Report: Reproductive
Technology
American Pro-Life
Encyclopedia
CHAPTER
55. IN-VITRO FERTILIZATION: HARBINGER OF THE BRAVE NEW BIOLOGICAL WORLD
CHAPTER
85. SEX SELECTION ABORTIONS: THE ULTIMATE IN SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION
==============================
“The man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: We shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in whatever shape they please.”-- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man .[1]
“The attack [by pro-lifers on IVF] includes a condemnation of sacrifice even of a zygote as a form of abortion, abortion being held to be (as such) immoral. This means that embryology, fetology, and all forms of laboratory reproduction are immoral -- that physicians and scientists are murderers.
“I respect the ethics of scientists, which is primarily a love for and search for the facts, but some scientists seem to have an almost blind faith that somehow the facts will be used to good purposes, not misused for evil.
“If the greatest good of the greatest number (i.e., the social good) were served by it, it would be justifiable not only to specialize the capacities of people by cloning or by constructive genetic engineering, but also to bio-engineer or bio-design para-humans or “modified men” -- as chimeras (part animal) or cyborg-androids (part prostheses). I would vote for cloning top-grade soldiers and scientists, or for supplying them through other genetic means, if they were needed to offset an elitist or tyrannical power plot by other cloners -- a truly science-fiction situation, but imaginable. I suspect I would favor making and using man- machine hybrids rather than genetically designed people for dull, unrewarding or dangerous roles needed nonetheless for the community’s welfare -- perhaps the testing of suspected pollution areas or the investigation of threatening volcanos or snow-slides.
“People who appeal to Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four and Fahrenheit 451 forget this, that the tyranny is set up first and then genetic controls are employed.
“Coital reproduction, is, therefore, less human than laboratory reproduction -- more fun, to be sure, but with our separation of baby making from lovemaking, both become more human because they are matters of choice, and not chance. This is, of course, essentially the case for planned parenthood. I cannot see how either humanity or morality are served by genetic roulette.
“To be men we must be in control. That is the first and the last ethical word. For when there is no choice, there is no possibility of ethical action. Whatever we are compelled to do is a-moral.
“Rights are nothing but a formal recognition by society of certain human needs, and as needs change with changing conditions, so rights should change too. The right to conceive and bear children has to stop short of knowingly making crippled children -- and genetics gives us that knowledge ... It is human need that validates rights, not the other way around.”
-- ‘Bioethicist’ Joseph Fletcher.[2]
THEY SAY BABIES ARE MADE IN HEAVEN, BUT WE KNOW BETTER.-- Sign on an IVF clinic waiting room wall.[3]
The
IVF process is remarkably simple to describe. In-vitro (literally, “in glass”)
fertilization is the beginning of a new human being outside the mother’s body.
The
first step in an in-vitro fertilization is to obtain a healthy egg from the
woman. This is accomplished during a laparoscopy performed under general
anesthesia. A laparoscope (a camera with a miniature flashlight attached to its
head) is inserted into an incision in the vicinity of the woman’s navel. The
physician locates a ripe egg that is about to be released from the follicle and
extracts it with an aspirator tube. More advanced techniques make use of
ultrasound, and a ‘band-aid’ incision is made under local anesthesia.
The
retrieved egg is placed in a dish filled with a nutrient and exposed for half a
day to a few drops of sperm. If the egg is fertilized, it is monitored for
proper growth. At the 3rd or 4th day, (approximately the 8-or 16-cell stage),
the embryo is inserted into the donating woman’s uterus with a catheter or tube
which is passed through the cervix.[4]
On
July 25, 1978, Louise Brown, the first baby conceived in a Petri dish, was
born. Since that date, more than 15,000 such babies have been born, about
one-third of which have been in the United States. Other leading practitioners
of IVF are England, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Australia.[5]
The
first child to be conceived through IVF, frozen, thawed, implanted and born is
Zoe Leyland of Melbourne, Australia, who was born on March 28, 1984. Her mother
was superovulated and produced 11 eggs, 10 of which were deliberately destroyed
through abortion or died in the process.[6]
Zoe
was very lucky indeed to survive.
