An IVF petri dish sustains newly fertilized embryos for nearly a week. On the other end of the pregnancy journey, incubation can stand in for a mother's womb as early as five and a half months into gestation. But there is no medical substitute for the intervening time in which the uterus protects and nurtures life - not yet, anyway. This film examines the very real possibility that technology will one day offer a comprehensive surrogate for natural uterine development. Beginning with biologist and philosopher Henri Atlan, who explains the thinking behind his groundbreaking book The Artificial Uterus, the program also features Weill Cornell Medical College researcher Dr. Helen Hung Ching Liu, who performed controversial uterus-replacement tests on mice but stopped short of human experimentation; neurobiologist Yehezkel Ben-Ari, who describes his research into brain structure and what it suggests about the mother-child bond during pregnancy; and anthropologist Francoise Heritier, who considers how human society and male-female roles might change if the synthetic womb becomes a reality.