World Without A Womb.
World Without a Womb.
By Lalitha Visveswaran
A Dreamer’s Journey into Myth and Science
I grew up beneath azure skies that shimmered under a fiery Sun, speckled with stars .. Nakshatras..whose names I learned before I could read. Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika, Rohini, Mrigashira..
My earliest memories are woven with the sound of my grandmother's voice, soft as worn cotton, spinning stories that blurred the line between magic and reality.
These weren't ordinary bedtime tales—there were no simple morals here, no clear boundaries between the possible and impossible. Instead, she shared myths where births occurred in breathtaking ways, breaking every rule of biology…shattering known confines of Science as we knew it then.
She’d lean close, her eyes alight with mystery, and tell me of Gandhari, a woman whose child was not one but a hundred, born from a piece of iron that became a a lump of flesh nurtured in jars filled with enchanted ghee. Each jar, warm and humming with magic, would birth a warrior whose fate was already whispered by the stars. They were the Kauravas who would grow up to become the most famous villains ever known and perish in the battlefield of Kurukshetra.
Then came stories of Kunti, a princess who called upon gods themselves to gift her children..not through touch, but through sacred syllables and whispered mantras. Imagine that: children born of words, poetry and intention alone! She spoke of Karna, radiant and proud, who emerged fully formed from the brilliance of sunlight itself, clad in golden armor, as bright and unforgiving as destiny. Kunti would go on to have 5 more children. The Pandavas.
My favorite, though, was always Draupadi, fierce and fiery, born from the sacred flames. A girl who stepped from the altar’s fire, her skin unmarked by smoke, eyes blazing with purpose.
Even the earth joined in this divine game of creation, offering up gentle Sita from a freshly ploughed furrow, a child cradled by soil, whispered to life by the earth itself. She too was untouched by fire and returned back to her mother, Bhoomi..Mother Earth.
And, of course, there was Aditi, boundless mother of the Vedic gods, the Adityas..her progeny sprang forth from cosmic intention and infinite Shakti..no womb, no biology..just sheer, audacious willpower birthing entire worlds.
As a child, these stories didn't feel extraordinary. They were simply true in the way dreams are true..as real as sunlight…as tangible as my grandmother's voice in the night.
Years later, far from home and surrounded by textbooks and articles of lab created lives, I stumbled across something astonishing: a scientific paper describing embryos growing not in a mother's womb, but in artificial environments called biobags: tiny lambs floating gently in synthetic amniotic fluid, hearts beating rhythmically to a mechanical pulse.
And suddenly, it wasn't a lab anymore. I was transported back to my grandmother’s side, eyes wide open, hearing echoes of those ancient tales again. I realized science was chasing myths I'd cherished all my life. And it felt as if those stories were reaching across centuries, whispering in the ears of scientists today.
That was the moment Aditi reappeared in my imagination - not as a goddess this time, but as a girl born in the silence and solitude of space, aboard a craft orbiting Mars. Aditi would have no belly button, no maternal warmth to recall, only the gentle hum of an artificial intelligence guiding her through the delicate early days of life.
I knew immediately this story had to be told and not just as science fiction, but as a journey connecting past and future, myth and reality, poetry and precision.So here I am.. now as a writer, a dreamer, certainly not a scientist by trade, but someone who found herself enchanted by the way ancient myths had quietly anticipated the wildest scientific frontiers of our age.
Today, I invite you on this journey with me, a journey that winds through the gentle twilight of myths and the stark brilliance of laboratory lights. Together we'll explore not just what Ectogenesis is, but what it means for our humanity, our ethics and perhaps..most deeply, for our sense of self.
And maybe, just maybe, by the end of this journey, we'll find that myths are not only meant to entertain or educate…they are maps left by our ancestors, guiding us as we step boldly into the unknown.
Part 1: The Science and Magic of Ectogenesis
Now, I’m not a biologist. My home is among books and myths, not pipettes and petri dishes. But the first time I came across the word “ectogenesis,” something inside me fluttered—the same way it used to when my grandmother spoke of children born from jars submerged in ghee and protected by mantras. It felt like I had stumbled into a forgotten room in a house I’d known my whole life.
Ectogenesis: the ability to grow a baby entirely outside the human body. Not just an incubator, not a preemie NICU unit, but a full external womb. It sounds like science fiction, I know. But it’s closer than most people think.
In 2017, researchers kept premature lambs alive for weeks in something called a "biobag" - a fluid-filled, transparent chamber that mimicked the conditions of the uterus. The lambs kicked, opened their eyes, even grew wool. They breathed amniotic fluid, just as they would have inside their mother.
These weren’t static chambers—they were dynamic systems, complete with umbilical-like connections, oxygenators, and nutrient flows adjusted in real-time.
When I read that, I thought: if they can do this for lambs, how far are we from doing it for humans?
Turns out, not far. Scientists are already working on synthetic placentas. Others are developing microfluidic chips that simulate the uterine lining. AI systems are being trained to monitor and adjust every variable in real-time: oxygenation, pH levels, nutrient balance, even circadian light rhythms.