“The very probability that we may be faced with a human person in the full sense constitutes, in my opinion, an absolute veto against any type of [in-vitro] experimentation.”-- Bernard Haring.[7]
In
1979, a Federal Ethics Advisory Board (stacked, as these committees invariably
are, with pro-abortionists) concluded that IVF research was “ethically
acceptable,” while at the same time acknowledging the dangers of abuse and
unspecified risks that accompany the procedure.
They
ignored the basic fact that IVF by ‘semen donor’ is technically adultery, and
gave only passing reference to the future horrors predicted by Joseph Fletcher
in this chapter’s lengthy opening quote.
It
seems that bioethicists no longer glorify the way reproduction should be: Sex
with babies. Instead, they glorify sex without babies (contraception,
sterilization, and abortion) and babies without sex (IVF).
It
is quite certain that God did not intend the reproductive miracle of His
creations to be bypassed and abused so horribly. The Vatican newspaper
L’Osservatore Romano , speaking for many Christians, has condemned the practice
of IVF and stated that women who participate in IVF and surrogate motherhood
“... have been used for nine months as an incubator, prisoner of the egoism of
the mother and of detestable techniques,” and quotes heavily the Vatican
document “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on Dignity of
Procreation.”
The
World Health Organization (WHO) has funded extensive IVF research since 1972 --
but not to help childless women become pregnant!
The
International Population Union Conference on the Scientific Study of
Population, held in London on 1969, was funded by the governments of the United
Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, West Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States.
Their real, unobstructed vision for IVF was neatly summed up in the opening
speech; “There are grounds for hoping that the use of IVF embryos for research
will lead to the discovery of efficient new methods of population control. This
is the real justification for the promotion and funding of IVF by governments
and organizations involved in population planning.”[8]
The
research proposed and funded at this conference (and all those held ever since)
has been delving into the possibility of finding a pill that would destroy the
corpus luteum whether or not fertilization had taken place (the corpus luteum
secretes progesterone, which maintains an embryo and prepares the uterine
lining to accept it). For this purpose, a very large and continuous supply of
human embryos is required, and most of these are supplied by government-funded
IVF programs so that they can be destroyed in tests of abortifacient drugs. In
other words, human life is being created for the express purpose of destroying
it .
Not
even women who obtain abortions intend this result!
So
much for the “tragic but necessary” theory!
In-vitro
fertilization is another instance of medicine serving people’s wants instead of
their needs or illnesses. As a ‘service’ fulfilling needs, IVF has inevitably
become an outright business venture for many doctors with questionable ethics
-- just as abortion has become, and just as euthanasia just as inevitable will
become.
Therefore,
it was also unavoidable that unscrupulous operators should exploit women in
exactly the same manner that abortionists do. Physicians and investigators have
reported that many doctors prescribe fertility drugs without even taking a
woman’s history, recommend painful and expensive tests, and generally ‘take’ an
infertile couple for all they money they can.[9]
Other
examples of medicine as business include abortion and the famous case of a
woman golfer who had a healthy breast removed because it interfered with her
swing.[10]
More
Preferable Methods. Many women who resort to IVF do not first check in to the
rapidly-growing field of alternative procedures that can actually restore fertility
in many or even most cases.
According
to the executive director of the national infertility- counseling organization
Resolve, various micro-surgery techniques can restore fertility to about 70
percent of all infertile women.[11] Dr. Joseph Ballina, Director of the Laser
Research Institute of New Orleans, has reported an 80 percent success rate in
repairing blocked or cut Fallopian tubes. After surgery, 80 percent of these
women subsequently become pregnant.[12]
The
repair of damaged Fallopian tubes is an example of medicine used to repair an
injury or pathological condition, unlike the IVF procedure.
In-vitro
fertilization may interfere with natural selection via two mechanisms. The eggs
‘harvested’ after stimulated ovulation may not be those that would have been
released during the natural course of a woman’s cycle. Even more importantly,
the sperm that just happen to be mixed with the egg(s) in a dish are almost
certainly not those that would have had to survive their rigorous and hazardous
journey through the female reproductive tract. Many scientists believe that as
many as 40 percent of all sperm are damaged or abnormal, and that almost all of
these are screened out by the difficult trip through the uterus and Fallopian tubes.[13]
This
is one of the reasons that most IVF clinics insist upon prenatal diagnosis and
abortion if the resulting baby is defective in any way. In fact, the parents of
the first IVF baby, Baby Louise, signed a contract that required abortion if
prenatal testing revealed their preborn to be handicapped.
