Baby Factory: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Take the female body. Now, instead of visualizing a human being, with all the markings of independent thought and higher intelligence, visualize an organic device that can be used to create babies. This is no doubt rather creepy (particularly for our female viewers), but sometimes this is because it is believed to be necessary, to deal with a heavily depleted race of species. On the other hand, this trope can just as easily be engaged in for the sake of evil. Babies can be sold for delicious, delicious profit. Or alternatively, [[Eats Babies|they're just delicious]]. You can guess what a sufficiently evil character will do from this point.

* In ''Hexwood'' by [[Diana Wynne Jones]], the corrupt and oppressive intergalactic government enforces its will by means of psychic assassins called Servants. They get more Servants by picking women with strong psychic abilities to breed to the current Servant and giving them drugs so that they have as many babies as possible (the women, naturally, get no choice in this matter). The children are taken away as soon as they're born, and... well, no one knows what happens to the mother after that.

* Frank Herbert's ''Hellstrom's Hive''. The insect like humans of the Hive have a practice of slicing off most of the body above the waist and below the knees and using the remainder for breeding purposes.

* In Lois Lowry's ''[[The Giver]]'', girls are selected at the age of twelve to begin training as Birthmothers, producing offspring for the Community that are immediately taken away. Once they meet their quota, Birthmothers spend the rest of their lives as factory labourers.

* In [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[Spectrum]]'', a race of [[Lizard Folk]] often travel with four-legged pets. It turns out these are their females who have lost their sentience as a result of a radical evolutionary change caused by an ancient cataclysm.

 

== [[Live Action Television]] ==

** The illogic of the trope being applied in this situation was deconstructed in a ''[[Starfleet Corps of Engineers]]'' novella that essentially spends the entire story asking "What were the ''Enterprise'' crew ''thinking''?"

*** The in-show explanation is that neither colony has enough genetic diversity on its own to survive, though there's no reason they couldn't just open immigration from the Federation.

** The Cromags have to engage in this trope because their females, due to [[Depopulation Bomb|some disease or something]], can't effectively propagate the race. Main character Wade ends up as one, and that's the last we hear of her until season five, where we find she and other humans are being used to power new sliding technology.

* The Cylon 'farms' on the occupied Colonies in ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]''.

* An episode of [[Earth: Final Conflict]] indicates that the Taelons were using human clones and the cover of an infertility clinic to make [[Half Human Hybrids]]. It also stated that Sandoval was also tinkering with the results as well.

 

== [[Music]] ==