The Woman and the Petri Dish
Monica Slinkard
Louise Brown, the first person conceived through in vitro fertilization, turns twenty-nine this year. Since her birth the field of assisted reproductive technologies has marched ahead with little regulation and, until recently, little discussion in either the public square or religious circles.
Emerging reproductive technologies range from the various types of in vitro fertilization—joining sperm and egg in a Petri dish and introducing the resulting embryos into the uterus or fallopian tubes—to experiments with full ectogenesis, that try to accomplish everything from conception to birth outside the body. In the U.S. the President’s Council for Bioethics has recently been addressing these technologies and has recommended regulation and further research, but overall policy is still lacking.
As policy discussions evolve in an environment where these reproductive technologies become more popularized, it is worth raising the question of what God thinks of them. I do not pretend to know what God thinks, but I do suggest that this question is not asked often enough. Though the events of Roe v. Wade and the birth of the first IVF baby happened within five years of one another, the Christian churches have focused much more on the former. While abortion is an issue deserving thorough consideration by people of faith, it must not monopolize discussions about reproductive issues.
Technologies are emerging too quickly for churches to be entangled in the pro-life debate alone. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, for example, is becoming increasingly accessible, allowing embryos to be screened in the laboratory to avoid disease and even select for desired traits. Every day more serious, and not so serious, conditions and diseases are added to the list of identified material that can be manipulated or avoided in this way. A new form of eugenics may be on the horizon, where only the “best” are even allowed to develop into fetuses. Is such use of technology promoting or compromising life?
Not only is the use of emerging reproductive technologies begging the questions of the meaning of “life” and humanity, it is also indiscriminately pushing the redefinition of sex and family. Procreation, once an intimate act, is routinely placed in the hands of technicians. In the case of in vitro fertilization, a child can have up to ten people invested genetically or legally as a parent. In the instance of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, implied promises about a child’s genes bring unreasonable expectations that can displace familial responsibility for the development of the engineered child. In this way ideas of procreation, parents, and family are being manipulated, but so gradually that we do not think about their ramifications on the place of men, women, children, and families within community and more broadly as human beings.
If not discussed and regulated, these technologies will begin to infringe on Christian and even democratic notions of family and community. It is thus critical that people of faith engage with these issues on the local and interpersonal level while they simultaneously help craft policies that will maintain the integrity of relationships and set thoughtful limits on the role of these technologies in the reproductive process.
Monica Slinkard is a recent graduate of Davidson College and a current fellow at the Trinity Forum Academy where she has explored the theology behind providing housing for women in unplanned pregnancies among other bioethical issues. She will attend Yale Nursing School in the fall where she will receive her Masters in Nursing and Nurse Practitioner's license in Women's Health.
6 Responses (comments are closed) • Provocations, Science and Technology, Mon 23 Apr 2007
Dr. Cline,
Thank you for your comments and for your ethical work. My husband and I adopted embryos through the National Embryo Donation Center 2 years ago, and now have an 18 month old son. I’m happy to hear that you’ll be working with Dr. Keenan’s office to help couples adopt embryos in your area.
The matter of reproduction has become quite problematic for American Christians, and virtually no one has addressed it. In my mind, the focus on getting couples what they WANT has trumped the bigger question of doing what is GOOD. This is such a large topic with so many variables that I feel I can’t do it justice in this forum, but I do hope Ms. Slinkard will continue to investigate and write about these issues so that others, especially those facing infertility, will consider all the ramifications of treatments like IVF, rather than just “getting” a baby.
Distancing
In her thoughtful article, The Woman and the Petri Dish, Monica Slinkard makes the point that “Procreation, once an intimate act, is routinely placed in the hands of technicians.”
Part of being human is to want to control our lives and to insure the future of our offspring. Now comes a technology promising power over the genetics that mostly determine the future health and aptitude of our children, formerly powers attributed to nature.
As we tinker with the mechanism of creation, assuming authority to determine desirable traits, we have to take a fresh look at what we mean by quality of life and spiritual existence. When we have the ability to choose the gender and the mental and personality characteristics of our children we change the nature of whom and what we are. That may be desirable – though I wonder who will be the arbitrator of characteristics that are desirable and those which should be eliminated?
Eradication of disease and disability is a noble dream. In our dream we might include a time envisioned by Aldous Huxley seventy-five years ago where children will be adjusted in the womb for aggression, passion, aptitude, gender, and tolerance for pain.
These questions were mostly answered by nature in the past and we felt a certain powerlessness in the determination of the outcome – and in that powerlessness came grand love and if we were lucky, a sense of awe.
Caring for children in our society is increasingly delegated to others. Perhaps it’s time for nature to do some delegating of her own. The result of all this passing along of responsibility is that we will become more and more distance from the passion and deep personal commitment that nature sat before us. And then, from the children who result from the process, and ultimately from each other.
With increasing control over the product of our genes I wonder who or what it is that we will turn to for that sense of awe?
I am a reproductive endocrinologist who has been doing IVF since 1984. I believe life begins at conception and that once an egg is fertilized it has moral dignity at the same level as all human life. I do not freeze embryos nor do I use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis because of that belief. Eight years ago, Jeff Boldt PhD and I developed a technique in which we have successfully frozen eggs. Human eggs are one cell and have no more moral dignity than a sperm, skin cell or any other single cell. I think we have shown that we can use technology to help infertile couples without abusing the technology that is God given. Please visit my website to see whar else in new and exciting in reproductive endocrinology/infertility.
Science, technicians, our brains are all God given gifts; I thank God for those technicians who helped me to save my first child I was about to lose when my placenta separated from my womb. These new technologies are not about manipulation but about women, men and families who are desperately seeking aid from those who have the medical expertise to forge new paths and give hope. All sorts of medical technologies are in the end subject to manipulation. Yes, this new and emerging field needs to be regulated and overseen, yes we do need to continue to address moral questions arising from such new technology. The questions posed by Monica Slinkard seem to me to more of personal character and faith and displacing responsibility on the ‘technicians’ does not seem fitting.
Ms. Slinkard brings up some very interesting points about the rapidly changing area of genetics. While my area of “expertise” is finance, to understand the financial interest on this topic is to understand the compelling forces behind this rapidly changing ethical landscape. As man loses his belief that any of his unalienable rights were given by a Creator, he easily moves himself as the ultimate authority on ethics. As Christianity’s view that a Divine Creator made us in our mother’s womb, what is being lost when we say that we are a creation of science? How we will address what we see as our calling or destiny in life? Who will man see as his creator?
When the monetary value for experimenting with ethics declines, man will seek to answer these questions with his Creator, not his laboratory scientist.
Oradea, Romania
on 2007 04 30
In my understanding, some people use technology to do whatever possible to kill unborn babies in the name of human freedom of choice, while other people use technology to do whatever possible to have children in the name of the same human freedom of choice. Historically speaking, these two tendencies could be traced in the history of fallen humanity throughout the centuries. The only difference now seems to be the almost unlimited power of technology in the hands of a fallen humanity. The twin issues of reproductive technologies and abortion should be addressed by Christians ethics.
Dr. Paul Negrut
Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics
Emanuel University of Oradea, Romania