This
type of contract is logical. After all, defective ‘products’ would be bad for
IVF publicity -- and business.
“I can foresee the day when a human baby is born to a chimpanzee. That might happen within 20 years.”-- IVF scientist in 1985.[14]
The
sanctity of the marriage vow is not only bypassed by the various types of IVF
procedures, it is shattered -- and the resulting fragments are irrevocably scattered.
The
first artificial insemination by donor (AID) procedure was performed in 1884.
An infertile but rich Philadelphia couple sensed that there was some way to
‘bypass’ infertility and asked the assistance of medical school professor Dr.
William Pancoast. The good doctor in turn asked the handsomest student in his
class to contribute a sperm sample and injected it into the wife while she was
under general anesthesia. She was not advised of the details of the procedure,
but her husband was.[15]
In
AI, a sperm donor can masturbate three or four times a week for $20 a shot, and
does not care whether he has fathered dozens or even hundreds of sons and
daughters. AID, or artificial insemination by donor, is technically adultery.
The real father is unknown to the mother, and neither ‘partner’ really cares
about marriage.
In
artificial insemination, the precursor to IVF, only the male gamete is isolated
from the body. In the IVF procedure, both male and female gametes are isolated
from the body.
Embryo
transfer takes this process one step further. An embryo that is conceived
(usually by AID) is removed and transferred to another woman.
As
reproductive technology ‘progresses,’ motherhood and fatherhood are divided
into successively smaller ‘pieces.’ One or more men may donate sperm, one woman
the egg, another the womb, and maybe a third the actual raising of the child.
So
a child may have a genetic mother, a gestational mother, an adopting mother, a
genetic father, and an adopting father. The various reproductive technologies
therefore lend new meaning to the term ‘extended family,’ as shown below;
|
With IVF Procedure; |
A Child Has; |
|
DS (donor sperm) |
2 fathers and 1 mother |
|
DO (donor ovum) |
2 mothers and 1 father |
|
DE (donor embryo) |
2 fathers and 2 mothers |
|
SET (surrogate embryo transfer) |
1 father and 2 mothers; or 2 fathers and 2 mothers; or 2 fathers and 3 mothers |
The
ultimate goal of this line of technology is extracorporeal gestation (EG), in
which a child is conceived in a dish and gestated entirely outside the mother
in an artificial uterus. Late- term aborted babies have already been kept alive
for days in pressurized vessels. In fact, the Italian embryologist Daniele
Petrucci claims that he has kept a female embryo alive for 59 days in an
artificial uterus.[13]
Many
scientists and doctors, including Dr. Bernard Nathanson, believe that an
artificial womb will be perfected and functioning before the year 2000.[16] The
implications of such technology as relating to the abortion issue are
fascinating to contemplate.***
The
ubiquitous pro-death ‘bioethicist,’ Joseph Fletcher, rather likes the EG concept.
According to him, “The womb is a dark and dangerous place, a hazardous
environment. We should want our potential children to be where they can watched
and protected as much as possible.”[17]
Isaac
Asimov writes that if a woman could “... extrude the fertilized ovum for
development outside the body, she would then be no more the victim of pregnancy
than a man is.”[18]
The
ultimate scenario that will be achieved by this line of research has been
seriously proposed by several prominent scientists. In their ideal society,
pregnancy will be abolished and everyone will be surgically sterilized at the
end of their teenaged years. Before the sterilization process, however, girls
will be superovulated and their eggs harvested. Boys will masturbate once in
order to produce a sperm sample. The sperm and eggs will be carefully
gene-mapped (presumably enabled by the Genome Project, now in progress), and
any samples that are subnormal in any way will be discarded. When there is a
projected need for a scientist twenty years down the road, one will be
conceived and grown in an artificial uterus. When there is a projected need for
a negotiator, one will be grown. When there is a projected need for a number of
talented prostitutes, they too will be grown.[19]
These
are serious proposals, not just grist for science fiction pulp novels. If it
were possible to implement these scenarios today, Fletcher, Asimov, and many
others who think that pregnancy is “victimization” would do so without
hesitation. This colossal arrogance allows the ‘biocrats’ to think that they
can go God one better. They think that they can improve upon His design by
bettering the “hazardous environment” that He created and by ‘weeding out’
defective children.
