risk of being accused of some thought crime. Does it? People make suggestions like that all the time, and while they are often disputed, its rarely about anything like “thought crime”.
Terr_ 3y ago
> I really wish that human language was strongly typed. You shouldn't be allowed to hijack a word According to my one true definition of "strongly typed" it already is--how dare you try to hijack those words. /s

mock-possum 3y ago

Yeah I wouldn’t have expected a fetus to only be called a fetus while it’s inside a human being. ‘Fetus’ is a stage of development, not a context or a location.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

No. I imagine the lawyer is erring on the side of amplifying the rights of the child (now somewhere between a foetus and a newborn) rather than diminish them.

RecycledEle 3y ago

Look up "Chloe Romanis, a biolawyer at Durham Law School, UK" and see what her bias is: Available for media contact about: Ethics: Abortion Law & Crime: Abortion English Law: Abortion Gender and law: Abortion Ethics: Reproductive Technologies Law & Crime: Reproductive Technologies https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-c-romanis/ https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-c-romanis/