Tech firms are currently working to create “artificial wombs”, says Katherine Boyle on Substack: a type of “Ziploc bag” in which you can grow a baby, so that women don’t have to undergo childbirth. The logic that drives this kind of innovation reflects a broader cultural consensus: that eradicating pain should be the “common goal of government, technology, medicine and science”. This “war on suffering” began with two policy changes, made the same week in January 1973: the Supreme Court passed Roe v Wade, ending laws requiring pregnant women to give birth, and President Nixon announced the end of conscription. It was the first time American men and women were “given the option to forgo these once-universal forms of sacrifice”.