But
our God is a jealous God, and whenever man tries to equal Him, there is always
a backlash. That’s simply the way He designed the universe. You just don’t mess
with Mother Nature unless you want a bloody nose or worse.
When
will we ever learn this lesson?
Senator Brian Harradine: “How often has in-vitro fertilization been undertaken on non-human higher primates?”
Professor William Short: “It has not been undertaken on gorillas because gorillas are an endangered species.”
Senator Brian Harradine: “So you are able to do it on humans?”
Professor William Short: “We are not an endangered species.”
-- From the transcript of the Australian Senate’s Select Committee hearings on the 1985 Human Embryo Experimentation Bill, reported by The Tablet , November 22, 1986.
The
chances of a single transplanted embryo surviving the entire IVF process are
quite slim. Therefore, the donor woman routinely receives fertility drugs so
that she produces several eggs during ovulation. These multiple eggs are
fertilized, and then transferred to the receiving woman’s uterus.
Despite
the use of multiple eggs, the average probability of pregnancy per cycle,
according to a March 1989 study by the House Small Business subcommittee, is
only about 10 to 15 percent.[20]
Pro-life
activists object to in-vitro fertilization primarily because it involves the
intentional and inevitable destruction of many human embryos for the sake of
pure efficiency. For example, only four percent of 14,585 human embryos
survived to birth in a 1984 European study, and another study done in 1987 at
the United States’ largest IVF center in Norfolk, Virginia, concluded that only
five percent of 4,500 embryos survived to birth.
Resulting
embryos that appear to be defective in any way are simply discarded as garbage.
If a woman becomes pregnant with multiple embryos, a ‘doctor’ will many times
perform a “pregnancy reduction,” which is a fancy way of describing selective
abortion. The unwanted children are killed with a shot of potassium chloride to
the heart, and they are simply reabsorbed by the mother’s body.
Naturally,
some other researchers hate to see all of these perfectly good embryos go to
waste, so they extract them alive and experiment upon them.
One
of the many undesirable ethical situations that fertility drugs and in-vitro
fertilization (IVF) have created is a ‘need’ for ‘pregnancy reduction’
abortions. During such a procedure, the woman is deemed to be carrying too many
unborn babies, and the abortionist selectively kills one or more of them.
The
United States Congress’ Committee on Small Business found that many unregulated
IVF enterprises deliberately implant an excessive number of embryos during
transfer procedures just to increase their chances of success;
“IVF
success rates are so discouraging that there are some centers trying to do
better in terms of creating babies by using multiple [embryo] implants. It
shows at the forty-one [leading] centers there were an average of three embryos
used. Some centers use more than that. When they do, they sometimes create
multiple pregnancies, three, four, five, or six babies.
“Then
they use fetal reduction, which is killing some fetuses to preserve the health
of the mother and to help the other fetuses survive. That is a serious
procedure. But because of the lack of pressure to standardize, routinize, and
assure quality in the centers out there, we have this kind of dubious activity
going on out there.”[20]
The
usual scenario develops when an infertile woman receives fertility drugs and
then is found to be carrying so many babies that the doctor claims that her
life or theirs may be endangered.
This
is not always the case. In one instance, a doctor told a woman that her five
babies would all die, but she chose to carry them all to term. They were all
born healthy, and the entire family was the subject of a 1991 People Magazine
cover story.
As
always, abortionists lean on the ‘hard case’ argument. Some women seem to think
that twins are too many kids, and abortionists agree with them. So the
‘mother’s health’ argument, in general, doesn’t hold up when you can ‘reduce’
twins to one child with a sort of abominable reverse ‘Sophie’s choice.’ In
other words, the mother is not selecting which of two children will live , but
which will die . Actually, all abortions can be justified with the same flimsy
arguments used to rationalize ‘pregnancy reduction.’ After all, most abortions
are just the reduction of one preborn baby to none.
