Birth Rights IS REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY DEMEANING THE SEXUAL PROCESS? by Sarah Curtis-Fawley For centuries it's been all about the birds and the bees. Remember when your parents gave you the talk? "When a man and woman love each other very much ... (mumbled anatomy lesson) ... and then a baby is born!" By the time you get around to giving your curious pre-pubescent children this little sermon, it will be a tad more complicated: "Well, sometimes two people love each other, blah, blah. But the real action is in the laboratory! In-vitro fertilization is when doctors fertilize the egg in a lab and then put back inside a woman's stomach. The sperm can come from the daddy or a donor. The egg can come from the mommy or a donor. The fertilized egg can be put in the mommy's stomach or in a surrogate. Doctors perform a prenatal screening to check for harmful abnormalities, and maybe a bit of genetic engineering is done to select the sex or eye color of the child. And then a baby is born!" Ah, the wonders and mystery of birth. Approximately one in twelve couples in the United States is infertile, which means they cannot conceive "the old-fashioned way" within one year. The scientific and medical communities come charging in like valiant knights wielding turkey basters in aid of these childless couples. The burgeoning field of reproductive technology (or "reprotek," for those in the know) has become big business; both the government and private research firms spend millions of dollars every year searching for novel ways to make babies. While these techniques have undoubtedly made scads of infertile couples extremely happy, the many serious issues concerning reprotek tend to be overshadowed by the financial and emotional components of providing couples with children they couldn't have conceived otherwise. Before blindly accepting these technologies as simply another advance in the global race towards the "future," we must consider the profound philosophical and socio-political challenges posed by reproductive technology. Perhaps the most obvious objection to reprotek is that it undermines the dignity of human life and turns babies into commodities. Sperm, eggs, and wombs are bought and sold, and then whisked into labs to be played with like Legos. An ad for a sperm bank in California highlights the indifferent marketing of reproduction: "Wanted: UC Berkeley males ... $40 for five minutes of work; choose your own hours." The intensely personal and emotional components of pregnancy and childbirth become garbled in an endless stream of (very expensive) tests and procedures. The language used to talk about reprotek reflects this detached, clinical way of viewing the people involved in the process: surrogate mothers have been referred to as "breeders" and "human incubators;" donated eggs are said to be "harvested;" the cervix of an infertile woman is called "incompetent;" ovaries are "bombed" with fertility drugs to induce ovulation. All parties involved in the creation of a human life get turned into machines, and the child becomes a product. Some critics of reprotek fear that the children resulting from these transactions will also be viewed as property on whichthe buyer can place demands. Feminist theorist Barbara Katz Rothman argues that when we create children Frankenstein-style, "Some will be rejects, not salable at any price: too damaged, or the wrong color." Rothman's concern that children conceived through artificial means will be viewed as rejects points to another major concern with reprotek: the increased use of genetic engineering. When I opened The Washington Post a few weeks ago, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby gazed sweetly at me. A full page ad featured this Aryan dream baby and the celebratory claim, "Children made to order." Initially I was horrified, assuming that some fancy fertility clinic was proudly offering a "drive-thru" approach to reproduction. "So that'll be an intelligent, six foot tall athlete with a knack for sculpture. Any sex preference with that?" However, the tiny print at the bottom of the page indicated that it was really an ad for the upcoming movie, Gattaca. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that the era of the designer baby is still the domain of the dimwits in Hollywood. Yet this ad highlights the fact that someday soon parents may be able literally to "shop" for the perfect child. Once the eggs, sperm, uterus, and embryo are viewed as salable commodities, there is the tendency to utilize science to create an ideal product. At the Cryogenic Laboratories sperm bank in Minnesota, donors are not accepted if they have a history of more than one "condition," including mental illness, allergies, color blindness, or migraine headaches. God forbid we create any more color blind, wacko, allergic kids who bitch about headaches all the time. Procedures such as in-vitro fertilization offer scientists direct access to the embryo and the opportunity for more genetic manipulation than ever before. Currently, genetic screening is rarely done to select specific characteristics, rather, only to protect against genetic diseases and harmful abnormalities. Yet how does one distinguish what makes something a "disease" or even "harmful?" These definitions are inevitably determined by social contexts; in modern American society we might say that being overweight is a harmful abnormality, in that the cultural norm dictates that everyone should be of Cindy Crawford proportions or else risk ridicule and social banishment. All parents want their children to live happy and fruitful lives -- does this mean that all parents should be able to choose the characteristics that will best allow their child to succeed according to prevailing cultural norms? This would probably mean that all parents would want to have strong, intelligent white sons. Rather than utilizing genetic engineering to make "perfect" children, perhaps we should focus our attention and resources on fixing the social conditions that overwhelmingly favor certain people with certain characteristics. Finally, we must question who has access to these technologies and who is reaping the benefits of reprotek. Debra Morris, Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs, points out that because "most doctors are male, reproductive technology is still the purview of experts, thus the turn to new reproductive technologies must necessarily benefit their control and buttress their social and political status ... The whole debate really points up the necessity of judging every supposed improvement or innovation with respect to a context." Conceiving a child in a lab can be very expensive; each time in-vitro fertilization is attempted (and typically many trials are necessary before pregnancy is achieved) it can cost up to $10,000. Clearly, only the top echelons of our economically polarized country can afford to overcome infertility through science. In addition reprotek is rarely available for single or lesbian women. This reinforces the cultural paradigm of the nuclear family: reprotek is utilized to make babies for married couples and denied to those considered unfit to be parents. Sperm and egg donors and surrogate mothers tend to be of lower economic class than those who are using these technologies to make children. It is clear that those directly benefiting from reprotek are the already very privileged sectors of society: upper class, married couples, and the medical/scientific community. Without critical thought and regulation, reprotek could herald a future populated by genetically tweaked babies created from the gametes sold by the poorest to the richest members of society. The new reproductive technologies cannot be viewed as simply a medical or scientific issue but must be discussed with respect to class, gender, how we conceive of "family," and why certain characteristics allow for success in our appearance-obsessed culture. The slogan of the California Cyrobank is "Remember -- when you succeed, we succeed." We need to start asking at what price this "success" is achieved.

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