As we continue to develop new technologies, we come nearer to the possibility of forming human life without gestation inside female bodies. How we respond to the development of so-called ‘artificial wombs’ depends upon how we resolve the theological and anthropological questions they raise. This paper considers the theological significance of the persons who stand as the presupposition to our own lives, namely our birth parents. It queries, specifically, whether there is theological significance to the fact that the nature of ‘experience’ of our embryonic existence is unavailable to us from a first-person standpoint, and that in our earliest days our lives are wholly encompassed within and sustained by another person. Through close dialogue with Augustine’s theologically animated consideration of his own embryonic life in Confessions and Karl Barth’s searching discussion of humanity’s Whence? in III/2 of Church Dogmatics, I will argue that birth parents are presuppositions of an individual’s existence, which condition and prepare for their own irreplaceable individuality—and that the radically unavailable and dependent condition of the embryo is indicative that our personal identity is inherently and inextricably structured by what is done to us, and not only what we do. The womb is a natural sign of God’s sustaining care for His creation—a significance that, I argue, is obscured by artificial wombs.