In
fact, most ‘pregnancy reductions’ are carried out to kill one of a set of
twins. Even in such apparently simple cases, ‘pregnancy reduction’ is an
abysmal failure at delivering its intended result. A recent medical journal
stated that; “The first six twin pregnancies to undergo selective termination
at Mount Sinai Hospital ‘worked out very badly,’ with the unintended
miscarriage of four unaffected fetuses as well as the six targeted for
abortion. These first attempts involved the use of exsanguination [draining all
of the blood from the unborn babies] or injection of saline or an air embolism
[to cause heart attacks], Dr. Berkowitz said.”[21]
As
with all immoral and cowardly acts of murder, Newspeak is required to insulate
the ‘doctors’ and the ‘mothers’ from the reality of what they are actually
doing. The term ‘pregnancy reduction’ is a case in point. Others go even
further in their self-deceptive language. Dr. Seymour Romney suggests that the
‘roulette killing’ of some of the babies in a multiple pregnancy be called
“enhanced survival of multifetal pregnancies,” or ESMP for short.[22]
The
‘pregnancy reduction’ procedure has been in use for more than a decade now and
is now generally standardized. A needle is inserted through the mother’s
abdominal wall into her uterus and potassium chloride is injected into the
hearts of the ‘surplus’ babies at random. They die and are reabsorbed by the
mother’s body.
Two
doctors described the procedure in the New England Journal of Medicine ; “Using
ultra-sound to locate each fetus, the doctors would insert a needle into the
chest cavity of the most accessible fetus and place the needle tip directly
into the heart of the baby. Potassium chloride was then injected into the heart
and the heart was viewed on the ultrasound screen until it stopped beating.
Even at 9 weeks, 3 of the 12 fetuses selected for elimination presented
problems. The heart continued to beat and the procedure had to be
repeated.”[23]
Other
doctors described how they killed two of five babies in a slightly different
procedure; “At ten weeks gestation, a reduction in the number of embryos was
performed at the Clamart Clinic in Paris. Guided by real-time ultrasonography
and under abdominal local anesthesia (lidocaine 1 percent), ten milliliters of
amniotic fluid from each of the two sacs was aspirated [drawn out] through a
ten centimeter long, 21-gauge needle. The tip of the needle was then directed
into the thoracic [chest] cavity of the fetus and a mixture of 1 milliliter of
dolosal and 3 milliliters of xylocaine was injected. The needle was left in
place for up to ten minutes until cessation of cardiac activity was seen. If
the initial injection was unsuccessful, it was repeated after ten minutes.”[24]
It
would seem logical that the babies who are lucky enough to avoid the random
‘death needle’ may suffer extensively from ‘survivor syndrome’ when they grow
up if they find out about their narrow escape. This syndrome is typically found
in children whose parents chose to abort siblings. How much stronger will the
‘survivor syndrome’ be in children who escape death by mere millimeters,
children who, just by chance, are still alive, because they happened to be in
the right position when the killing took place? What sorrow will they feel when
they realize that their twin died to preserve their own life?
And
what of the mother? The vast majority of women who undergo embryo transfer or
IVF have been infertile for an extended period of time and spend an average of
$11,000 for their assisted reproduction procedures. They obviously want a baby
in the worst possible way.
So,
after a mother experiences the intense joy of realizing that she is finally
pregnant, she is then told that she has too many babies. She has to lie on her
back for at least twenty minutes while a needle pierces her abdomen and womb
and injects poison into one or more of her baby’s hearts. Some of her children
will die because of the off-chance that their existence may compromise the
health of her other children.
What
will this experience do to these poor mothers?
“Sooner or later one human society or another will launch out on this adventure, whether the rest of mankind approves or not. If this happens, and a superior race emerges with greater intelligence and longer life, how will these people look upon those who are lagging behind? One thing is certain: They, not we, will be the heirs to the future, and they will assume control.”-- A. Rosenfeld.[25]
The
abuses that are possible with IVF (abuses that therefore will certainly occur),
are manifold and strain the imagination. However, they are an inevitable and
(un)natural outgrowth of the mentality that undergirded the early research and
experimentation involving IVF.
The
moral objections to early IVF experimentation were even more pronounced than
they are now due to the initial extraordinarily high embryo wastage rate and
the dubious nature of early research.
