A womb of his own

Although some feminists formerly saw utopian possibilities in reproductive technology, many now fear that the new technologies are turning women's bodies into test tubes. They feel that these technologies are designed less to help infertile women than to appease men's envy of women's reproductive power. The consequences of the new technologies for the psychology of women and children and the future creation of culture are open questions. Should the technologies succeed in taking reproduction out of the body altogether, it remains to be seen whether women will gain in freedom, or whether this will simply fulfill the age-old misogynistic fantasy of depriving women of their central place in procreation.