What are the ethical, legal, and social debates surrounding artificial womb technology? A scoping review protocol

Ectogenesis-the development of the fetus outside the human uterus-is generally attributed to British scientist J.B.S. Haldane as early as 1924. Although efforts to develop artificial womb technology have seen limited success, a number of recent advances suggest that human clinical trials may become possible. The objective of this scoping review is to identify the ethical, legal, and social debates that have emerged regarding the future prospects of artificial womb technology.

We will use a pre-defined five-step framework to guide this scoping review. Our primary research question is: "What are the ethical, legal, and social debates surrounding AWT?" We will identify relevant peer-reviewed studies in which the full text is in English from electronic databases including Scopus, PubMed, JSTOR, Proquest, Medline, LexisNexis, Westlaw, HeinOnline, and DOAJ. We will employ a two-stage process to identify relevant articles by (1) searching for articles in databases using keywords and 2) conducting a hand search of the reference lists of all retrieved articles to find any relevant sources not indexed by these databases or keywords. Two independent reviewers will select articles by screening titles/abstracts followed by a full-text appraisal using standardized inclusion criteria. We will extract and synthesize the data and develop a narrative summary with accompanying tables and figures. The final output will adhere to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Extension for Scoping Reviews checklist.

The scoping review will document evidence and gaps in the evidence of key areas of focus for academics, clinicians, scientists, legislators, and public policy decision-makers as they consider how to move forward with artificial womb technology. Given the novelty of this technology, we anticipate that we will identify significant gaps that may inform future research and promote a proactive approach to the modernization of legislation, regulatory frameworks, and existing policies and guidelines that may govern this technology.

We have registered this scoping review protocol with OSF Registries: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/D8Q96 .