Doctors
Edwards and Steptoe, who produced Louise Brown, the world’s first “test tube”
baby, discarded 99.5% of their fertilized ova over a period of 12 years. This
means that they had failed in the first 200 attempts at transferring the embryo
to the uterus.[26]
Steptoe’s
IVF research had been wholly financed by his very lucrative abortion
practice.[27] Steptoe required the parents to agree to abort if there was the
slightest hint of an abnormality in Louise, in order not to sully the
reputation of the new science. It would be interesting to know how Louise, now
a teenager, would react to the knowledge that she would have been disposed of
as so much garbage if she had been less than perfect -- or to the realization
that 200 embryos before she had a chance at life.
This
eugenics attitude has been passed down to latter-day IVF clinics. For example,
Noel Keane, director of the largest surrogate motherhood service in the world
(New York’s Infertility Center), has his applicants for surrogate motherhood
sign contracts stating that their children will be genetically tested and
aborted if defective.[28]
We
certainly can’t have the reputation of the ‘service’ tarnished now, can we?
Nobel
Prize laureate James Watson has stretched this ‘logic’ to its natural
conclusion. He asserts that doctors who participate in IVF should be present at
the birth of all of their babies so that they may “... terminate the baby’s
life should it come out grossly abnormal.”[29]
Many
scientists, drunk with the euphoria of treading where no human has dared go
before, are plunging headlong into lines of research that would have been
unthinkable a few years ago. In addition to arcane knowledge, they have also
acquired a dangerous elitist attitude. As one leading researcher boasted,
“[Scientists] have the right to exercise their professional activities to the
limit ... as lay attitudes struggle to catch up with what scientists can
do.”[30]
In
other words, ethics and morals, along with judgment, have been sacrificed in
order to advance the mad dash for knowledge. This philosophy has destroyed all
limits, so that now the rule is:
IF
IT CAN BE DONE, IT MUST BE DONE, AND DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES.
For
example, if researchers continue along current lines of inquiry, it will soon
be possible for a woman to conceive and bear her own (younger) identical twin
sister; it will be possible to allow human embryos to gestate in apes of
various species (or even in bovines) in order to bypass the legal barriers now
springing up against surrogate motherhood; and it may well soon be possible to
fulfill the long-standing homosexual fantasy of male pregnancy.
The
noted French biologist Dr. Jean Rostand wrote in all seriousness a few years
ago that “Here and now Homo Sapiens is in the process of becoming Homo
Biologicus, a strange biped that will combine the properties of
self-reproduction without males, like the green fly; of fertilizing his female
at long distance, like the nautiloid mollusk; of changing sex, like the
xiphores; of growing from cuttings, like the earthworm; of replacing his
missing parts, like the newt; of developing outside his mother’s body, like the
kangaroo; and of hibernating, like the hedgehog.”[31]
These
are not the mad pipe dreams of some isolated quack. Many leading scientists
have advocated the creation of chimeras -- part-human and part-animal or plant
creatures whose usefulness for various purposes would be enhanced by their new
‘qualities.’
Dr.
Robert C. Gesteland, an associate professor of biological sciences at
Northwestern University in Illinois, has suggested (1) crossing man with
plants, so all we’d need for food would be water and sunlight; (2) developing a
servant class of supersmart apes; and (3) best of all, breeding a race of
humans only four inches tall, which would lessen pollution and conserve natural
resources.
It’s
funny how educated people often don’t think about the practical aspects of
their hopes and dreams. Presumably, if Gesteland’s dreams came true, (1) we
could pass up a McDonald’s and simply graze at the side of the road, (2) we
would create and enslave another species, and (3) we would shrink ourselves to
the point where pigeons would become our predators and housecats would be
comparatively as large as elephants.
Dr.
George Haldane (the late British geneticist) predicted that we might breed a
race of legless humanoid mutants with prehensile tails or feet for space
travel. Other scientists would like to see women laying eggs that could be
hatched or eaten (i.e., use our own young as a food source); human beings with
gills to facilitate underwater travel; and people with two sets of arms and
hands, one for heavy work, the other for lighter tasks.[30]
We
are already most of the way down Gerald Leach’s “Ladder of Unnaturalness.”
