An Ecology of Procreation
William Saletan at Slate writes about the case of a 70 year old woman (yes, you read that right) who recently gave birth thanks to assistive reproductive technology. He concludes with the following observation:
Maybe, as we extend our reach in this area, we’ll learn to control it. We’ll stop seeing infertility as a binary struggle between cultural fatalism and scientific treatment. We’ll see an ecology of procreation and parenting, with some boundaries worth respecting, even when we know how to defeat them.
I like the phrase “ecology of procreation and parenting.” We’ve already seen the risks involved in thinking the natural world is something that can be completely subjected to human control and manipulation. The risks may be even greater when we begin to apply those techniques to human beings. Something to think about.
Forgive me for saying so, but I don’t care for the word “ecology” in this context. It imparts a scientific luster to something that, IMHO, is better served by notions like “prudence” or “wisdom”.
I don’t think it’s moral (forget “ecological,” “wise” or even “prudent”) to pump women full of dangerous levels of hormones (not to mention donor-egg-and-sperm cocktails) so they can produce a baby at age 70 to satisfy a cultural imperative or overcome a social stigma.
But (and CAUTION feminist rant follows) is this much different from Western medical science that “helps” women satisfy cultural imperatives to strive to remain sexually alluring into old age?
When I worked at a hospital decades ago, the silicone breast implant biz was going full-tilt. Doctors who did the surgeries gave talks to the staff about the problems women with small bustlines–they called it “breast atrophy” as if it were a disease–endured. Clothes didn’t fit right, they didn’t feel womanly, they had poor self-esteem. These weren’t women who were promiscuous or out for a fling, docs were quick to note. No, these were good, decent mothers and wives who had suffered.
The implants caused medical problems. The solution was not to take a time out and rethink the whole breast size “stigma.” No, the solution was … saline implants!
At a recent lunch with “the girls” (all of us 50+) I didn’t count too many who weren’t on HRT, washing away their gray, talking about their diets, or envying somebody who’d just come back from the nip-n-tuck shop. (Though the number of women in my age bracket giving up their HRT is encouraging.)
Being an imperfect female is not always a problem that requires medical intervention. God made some of us women fertile and some of us beautiful, some of us both, and some of us neither. We are none of us any less in God’s eyes for those attributes.
Women of any age having children in any manner: Si
Lesbians and gays of any age adopting children: No.
Tell me what’s wrong with this picture, please.
And don’t give me this caca that women having them in any manner is at least following the pattern that God intended. If She had intended this, why do women go through menopause?
Women of any age having children in any manner: Si
Lesbians and gays of any age adopting children: No.
Tell me what’s wrong with this picture, please.
I’m not sure where you’re seeing these opinions held in concert, Jimmy Mac. Not by Catholic teaching, certainly; the means this particular woman used to bear a child (donor eggs, in vitro fertilization) are right out as far as the Church is concerned. Even outside the realm of Church teaching, The idea of a 70-year-old woman using artificial means to conceive and bear a child might be as controversial as gays adopting, if not more. Those who concede that a gay couple can be perfectly fit parents to an otherwise parentless child might legitimately question whether an elderly couple should seek to bring children of their own into the world.
This is what jumped out at me from the story:
As Saletan notes, the notion that the natural timing of fertility and menopause is somehow cosmically prejudiced is odd, especially when the reason human beings might have been designed to stop being able to give birth at a certain point seems pretty obvious. But it’s also totally weird to conflate menopause and “infertility.” It is indeed sad that this couple lives in a society where they feel looked down on for being childless — and one still caught up in the “bad old days of blaming women for infertility.” But, it seems to me, describing the condition of a 70-year-old woman as “infertility” confuses the notion of what “infertility” means, or should mean, in a medical context. She was, evidently, what we would call “infertile” during the putatively “fertile years.” But now, assuming she’s a normal 70-year-old woman, she’s postmenopausal.
On top of that, this doctor seems to ignore the fact that science’s more significant contribution to ending the “bad old days of blaming women for infertility” is demonstrating that the failure to conceive is not always the woman’s fault. A woman’s natural fertility cycle isn’t sexist. What’s sexist is assuming that a childless woman is defective.
One reason this might be a bad idea, aside from the thought of having a child simply because of what others think of you, is that the parents might not be around to raise the child. But having said that, why is it so creepy that a woman that age would have a child when men that age often do so without comment?
People the world over have children in suboptimal and even chaotic conditions. This couple strikes me as an oddity, and not much more. This is, after all, only a single woman.
In addition, I think it’s important to note that this woman was infertile during what should have been her fertile years in a time when fertility treatment was more or less nonexistent. If she had had access to fertility treatment at that time, I have no doubt she would have availed herself of it, and achieved success perhaps through far less drastic measures. The increased availability of effective infertility treatment, by itself, makes it unlikely that 70 year old mothers are the wave of the future.
What bothers me most is the clear implication that social condemnation played a significant role in her inability to reconcile herself to not having children. I wish that could change for all women.
