CONSPECTUS : The Procreation Debate: Politics and Possibilities
EMBRYOS, ETHICS AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS Exploring the New Reproductive Technology Elaine Hoffman Baruch, Amadeo F. D’Adamo Jr. and Joni Seager, editors (Harrington Park Press: $19.95; 259 pp.) BACK ROOMS An Oral History of the Illegal Abortion Era by Ellen Messer and Kathryn E. May (Touchstone: $8.95; 234 pp.) THE WOMAN IN THE BODY A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction by Emily Martin (Beacon Press: $11.95; 276 pp.) BEYOND CONCEPTION The New Politics of Reproduction by Patricia Spallone (Bergin & Garvey: $16.95, paper; $44.95, cloth; 251 pp.) WITHOUT MORAL LIMITS Women, Reproduction and the New Medical Technology by Debra Evans (Crossway: $9.95; 288 pp.) THE WORLD OF THE NEWBORN by Daphne Maurer and Charles Maurer (Basic Books: $11.95; 293 pp.)
The much-discussed fate of seven tiny blastocysts--a blastocyst is the medical term for an egg that has been fertilized by a sperm--has vaulted the esoteric and exotic field of reproductive technology into the domain of dinner-table conversation. Suddenly, as a divorcing couple named Junior Lewis and Mary Sue Lewis fought in a Tennessee courtroom for custody of these “potential life forms,” as at least one participant in the recent legal fracas termed them, the Brave New Worldly options for reproduction that are offered to victims of infertility became as clear to mass America as the pain these millions of people suffer and the desperate extremes to which they are driven in their hopes of producing children
Fertilized eggs in a freezing jar? Surgery to implant them? Fees of $5,000-and-up per attempt at technologically enhanced childbearing? A pregnancy rate of, at best, 20% and a “take-home baby rate” that is far lower? Champions of fetal rights who shout that fertilized cells visible only through a microscope should be afforded full protection by the Constitution? Angry defenders of women’s rights who retaliate that all this medical “progress” is only further evidence of a male conspiracy to enslave women?
Is any of this real?
The answer is yes--and with each new development in the still-infant field of reproductive technology, the debates and the questions become more shrill and more confusing. The commotion is reflected in a spate of books that examine reproduction in the declining years of the 20th Century from a variety of perspectives.
In one, Embryos, Ethics and Women’s Rights, the editors explore the proceedings of two conferences on “technologically controlled childbearing” and conclude that the future of procreative possibility is at best guardedly optimistic, and at worst, a dangerous precedent for eugenic management and the “commodification” of life. An impressive array of experts--among them, Harvard biology professor Ruth Hubbard, CUNY sociology professor Barbara Katz Rothman and feminist journalist Gena Corea--offers often-provocative thoughts on what is as much an ethical conundrum as it is a medical advance. There is a Catholic discourse and a legal analysis, each of which reiterates the point that humans have not begun to fathom the complications inherent in the new reproductive technology. Several contributors examine the medical and procedural aspects of “noncoital reproduction” and “hope in a test tube.” Unfortunately, because the papers that make up this book are in some cases by now almost five years old, they tend to rely on outdated information. For example, the book cites $200 million as the annual figure spent on infertility treatment, when in fact the current figure is closer to $1 billion. Also, it sometimes wanders into the territory of political and philosophical extremism--comparing, in one instance, prenatal chromosomal analysis to the eugenic policies of Nazi Germany.
But any anger or cynicism contained in Embryos, Ethics and Women’s Rights is mild compared to the rage in “Beyond Conception,” a fierce polemic that argues that the new technology has redefined reproduction in a way that subjugates women. In often incendiary terms, Patricia Spallone contends that scientists have lost sight of “woman-centered” health care and pursue medical knowledge at the expense of women. Researchers looking into in-vitro fertilization “mine women’s bodies,” she writes, by availing themselves of “urine and blood samples, from which hormones and serum for research may be extracted, with cervical fluid, with bits of Fallopian tube and uterine tissue.”
Maybe so. But ask the rare couple for whom in-vitro fertilization was successful, and they will probably say they would happily have handed over their hearts, their lungs, their brains and any other relevant tissue if it would have meant getting a healthy child. Speak to the woman who is about to undergo this cumbersome procedure, and her response will likely be, “Take my blood, please.” Even when IVF fails to result in conception, as is the case in the vast majority of attempts, most couples view their status as medical guinea pigs with some degree of equanimity. They know full well that this new territory is only sparingly charted, and that their failures, however traumatic, may help provide a map for future successes.
With equal fervor, but considerably more spirituality and literary skill, Debra Evans lashes out in Without Moral Limits at everything from unnecessary Cesarean deliveries to egg harvesting and embryo experimentation. The former, she maintains, forces women to “surrender childbirth”; the latter makes women unwitting participants in ghoulish experiments she suggests exist more to gratify scientific egos than to benefit society. Evans also takes aim at the tendency on the part of doctors to perform what she believes are excessive numbers of hysterectomies and abortions. Women’s reproductive systems, she charges, are “the most surgically manipulated area of the human body.”
In The Woman in the Body, anthropologist Emily Martin examines how women of different ages and social strata feel about their bodily processes and the way they are treated by the medical establishment. Her calm, well-written book won the top prize in 1988 from the Society for Medical Anthropology.
What she finds is a sense of alienation, not surprising, since “the dominant metaphors in medical discourse” about women’s bodies tend to be “a hierarchical, bureaucratically organized system.” Medical texts, Martin says, describe birth “as if it were work done by the uterus.” Society is no kinder, ascribing a negative “cultural grammar” to menopause that does not reflect what the women themselves feel.
Babies conceived outside the womb were the furthest things from the minds of the women in Back Rooms, Ellen Messer’s and Kathryn May’s compelling history of abortion before the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. In graphic and gripping terms, what they describe is the wrenching process of parting with pregnancy. The stories are haunting, and lend further support to the notion that even those who advocate abortion as a right are not so naive as to believe it is an uncomplicated process with no emotional ramifications.
But in recalling the dim days when women were blindfolded and driven to distant, nameless places to end their pregnancies, the book does talk about empowerment, an important issue wherever women’s health is concerned. As one subject in the book declares, “Women must be reminded, the citizenry of our world must be reminded, that we must have control of our reproductive lives. When you create a situation in which the control over women’s bodies and minds is put at the mercy of those in power, then you also institutionalize the misuse of power against them.”
Finally, in looking at The World of the Newborn, Daphne Maurer and Charles Maurer exempt themselves from the controversy over reproductive technology by concentrating on what happens after reproduction has occurred. The book presents some startling conclusions about the ability of very tiny infants to recognize some sounds and stimuli and to differentiate among others. The Maurers tell us that babyhood is apparently a full-time job, so much so that newborns are busy learning even while they are asleep. In fact, they write: “Since a newborn maintains consciousness during sleep, his sleeping need not impede his learning.” Rather, “Waking is more likely to impede it.” Filled with fascinating tidbits--the fetus, we learn, may not have teeth, but does have a sweet tooth--and illustrated with photographs that make babies look interesting, and not merely adorable, this book is a useful manual for anyone who has ever wondered what that kid who is lying there like a beach ball actually is thinking about.
