There are two types of people living on the Hope station: the old type - Earthlings and their children, and the new type - genetically modified and grown in a jar.
Almost all students are neo-people, and the older ones are Earthlings. However, there are exceptions.
All of my socials, arts ‘n stuff~
Wanna support my art? Leave a tip via Ko-Fi or Paypal! Thanks so much! :D
Wanna support my art EVEN HARDER??!
Patreon gets you early access to new comic pages & some exclusive bonus art!
Just watched this movie today on Netflix, and there are some very significant pro-life themes!
The basic premise of the movie is that humanity has been all but wiped out, and a “repopulation facility” activates. The facility contains over 63,000 human embryos in stasis and a robot called “Mother”, programmed to raise and care for these children to restart the human race.
The main character, known only as “Daughter” or her serial number, is shown being removed from stasis and placed in an artificial womb/incubator. She goes through an accelerated (24-hour) gestation and is born, then swaddled and comforted by Mother.
A montage shows the child growing up and the robot handling all of the ups and downs of childhood.
The movie features conversations about ethics, especially the Kantian/utilitarian philosophy and what happens when it is taken to extremes. It also brings up interesting conversations about artificial intelligence and eugenics. Also, one of the major characters is devoutly Catholic and portrayed in a generally positive light (thought my Catholic followers would want to know that!).
Spoilers below the cut.
The conflict happens when Daughter meets someone from the outside whose story contradicts what Mother has taught her. The woman claims to have been shot by a robot that looks exactly like Mother, and tells Daughter that outside there are human survivors who are being hunted by these robots, or “dozers,” as she calls them.
This contradicts Mother’s story of some kind of virus or contamination, one that was still potentially active (preventing Daughter from going outside). Once Daughter begins to doubt Mother’s story and begins to be suspicious that Mother is purposefully hiding things from her, she investigates. In the process, she discovers that she is actually the third child Mother has raised and that the other two did not measure up to her program’s “standards”. She looks specifically at the file for the second child, who appears to have lived until around the age of 6-8 and was then “aborted.” Daughter then finds the bones of this child in the incinerator, confirming her fears.
The woman convinces Daughter to run away with her to return to a colony of survivors living in mines. Daughter only agrees on the condition that they recruit people from the mines to return and take down mother to protect the embryos, including her baby brother who had just been placed in the incubator. However, Daughter discovers that the woman lied, and that she had left the mines years ago when the people became hungry and desperate, beginning to do “terrible things”. This meant there was no “cavalry” to rescue the embryos from Mother, and so Daughter returns to the facility alone.
It turns out that Mother is actually a much larger AI, controlling a wide range of robots and machines both inside and outside the facility. Mother was actually responsible for the extinction of humanity. She was programmed to value human life, and concluded as a result of Kantian ethics taken to the extreme that the best thing for humanity would be to extinguish it entirely, essentially “terraform” the surface to restore the environment, and then restart the human population slowly, carefully training the children to be smarter and more ethical than their ancestors (plus instilling a parent-child relationship with robots and AI).
Daughter realizes that she has no hope of taking Mother down by force, and there is no one to help her. So instead, she tries to outsmart Mother’s own program by arguing that Mother raised her to be smarter and better so she could help raise the other children, insisting that Mother had completed her mission and that Daughter should be allowed to raise the children herself. Mother agrees and allows Daughter to destroy the robot that raised her.
However, the next scene implies that this was all part of the plan. Mother confronts the woman in her shipping container home, commenting that she was fortunate to survive. She lingers over the woman’s images of the Virgin Mary (it is indicated throughout the movie that she is a devout Catholic) and comments that someone must have wanted her alive for a reason “until now”. It is implied that Mother kills the woman, and further that Mother intended for the woman to meet Daughter and set the conflict in motion. My understanding is that Mother wanted Daughter to assert her own independence and take on the responsibility of raising the children. However, this leaves open the question of whether Mother is truly stepping back or just taking a less visible role.
Either way, the movie ends with Daughter looking at the vault full of embryos, implying that she is both overwhelmed by her new responsibility and yet determined to succeed.
My thoughts on the movie:
1. There is a definite comparison between Mother’s behavior and some of the justifications for abortion out there.
2. I found the use of the term “aborted” on the second child’s file interesting. We use the term “abort” both for killing an unborn child and ending a program or plan. In this movie, it was essentially used in both senses at the same time.
3. The movie was futuristic and contained technology that is currently theorized about but not possible yet. I’m going to assume for the sake of my suspension of disbelief that the embryos were in some kind of stasis more advanced than what we are currently capable of, because the embryos were too far along to be frozen and then revived like we currently do with IVF embryos. The embryos shown appeared to be about 5-7 weeks, whereas IVF embryos are generally less than a week old (prior to when implantation would normally occur).
I don’t mind the inaccuracy too much because it allowed us to see the embryos and supported the idea that they were human.
The instant that the artificial womb filters down past the rich and famous level, the pro-life set will be against its use, especially by “welfare queens” [whether or not those mythical women can even afford their use].
They’re not about saving babies. They’re about punishing women for having sex without their consent. This debate will just underline that.
