Making babies has become news these days. With fertility rates dropping in most parts of the world, reproduction has now come under close scrutiny.
It has become a subject of public debate, political anxiety, and technological innovation. While politicians weigh in on why women are having fewer children, fertility clinics seem to be turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to improve in vitro fertilisation (IVF) outcomes.
As we watch populations dwindling suddenly in once over-populated countries like China, Korea, and Japan, the alarm bells start ringing in India, even though about 65% of its people are currently under the age of 35.
A population is considered below replacement level when the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) drops below 2.1 children per woman. Most states in India have now reached this point. In fact, India’s average TFR in 2024 was 1.9. Only six states still have higher TFRs, with Bihar topping the list.
But, with so many young people around, won't India's population pick up and continue to grow? However, that doesn’t seem to be happening in countries that have already reached critical levels. In our neighbouring countries like Korea and Japan, for example, the plummeting birth rates have left them struggling to cope with an aging population and hardly any youngsters.
According to the experts, India is currently in a demographic phase where there is a large working age population. Economists call this the demographic dividend.
Our population may peak at around 1.7 billion between 2050 and 2060 before beginning to decline. A large young population also translates into a large population in the child bearing age. So, there is a population momentum, which means even if couples have a limited number of children, the population will continue to grow till it peaks and in a couple of decades when the children of today grow up.
Amidst all this, wombs are now in focus again. Male politicians, for instance, are urging women to reproduce more. But as women are getting better education and more personal autonomy, they choose to prioritise quality of living over family size.
There are also concerns of infertility among the young population. And then there is AI. Can it have any role to play in all this?
Fertility clinics that have been around for a few decades now are picking up business as more couples struggle with childlessness. I wrote my book Baby Makers more than 10 years ago when the IVF and surrogacy wave was still in its infancy. There were quite a few fly-by-night clinics then with fake embryologists and untrained gynaecologists who cheated those desperate couples. Since DNA testing was also yet to take root here, couples were given wrong embryos, sometimes by mistake and sometimes deliberately, if the couples own embryos were non-viable.
Today, AI can help to streamline IVF procedures and also ensure there are no such mix-ups.
IVF can be very tricky. The genetic material supplied by the parents has to be carefully screened, the eggs and semen tested for their viability, especially for older couples and the woman has to take hormone injections to make sure that her womb does not reject the embryo. After IVF is done, the embryologist has to pick out the best embryos and carefully insert them into the womb.
The embryos are also screened for genetic diseases. AI helps embryologists to identify and pick the most promising embryos by analysing their images, cell division patterns, and growth rates. It also helps evaluate the sperm count and motility, and examines the eggs to assess their potential.
As of now, AI is only being used as a tool to perform certain tasks. But the day may not be far off when there are automated IVF labs where genetic screening is also done.
In the last chapter of Baby Makers, I had written about an almost sci-fi-like futuristic scenario where artificial wombs would gestate human babies. That scenario is still very far off, though it could ultimately happen.
The Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale is a chilling fantasy story of a dystopian future when many women have lost their fertility and are wives of rich and powerful men. Their “hand maidens” are women with proven fertility who are forced to have sex with powerful men and produce children for them.
Margret Atwood wrote this in 1985 when AI was not yet in the picture and fertility treatment was still in its infancy. Meanwhile we have at least 25–30 years to go before we face the crossroads, and who knows how much the world would have changed by then.
Gita Aravamudan is a journalist and the author of Baby Makers: The Story of Indian Surrogacy.
Views expressed are the author's own.
