U.S. Transhumanist Party remains neutral on Nevada abortion rights amendment, citing artificial gestation

U.S. Transhumanist Party remains neutral on Nevada abortion rights amendment, citing artificial gestation

On October 30, 2026, the U.S. Transhumanist Party and the Nevada Transhumanist Party reaffirmed their 2024 position. Both parties left their members free to decide how to vote on enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution. Commenters on the statement challenged this neutrality, citing the party’s support for bodily autonomy.

The amendment would enshrine abortion rights in the Nevada Constitution. These rights are currently protected by state law, which allows abortion up to 24 weeks and later when necessary to preserve the pregnant person’s life or health. The amendment requires voter approval in two consecutive elections; voters first approved it in 2024.

The parties aim to reconcile a woman’s freedom to end a pregnancy with preserving the life of the fetus. They propose developing ectogenesis: gestation outside the body in an artificial environment that supplies the fetus with oxygen and nutrients. Under their proposal, a woman could end her pregnancy while the fetus continued to develop outside her body.

Ectogenesis research received support from 94 of 100 participants in a 2019–2020 party vote. The statement’s authors also explain their current neutrality as an effort to bring together people with different views on abortion.

Commenter Nicholas Starr objected:

“The party is not neutral on abortion.”

He cited the platform’s section on morphological freedom, the right to control one’s own body and changes to it. This provision explicitly protects reproductive choice. Starr argued that the statement’s authors had sidestepped this provision of the platform.

U.S. Transhumanist Party Chairman Gennady Stolyarov II pointed to another provision in the same section: this freedom is subject to a prohibition on directly harming others without their consent. He explained that, for someone who regards a fetus as having rights, a procedure that causes fetal death violates that provision. On the status of the fetus, Stolyarov wrote:

“This was deliberately left open to interpretation.”

People with opposing views on fetal rights can accept the same platform and belong to the same party.

In a 2020 essay, reproductive law researcher Claire Horn argues that artificial gestation must be voluntary. In her view, requiring the removal of a fetus for transfer to a device would deprive a person of the ability to end a pregnancy on their own terms. She links freedom of choice to access to medical care and support, whether a person ends or continues a pregnancy. Horn stresses that artificial gestation requires people to keep the device functioning, and that the child will need care after birth. She asks who will pay for gestation and take responsibility for caring for the fetus and child if both genetic parents decline that responsibility.