The World Economic Forum didn’t ban natural conception in favor of lab-grown babies

Does the World Economic Forum have the power to ban the human race from procreating? No. 

Nevertheless, a recent blog post headline proclaimed: "WEF bans natural conception: all babies must be lab-grown by 2030." 

An Instagram post sharing a screenshot of this headline was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The blog post itself, published June 8 on a site called The People’s Voice, provides no evidence to support the headline’s claim. 

Rather, it appears to show a doctored tweet from the World Economic Forum’s account proclaiming that "natural births are outdated discriminatory acts of violence" (we found no such tweet nor evidence one ever existed) and misreports actual news. 

"To perpetrate this crime against humanity," the blog says, "the WEF have been developing artificial wombs which will be able to develop a fetus outside of a mother’s body." 

The blog links to a May 2017 post on the World Economic Forum’s website about artificial wombs. But the post describes Philadelphia physicians developing synthetic wombs that could help premature newborns — not the World Economic Forum developing such wombs to replace natural births. 

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We found no news reports or other credible evidence to corroborate the claim that the World Economic Forum is trying to ban natural conception. 

The forum didn’t immediately respond to PolitiFact’s questions about the claim, but a spokesperson told other news outlets that it’s false. 

"The World Economic Forum never called for banning natural conception and lab grown babies," a spokesperson told Reuters. "The forum also never funded such research."

We rate this post Pants on Fire!