The writer and cultural journalist Álvaro Colomer (born 1973 in Barcelona) has just published the contemplative essay In Vitro (Debate, 2026), a first‑person account of the processes of in vitro fertilization, in which he also reveals the drive among men to create life outside the uterus, while examining, from a cultural perspective, how the female body has long been a battlefield, a site of domination and a territory of conquest for the creation of life and how, over the centuries, it has become a space detached from women’s will.
With Álvaro Colomer we discuss the role of men as onlookers in the in vitro fertilization processes, the medical violence exercised upon women’s bodies, and how, throughout human history, the emergence and conceptualization of new life has been shaped; drawing on philosophy, art, religion, literature, and myths.
To conclude, Colomer shares his view on the possibility of a future (and rather plausible) creation of extrauterine life, that is: without the participation of women’s bodies, and who such a practice might benefit, as well as the ethical and legal implications involved.