Steps on soapbox …
I can’t agree there were nonexistent fertility treatments twenty-five to fifty years ago. There is one that has gone back millennia and is even practiced here and there in the animal kingdom.
Adoption.
Unless we want to concede we are all slaves of our genes, and that it’s the DNA that makes us do these things, we have to concede the social sin that leaves millions of children worldwide without parents.
And let’s be clear: this woman has experienced genuine pain in her life. She is worthy, many times over, of compassion and sympathy and of genuine friendship. If she is seeking a rectification of misfortune (however immature it might be) I have no problem with it on that level. Fifty-five years of infertility is about three generations of raising a five-year-old through college, or an infant to adulthood, or a troubled teen to family and career.
My problem isn’t that people individually seek IVF, or other methods to be generative. It’s that as a group, they offer society a near-total rejection of adoption as a sound, compassionate option for generativity.
Instead of attempting to fit the jigsaw pieces of life together as they are given, society attempts to manufacture new pieces as a commodity, and leave the fitting pieces for the trash heap.
I’ve yet to be convinced this really isn’t about being a slave to adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine.
… steps off.
Todd, the woman is Indian, not American. One of the reasons why international adoption has become so much more prevalent in the U.S. is that adoption is not a generally embraced practice in many, many nations. Adoption in India 50 or even 25 years ago was as unthinkable as fertility treatment. That, fortunately, is changing in India, because the government has made many efforts to promote intra-country adoption. I have a friend who adopted an Indian infant who had complete strangers of Indian heritage come up to him in the U.S. and tell him how wrong the adoption was. I am not overstating it to say that their logic was that if a child’s karma was to be an orphan it was wrong for outsiders to interfere — to which my friend would respond, “his karma was to be adopted by us.”
And I would say that your analysis is off base: “My problem isn’t that people individually seek IVF, or other methods to be generative. It’s that as a group, they offer society a near-total rejection of adoption as a sound, compassionate option for generativity.”
This is as insulting as it is completely upside down in its logic. People who seek IVF are probably, as a group, more likely to end up adopting. My cousin, for instance, had his first child through IVF and then decided to adopt his second. They may consider it first and then reject it for numerous, good reasons such as expense, family situation and so on. A 33 year old woman with a tubal blockage can probably become pregnant after one IVF cycle at a decent clinic — for a lot less money and time it would take to pursue adoption. It’s not useful or fair to generalize about a group that is bound by something that is almost wholly disconnected from their background or family circumstance.
It’s people who reproduce like bunny rabbits without encountering a single glitch who “as a group” offer society a near-total rejection of adoption. Have you ever asked a biological mother of 10 why she didn’t stop and adopt a few kids? If you don’t make her apologize for “being a slave to adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine” then don’t make infertile people apologize for the same failing, if you want to call it that.
Yet another example of the beauty of the teachings of the Church.
Humans properly procreate – they don’t reproduce or manufacture babies like farm animals – we participate in God’s creation.
Barbara, thanks for opening me to the possibility that other cultures are drastically closed to adoption. I would need to be convinced such cultural aspects aren’t a blight rather than an authentic expression of religion or of humanity. Kudos to the person who said, “His karma was to be adopted by us.” Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
I will say that international adoption is in part due to the availability to Americans of infants in foreign countries, a supply that seems to be drying up rather quickly.
“Todd, the woman is Indian, not American.”
Then her experience would be an extreme exception in her country, given the extent of poverty in South Asia. That probably speaks less well of the situation in what it seems to preach: karma is available to those who can pay for it.
“This is as insulting as it is completely upside down in its logic. People who seek IVF are probably, as a group, more likely to end up adopting.”
I hope you’re right. But my experience has been that IVF couples are looking for the infant experience, not the needy older child. I’d be happy to be proven wrong. I do think it’s useful to prick consciences on adoption: infant adopters, IVF couples and “rabbits,” too. The “unfairness” claim rings rather hollow to me, though. It’s far more difficult to adjust to the unfairness of having a parent who is an addict, absent, or even dead than to endure a faintly unfair generalization. I applaud and affirm your cousin. But 120,000-plus American kids are still waiting to be adopted. Their cross is more substantial.
“Have you ever asked a biological mother of 10 why she didn’t stop and adopt a few kids? If you don’t make her apologize for ‘being a slave to adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine’ then don’t make infertile people apologize for the same failing, if you want to call it that.”
When I first noticed that TLC show with the couple with seventeen kids, I thought, “What would happen if they adopted a few special needs pre-teens?” That would be interesting television.
So, yes, I have suggested that “experienced” parents should consider adoption: on my web site, on other blogs, and in person. That’s what the social workers told us–we needed more experience.
Adoption is a wonderful thing. My niece adopted twin girls a few years ago, and they are a joy to the family. But it strikes me as strange that Catholics, who are taught that every sex act must be “open to the transmission of life,” and that every sex act must be both “unitive and procreative” or it is intrinsically evil, would criticize people who want to have their own biological children. From the Catholic viewpoint, procreation is the very purpose of marriage.
