The EctoLife Artificial Womb Facility envisages a controversial new way to be pregnant, with the baby growing in an idealized, but completely inhuman environment: transparent “growth pods” arranged by their hundreds in human baby farming operations.

To be clear from the outset: this is just a concept at this stage, the brainchild of Berlin-based “producer, filmmaker and science communicator” Hashem Al-Ghaili. There are no immediate plans to build an EctoLife facility, this is merely a piece of science fiction Al-Ghaili has extrapolated from the current state of fertility research.

It’s designed to start a conversation and make an argument for a new model of parenthood that Al-Ghaili believes will be possible within years, and widespread within decades.