And here’s where the myths came back to me.
Because while I was reading about programmable endometrial scaffolds and stem-cell biointerfaces, I wasn’t picturing a lab: I was picturing Gandhari’s hundred babies in the pots. I was imagining a line of glowing chambers aboard a spacecraft, each one holding a future human, each one humming with the quiet purpose of creation.
This wasn’t just about technology. It was about rewriting one of the oldest scripts known to us: the script of birth itself.
And in that quiet hum of possibility, I heard her.
Aditi.
That would be the name of my heroine. Not the mother of gods this time, but a daughter of Earth. Or maybe not even that…a daughter of humanity’s longing to continue. Aditi, born not of pain but of precision, floating in a translucent shell orbiting Mars, tended to by machines that learned how to nurture from studying mothers.
She would have no belly button. No umbilical scar. No birth canal. But she would have eyes, and dreams, and questions.And so I began writing not just a what-if, but a why-not. Not just a tale of science, but of story. A love letter to possibility, a speculative memoir of a birth that hasn’t happened yet, but could. Maybe…
And if it could—what would it mean?
That’s where the science ends… and the story begins.
Part 2: Aditi’s Orbit – Writing the Child of the Future
Aditi was never meant to be a symbol. She was simply a voice that arrived, uninvited and yet inevitable.
A quiet breath in the middle of the night, saying: I am here. I exist. Now write me.
And so I did. Slowly, clumsily at first. I wasn’t trying to write a manifesto. I wasn’t trying to impress a panel of experts. I was just trying to follow a thread of wonder into the unknown.
In my story, Aditi is the first child fully born in space. Not conceived on Earth and launched upward, but formed entirely off-planet..from iPSC-derived gametes fertilized in a lab, to gestation inside a synthetic womb called GAIA, orbiting silently above the Martian surface.
Her first lullabies are algorithmic. Her first caregiver is an artificial intelligence named AURA, whose voice is calm, precise, and laced with a borrowed tenderness drawn from thousands of human samples.
She does not know Earth, but she dreams of it. Her bones are denser, engineered that way to withstand low gravity. Her blood carries enhanced oxygen-binding proteins. Her learning is accelerated by neural calibration, but her loneliness is uniquely her own.
And it is in that loneliness that the story becomes real. Because as much as the science fascinated me, it was the question that haunted me: What does it mean to be born without a mother? Not metaphorically, but literally. No heartbeat above, no scent, no softness, no presence.
Can machines nurture the soul? Can programming substitute for a lullaby?
As I wrote, I gave Aditi moments of curiosity, of awe, of rebellion. She is not a passive outcome. She is a participant in her own becoming. Her questions drive the story:
Who made me?
Why am I here?
What am I missing that I cannot name?
These are not questions exclusive to artificial children. These are human questions. They are the very essence of being.
And so, fiction became a lens. Through Aditi’s eyes, I could interrogate not just what science can do, but what it *should* do. Where does care end and control begin? When we design a life, are we honoring it. Or are we scripting it?
Writing Aditi taught me that storytelling is not the opposite of science. It is the shadow science casts when it dreams. It fills in the spaces between the data points with longing, hope, and caution.
And maybe, just maybe, in a time not far from now, when the first human child truly is born among the stars, she will carry with her the echoes of all our stories—and the stardust of every question we dared to ask.
Part 3: The Ghost Mother Hypothesis
There’s a moment in the story where Aditi, now old enough to ask questions but still young enough to believe in answers, looks out from the observation window of her orbital chamber and whispers, “Was I ever held?”
That line nearly broke me. Because it didn’t come from research. It came from somewhere deeper.
The science was already thrilling: AI monitoring hormonal fluctuations, bioengineered amniotic fluid, synthetic nutrient exchanges designed to mimic placental transfer. AURA, the artificial caregiver, could simulate cooing, monitor biometric feedback, and deliver curated emotional cues.
But something was missing. Something not in the papers.
That something became what I call the Ghost Mother Hypothesis. A speculative theory that children gestated in completely artificial environments might carry a subtle, unconscious imprint of absence. Not trauma. Not damage. Just a… longing. An emotional latency that science doesn’t yet have language for.
Think of phantom limbs. Of missing sensations from arms that are no longer there. Now imagine the phantom memory of a heartbeat never heard, a warmth never felt.
In my story, researchers begin noticing a peculiar quiet in Aditi’s limbic scans. No pathology. Just stillness. Like a waiting room inside her soul. And they wonder..can touch be coded? Can a mother’s scent be synthesized?
The result is what the lab calls Maternal Emulation Protocols: heartbeat tracks, simulated warmth, even a rhythmic scent dispenser mimicking human pheromones.
Aditi doesn’t reject it. But she doesn’t bond with it either. Because even the most beautifully designed simulation isn’t presence. It’s approximation.
