"In the Brave New World, erotic sexual activity is encouraged and freely practised but completely divorced from the process of reproduction. Huxley wrote his novel in 1932, before the contraceptive pill had arrived. By the 1970s, however, sex and reproduction had branched into two separate realms, thanks, in large part, to the pill. It is also interesting to note that the pill made its debut at about the same time that researchers first began to use artificial insemination on a wide scale. While the pill revolutionised sex, removing it from the process of reproduction, artificial insemination, then later in vitro fertilisation, egg donation, surrogacy and, soon, cloning further separate the components of reproduction from the biological act of mating. The artificial womb completes the process. "

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