Here’s a thought:
Perhaps sex brings couples together (is “unitive”) in emotional ways that makes them open to life, not just to biological procreation, but in a way that makes them want to love all created beings. Perhaps some couples’ love is so emotionally enriched by sex that they are willing to adopt whether they can have their own children or not.
If that’s so, perhaps our understanding of openness to life is too narrowly focused on biological reproduction and not on the way sex allows us to embrace all creation.
All that distracts us from my primary concern, which, so far, I don’t see anyone else sharing, that pumping an elderly woman full of drugs so she can become pregnant is dangerous to her health and immoral medicine. Nobody knows the short- or even long-term effect a pregnancy might have on a female body past menopause.
Moreover, the 70-year-old mother is not and never has been fertile. She has not been “cured” in that she can conceive on her own. She has been medically manipulated in the same way that athletes are enhanced by steroids, or models are enhanced by plastic surgery.
I hope God blesses her and her child. I hope God gets her doctors to think twice about their little Frankenstein experiments.
why is it so creepy that a woman that age would have a child when men that age often do so without comment?
I always comment on such things, or at least privately wonder at the wisdom of bring of child into the world when you are unlikely (statistically speaking) to see his or her 10th birthday.
Thanks for the comments, Jean. Let me also add that whenever the discussion turns to marriage, sex, kids, and procreation, rarely does the discussion extend to another equally important aspect: Christ’s presence in the sacramental nature of marriage.
That the so-called “defense” of marriage rarely refers to this shows us a few things, perhaps. The Church is ambivalent still on the nature of sacramentality, especially in non-Eucharistic sacraments, and especially marriage. The Church’s own theology of marriage is underdeveloped if not impoverished. The Church retains a literalist/fundamentalist approach to marriage and its manifestation in sexual intercourse. There is especially a drastic gap of formation that every marriage, even among elderly people, needs to be procreative. How is that possible? Seems like we need to set aside certain immature expressions of theology and look deeper at the core, Jesus Christ. And maybe the Church is “ashamed” of bringing out the sacramental nature of marriage out of fear of alienating its evangelical and LDS allies in the “defense” department.
Like those who favor “medical manipulation” (the same manipulation could probably allow men to get pregnant) the whole thing is about rights and privileges, rather than responsibility.
Todd,
Isn’t perhaps one of the problems the fact that although the Church teaches that the sacraments were “instituted by Christ,” marriages between Christians were largely civil marriages for more than a thousand years after the time of Jesus? How many other sacraments were left to civil authorities for a thousand years?
I was taught in Catholic school that Jesus “raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament” at Cana. I don’t want to be declared anathema by the Council of Trent, but that has always struck me as less than the most convincing case possible for the sacramental nature of marriage.
I don’t know whether the Church’s teaching about marriage is impoverished or whether Catholics just don’t dig deeply enough into its teaching about the sacramental nature of marriage.
Certainly the emphasis in discussions about marriage seem to revolve around chastity and procreation–but I hasten to admit that we were married 25 years ago by a judge, so I don’t know what all gets discussed in premarital counseling.
Studies suggest that infidelity is a cause of divorce, but money problems, addiction, personality conflicts, or one spouse “slacking” on housework and family obligations are factors as well.
In other words, “pelvic issues” are not the only–and perhaps not the biggest–causes for divorce in the West.
A topic for a different thread.
I think Jean’s feminist critique above is on target. I do think that Western medical science has advanced so far that as far as ethics go, it is eventually going to have to be centred on the subject. And, arguably, that is precisely what occurred in this scenario. This woman wanted a baby, the technology was available and accessible and she used it. Period.
I think the responsibility is mostly hers. That said, I also think we need to look at the pathologizing of human experience by the medical establishment similar to what Jean mentioned. Many women are not able to have children. I understand that is a suffering for them. The whole being accursed by being barren seems to be a deep spiritual thread in our history. I know one woman who was a Hindu and she was trying to have a child and was unsuccessful. Her father-in-law who was devout speculated that it might be karma from a previous life. So it isn”t just a Judeo-Christian thing. However, is the medical establishment playing on this theme by offering their own brand of salvation through technological manipulation?
–So it isn”t just a Judeo-Christian thing. However, is the medical establishment playing on this theme by offering their own brand of salvation through technological manipulation?–
I wouldn’t indict the entire “medical establishment,” I guess. While many doctors have been cavalier about women’s health in the past, I think women have wised up. I also think that ethics training for doctors in recent decades has led to improvements in care.
Though there are still a lot of fly-by-nights in the cosmetic surgery arena, i.e., the doc who was recently caught injecting women with industrial grade silicone.
And I am concerned when medical “miracles” occur in emerging nations, where it is relatively easy to get poor and desperate people to volunteer for bio experiments or to sell organs for donations.