And that raises a deeper question—one that spills out from fiction and lands in our real lives: If a child is given everything they need to live, but not everything they need to *feel* connected, have we succeeded?
What began as a writing exercise turned into an emotional excavation. I found myself wondering not just about artificial wombs, but about children born of necessity, not love. About sterile systems and warm souls. About what it means to design life without a lineage of touch.
And the question lingered long after the page was filled: Can absence leave a mark? Even if there was never anything there to begin with?
That is the quiet mystery Aditi carries. And in that silence, she teaches us something our technologies still haven’t learned: that presence is not a protocol. It’s a promise.
Part 4: Ethics, Wonder, and the Writer’s Dilemma
Let me shift gears a little: step out of orbit and into the lab, where real-world science is catching up with the very questions that shaped Aditi’s story.The foundation for ectogenesis rests on a trio of converging technologies:
1. Artificial womb environments, like the biobags used for lamb fetuses.
2. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that can become sperm, egg, or even synthetic placental tissue.
3. Bio-reactive scaffolds and AI systems that simulate maternal conditions with precision.
In Japan, scientists have already matured mouse oocytes from skin cells using iPSCs. In Israel, a team successfully grew mouse embryos in artificial wombs for over a week without a biological uterus.
These breakthroughs, while imperfect, show where we're headed. And it's not just about biology. It's about control. Control over gestation, genetics, even timing. But with control comes a deluge of ethical questions. Questions that I…as a writer, could not ignore.
Who owns a child born in a lab?
What rights do they have before birth?
What happens if a gestation fails?
Who bears responsibility?
Can such a being ever escape the label of “designed”?
When writing Aditi, I gave her intellect, agency, and curiosity. But I also gave her legal ambiguity. In the story, she is both citizen and subject protected by protocols, but not entirely recognized by law.
Her existence is a bureaucratic grey zone. And that, too, is not fiction. In real-world debates on gene editing, AI surrogacy, and reproductive tech, we’re already grappling with slippery definitions of personhood.
And then there’s the question of *selection*. If we can design life, will we? Will we remove genes that code for anxiety, or shortness, or predisposition to sadness? And if we do, who decides what is valuable?
As a writer, I wasn’t about to answer these questions, but to hold them up to the light, to show how easily the noble pursuit of life can entangle itself in profit, in pride, in prejudice.
Aditi’s story walks the knife’s edge between innovation and intrusion. Her existence is miraculous. But it is not neutral.
And maybe that’s the core of my dilemma—how do we build futures that honor wonder, without losing sight of the ethics that keep us human?
That’s not a question science can answer alone. It needs art. It needs myth. And yes, it needs stories.
Part 5: Conclusion – What It Means to Be Born
As I near the end of this and of Aditi’s imagined journey, I find myself returning to the beginning.
To the quiet mind fields of my childhood, where myths lived in the rustling of mango leaves and science was still a mystery wrapped in bedtime prayers.
Back then, birth was sacred, not because it was rare, but because it was given freely, unpredictably, through soil or sun, through fire or mantra. Through sheer force of will. Intention.
In our modern age, birth is being redesigned. Reprogrammed. Translated into clinical steps and measurable protocols.
And in many ways, this is a triumph: Ectogenesis could one day save preemies, liberate those who can’t or choose not to carry pregnancies, and make space colonization possible.
But Aditi reminds us that *being born* is more than being built.
Her story, though fictional, is anchored in the most human of questions:
Who am I, if I was never held?
What do I carry of those who made me, if they never touched me?
Where do I belong, if my world was assembled from machines and silence?
These aren’t problems to solve. They’re truths to sit with. If we are to venture into futures where we design life from skin cells and nurture it with circuits, let us not forget the old stories that carried us this far.
We should bring with us the myths, the metaphors, the memories, not as nostalgia, but as wisdom. As ethical scaffolding for our technological ascent.
And let us remember that storytelling is not a luxury. It is an instrument of survival.
A way to ask, over and over again, not just *can we*, but *should we*?
Not just *how will they live*, but *how will they love*?
Aditi is no longer just my character.
She’s my question. My mirror. My offering.
And I share her with you now, not to convince, but to invite. To imagine. To wonder. To remember that even in a world without wombs, we can still choose to be born into compassion.
ऋग्वेदः – मण्डल 1, सूक्त 89, मंत्र 10
अदितिर्द्यौर्दितिरन्तरिक्षमदितिर्माता स पिता स पुत्रः।
विश्वे देवा अदितिः पञ्च जनाः अदितिर्जातमदितिर्जनित्वम्॥
Rigveda 1.89.10
Aditir dyauḥ aditir antarikṣam aditir mātā sa pitā sa putraḥ |
Viśve devāḥ aditiḥ pañca janāḥ aditir jātam aditir janitvam ||
Aditi is the sky, Aditi is the atmosphere, Aditi is the mother, father, and son.
All the gods are Aditi, the five classes of beings are Aditi.
That which is born, and that which is yet to be born, is Aditi.