This Movie Gives Me Nightmares

In Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, Brave New World, people have no parents. They are gestated inside test tubes in factory-like settings where their development is monitored and controlled by a state agency. If Huxley had been writing horror instead of sci-fi, he might have dismissed the test tubes and instead described a society in which corpses are repurposed as incubators.

Such a ghastly scenario is too gruesome for most horror writers. Even Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, only envisioned dead bodies being rebuilt with spare parts so that they could be brought back to life.

In recent times, there have been occasional suggestions from researchers or politicians that brain-dead women or women in persistent vegetative states could be used as surrogates, or "fetal containers" for couples using IVF, or for fetuses transferred from women seeking abortions.

Now think about zombies.

Horror movies and TV shows portray zombies as angry dead people who have come to life and relentlessly attack the living, often with an appetite for brains. But the original zombies were less spectacular. They were dead people reanimated through voodoo, who were used as slaves.

It's happening now. Without consent, and against the family's wishes, a brain-dead woman is being used to incubate a fetus. If this bizarre procedure results in a live birth, there is a good chance the baby will face serious medical problems and disabilities. But that won't stop the mad scientists from trying it again.

What we are seeing is the zombification of women's bodies.

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