Future fertility rates are going to begin to be effected in 30 years by artificial wombs, already experimentally used on calves.
See this video from 5 years ago:
And a complete list of YouTube videos on artificial wombs may be found here:
There's only about 20 weeks in human development that needs to be filled in with artificial wombs. We can already grow an embryo in a Petri dish for up to a month and incubators work more-or-less well from 6.5 months forward; the incubators could be replaced by more reliable artificial wombs if they became available at the earlier stages. If they are available at earlier stages, they will automatically be more effective in months 6-9 of gestation, which in turn will accelerate their development in the near future as a medical right. By 5-10 years from now, they will be in limited commercial use in countries with low fertility, for couples with individual fertility problems or genetic conditions that will also be correctable at the same time as using artificial wombs. Transgender women will demand the right to have children using external support too.In China, Japan, and even some European countries that don't have/want to, use immigration to solve demographic collapse, having Artificial Gestation (AG, as it may come to be called, shorthand), will be seen as not dystopian, but as a human, feminist, right. Pregnancy still kills or injures millions of women a year, even in advanced countries. It also robs women of productive periods, sometimes years. This woman said she would use an artificial womb if her fertility condition required it (she discovered her condition while, ironically, filming this video on artificial wombs):
Low birthrate countries facing pension collapses due to high numbers of older people - whether they are "old" at 65 or 85 - will have their own reasons for encouraging healthy, possibly genetically enhanced, babies to be born via AG.
Towards the end of the century, burgeoning growth in Mars' and Moons' cities will use artificial wombs in gravity assisted environments to boost population without having to carry people long distances in expensive spacecraft.
The human species will look significantly different at the end of this century than it did at the beginning, and will have genetic and developmental enhancements that place rich countries with AG technology at a significant advantage over poorer, more "natural" gestation option countries only. As these advantaged children progress more rapidly and easily through the education system, poorer countries will begin to demand access to AG methods + genetic "correction" or even enhancement.
These developments will dovetail with developments at the other end of life via Life Extension technologies, which may come even earlier, in 5-15 years for an extra 10-15 years of life and, more importantly, increased healthspan. But that is a subject for a future article, already a richly covered topic: .youtube.com/results?search_query=longevity
