limbo

Birth Control and Designer Babies.

Of course they are both related to babies, and controlling the outcomes related to babies--but on the surface maybe you hear “birth control” and hear “no babies,” and hear “designer babies” and think “yes babies!” But really they just seem to circle around and around to each other. No babies, no babies now, yes babies, these babies not those babies, yes any and all babies.

In our everyday political dialogue, we are usually divided into two camps related to reproduction: Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. In this class we’ve often seen that two categories can be deficient, but this is what we are given.

So if you are pro-life, you could be for or against birth control, but you are more likely to be against the morning-after pill, and most likely against RU-486. If you are pro-choice, it’s assumed you are pro-birth control, pro-morning-after-pill, and probably pro-RU-486.

The ideas, I gather, behind the pro-life argument include that anything that denies the existence of a human that is “supposed” to be here is immoral, interfering with the work of God, and ultimately, an act of murder. This is often backed up by Science that details the workings & legitimacy of the life of the fetus. The ideas behind the pro-choice argument include that a woman who exists in this life already should be able to control what is created by her body, esp. in the case of something that will require care for 18 years or more. You could say, in terms of God, that it recognizes the woman also as a creature made by God, given the ability to make choices by God. Science is also used in these arguments to state how a fetus is different from a person.

If we think about Designer Babies, how do they fit in to the idea that some life is “supposed” to be here? Would a pro-lifer potentially argue that if a woman cannot get pregnant, it is because God has not willed it? Would her use of in vitro then be just as unnatural as birth control? I do not feel that I have heard this argument coming out of the pro-life camp as often as we hear anti-abortion sentiment--perhaps it is because fertility treatments are “right” because they are bringing to life something we all know is right: cute babies who wear sunglasses and hiccup inside the womb. Alternatively, it could be argued that God sent us genetic testing and IVF and so they are all fair game, or that it is simply a biological urge that cannot be denied, so women can’t help but strive to have a baby by any means.

Beyond fertility treatments, designer babies include modifying specific genes or traits in a potential baby--this can further enter into the discussion of whether or not we are playing God/interfering with natural creation as we make these decisions. What types of human life do we prefer, accept, and avoid? Are some of our technologies un-natural? Immoral?

We saw the image on the Birth Control poster stating “The Pill Kills.” We saw the eugenics tree on the Designer Baby poster. Driving on 35 in any direction we see the use of scientific “facts” on billboards to legitimate the idea that the fetus is a person already. Making your opposition out to be murderers is a powerful tactic. Doing so with accompanying numbers and statistics and research institutions is even more powerful.

This makes me think of cord blood banking--an expensive procedure when done privately, to save your baby's cord blood for a later date, if needed for disease treatment. Telling a parent (who can afford it) that banking cord blood may save their child’s life someday is probably going to make them do it, even if the evidence doesn’t exactly say that the blood will actually be effective. Similarly, both birth control and “designer baby” procedures are relatively new on the scene of mankind, and both take significant action to alter the functioning of a human body--and we may or may not have anticipated the long-term effects. (Are women gaining in freedom while risking their bodies and hormones to a larger experiment?)

These particular “scientific” issues are extremely emotional. It seems clear that trying to be objective about birth control or babies is a really, really, really hard task. No one wants to lose a child, no one wants their child to suffer a painful disease, and no one wants to inadvertently kill a child. These issues are complicated.

When we pretend they are not complicated is when it all gets extra dangerous.

We began this class reading the work of a bioethicist with a background in medical science, but I get the feeling that most (“hard”) scientists do not consider themselves to be working primarily to create society’s ethics. However, these various debates sift out our values, deciding what is acceptable and what is not. If you really want to declare what is or is not acceptable, backing it up with Science sure seems to help a position gain strength.

Its easy for this to invite cynicism. Instead what Latour points out to us is that we must be honest with ourselves, not expect way too much of our efforts and our conclusions. We must come around again and again, exploring our current ideas of reality, until, eventually death trumps us and the next person takes over.