Mother, Machine, Messiah: Sci-Fi’s Obsession with Reproductive Control

Science fiction has always concerned itself with the future, but some of its most persistent anxieties centre on a deeply ancient theme: the female body as a vessel of hope, horror, and control. From Battlestar Galactica to Children of Men to Star Trek: Voyager, the genre has long used reproduction—and women—as narrative crucibles for existential questions about survival, legacy, and what it means to be human. In doing so, sci-fi often elevates its heroines to mythic status. But what is lost when women become symbols instead of subjects?

The Last Womb in the Universe

In Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, the world is gripped by a global infertility crisis. Women have inexplicably stopped conceiving, and humanity teeters on the brink of extinction. The plot ignites when a young refugee named Kee becomes pregnant, making her the most valuable person on the planet. But Kee’s importance isn’t about her agency—it’s about her biology. The future is quite literally inside her.

"As the sound of the baby’s cry reverberates through the war-torn building, the fighting stops. Soldiers stare in awe, as if witnessing a miracle," notes Kee in one of the film’s most haunting scenes. It's the Messiah complex, rebooted for dystopia.

Kee doesn’t get much character development. We know little about her desires, her fears, or how she feels about becoming the first mother in nearly two decades. She is important because she is fertile. She is special because she reproduces. That dynamic—the elevation of women to messianic figures purely because of their reproductive function—is both a celebration and a cage.

Cylons, Clones, and Controlled Evolution

Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica (2004) digs even deeper into these tensions. Here, reproductive control becomes literal war strategy. The humanoid Cylons, in their quest for evolution, cannot reproduce naturally. Their solution? Capturing and impregnating human women. The infamous storyline involving Cylon Number Six and the hybrid child Hera turns motherhood into both salvation and science experiment.

President Laura Roslin, dying of cancer and leading a ragged fleet, decrees a ban on abortion—not out of personal belief, but because the species might not survive without every potential child. "The survival of the human race outweighs the individual right to choose," she says, a line that reverberates uncomfortably in a post-Roe era.

What happens when women become nationalised property? When their bodies are seen as public infrastructure? Battlestar doesn’t flinch from these questions. But in elevating Hera as a half-Cylon messiah, the show leans hard into prophecy and destiny—once again turning a female body into a battleground for competing ideologies.

Janeway, Borg Babies, and the Biopolitics of the Delta Quadrant

Even in the supposedly utopian universe of Star Trek, these themes persist. In Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway finds herself repeatedly navigating the ethics of reproduction, often in contexts that strip away choice. From the forced impregnation of crew members by alien species, to the controversial decision to raise a Borg child (Seven of Nine), the ship becomes a floating case study in biopolitics.

Seven’s arc, in particular, is fraught with tension. Once a Borg drone, she’s reclaimed her humanity but not her autonomy. Her body was a machine, a tool of assimilation. When she begins to recover her identity, the question isn’t just "Who is she?" but "What can she be used for?" Science, strategy, salvation.

And it’s not just about pregnancy. It's about the ways women's bodies in sci-fi are perpetually surveilled, modified, weaponised or redeemed. They are incubators for the future, often without being asked.

Wives, Wombs, and Weaponised Faith

One of the most chilling portrayals of reproductive control comes not from space operas or dystopian futures, but from a society that feels all too plausible. The Handmaid's Tale, both Margaret Atwood's novel and the acclaimed television adaptation, turns fertility into state-enforced servitude. In Gilead, women are categorised by their reproductive utility, their names erased and their autonomy stolen. It is a brutal allegory of patriarchal control, but one grounded in real-world ideologies and histories. What makes it especially potent is not the extremity of its premise, but how recognisable its logic feels.

Where sci-fi often turns reproductive bodies into objects of scientific awe or philosophical dread, The Handmaid's Talestrips away the genre veneer and forces us to confront how easily such futures can become the present. The show doesn't offer high-concept metaphors or speculative tech; it offers a mirror. The mechanics of Gilead’s system—ritualised rape, enforced pregnancy, and state-sponsored child removal—aren’t inventions of fantasy, but reflections of historical and ongoing global realities.

What resonates most is how fertility becomes both weapon and weakness. In Gilead, a woman's ability to conceive makes her powerful and powerless in the same breath. She is both revered and reviled. Worshipped, then discarded. And unlike many sci-fi stories where escape is possible via rebellion, innovation or space flight, The Handmaid's Tale shows how systems of control entrench themselves not only in law but in language, ritual, and belief. It is science fiction by way of slow horror—and all the more terrifying for how little it has to exaggerate.

Between Myth and Meaning

What binds these stories together is not just their treatment of reproductive control, but the mythologising of women as cosmic wombs—miraculous when fertile, tragic when barren, dangerous when unpredictable.

The problem isn’t that these stories exist. Many are powerful, affecting, and thoughtful. The issue is when they become the default lens. When women’s value in science fiction is constantly refracted through their biological potential, we risk collapsing identity into utility.

As feminist theorist Shulamith Firestone once wrote, "The end goal of feminist revolution must be...not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally."

But in the genre most obsessed with transcending limits, the womb remains sacred. And sacralised bodies are rarely free.

What next?

Watch Never Let Me Go – A quietly devastating look at bodies used for biological ends, this adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel offers a haunting meditation on identity, purpose, and humanity.

Read Binti by Nnedi Okorafor – A powerful novella about a young woman who leaves her home to pursue knowledge and is transformed in body and spirit, challenging traditional ideas of identity, choice, and destiny.

Listen to Flash Forward’s episode “Womb Raiders” – Explores speculative futures involving artificial wombs, reproductive tech, and who gets to decide what reproduction looks like.