Herds of prime cattle embryos are flown across the Atlantic Ocean in the wombs
of female rabbits. Lesbians are now making men superfluous with sperm banks.
The exploitation of women as ‘wombs-for-hire’ is the first step towards
parthenogenesis and actual extracorporeal gestation.
Gamete
Intra-Fallopian Transfer (GIFT) is totally distinct from other procedures in
that the woman’s egg is fertilized inside her body. In other techniques such as
in-vitro fertilization, human sperm and eggs are essentially mixed in a glass
dish and the already-fertilized egg(s) are then implanted into the uterus.
In
a GIFT procedure, doctors incise the Fallopian tube at a point past any
blockage and, using a laparoscope, place the woman’s egg and man’s sperm inside
the tube. If conception does occur, the pregnancy will proceed in the usual
manner -- the fertilized egg will travel down the Fallopian tube and will
hopefully implant in the uterus.
GIFT
is currently one of the few anti-infertility surgical procedures morally
acceptable to the Catholic Church and most Bible-believing Protestant churches,
because it does not involve questionable ethical practices such as masturbation
to obtain the sperm or the discarding of ‘excess’ fertilized eggs.
GIFT
has a 20% to 30% success rate, compared to IVF’s 15% overall success rate, and
a single GIFT procedure is comparable in cost to IVF at about $3,000 to $4,000.
Low
Tube Ovum Transfer (LTOT) is also an acceptable technology for Catholics and
members of many other faiths. This procedure relocates the woman’s egg past the
damaged portion of her Fallopian tube so that in vivo (in the body)
fertilization takes place.[32]
Other
procedures acceptable to almost all faiths include “assisted semination” (not
artificial insemination) and Sperm Intrafallopian Transfer (SIFT).[33]
==========================================
“In the year 4545, ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need your wife, you’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too, from the bottom of a long black tube ...”-- Song entitled “In the Year 2525.”
[1] C.S. Lewis. The Abolition of Man . New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1965. Page 63.
[2] ‘Bioethicist’ Joseph Fletcher. “Ethical Aspects of Genetic Controls.” New England Journal of Medicine (285:776-783, 1971). Available as Reprint #104 from the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, Hastings-On-Hudson, New York 10706.
[3] Sign hanging on an IVF clinic waiting room wall. Described in Michael Gold. “The Baby Makers.” Science Magazine, April 1985, pages 26 to 38.
[4] Albert S. Moraczewski., O.P. “ In-Vitro Fertilization and Christian Marriage.” Also Eugene Diamond, M.D. “A Call for Moratorium on In-Vitro Fertilization.” Both articles are in the November 1979 issue of Linacre Quarterly .
[5] Parade Magazine,
July 2, 1989, page 19.
[6] Claudia Wallis. “The New Origins of Life.” Time Magazine, September 10, 1984. Page 40. Also Jo Wiles. “The Gift of Life.” Star World , April 24, 1986. Pages 24 to 26.
[7] Bernard Haring. Ethics of Manipulation . New York: Seabury Press, 1975. Pages 198 and 199.
[8] Gary Potter. “ Intra Urbem Extraque .” The Wanderer , May 18, 1989, page 3.
[9] Robert W. Rebar et al . “Are We Exploiting the Infertile Couple?” Fertility and Sterility , November 1987, page 735. Also see Sevgi O. Aral and Willard Cates. “The Increasing Concern With Infertility: Why Now?” Journal of the American Medical Association , November 4, 1983, pages 2,330.
[10] George Will. “Abortion as Commodity, Not Medicine.” The Human Life Review , Fall 1978, pages 73 and 74.
[11] Beverly Freeman, Executive Director of the infertility organization Resolve, quoted in Claudia Wallis. “The New Origins of Life.” Time Magazine, September 10, 1984, page 40.
[12] “ In-Vitro Lab Approved.” National Right to Life News , January 1980, page 23.
[13] Donald DeMarco, Ph.D. In My Mother’s Womb: The Catholic Church’s Defense of Natural Life . Manassas, Virginia: Trinity Communications. 1987, 234 pages.
[14] IVF scientist, quoted in “Creating Monsters.” TFP Newsletter , 4.11 (1985), page 10.
[15] Robert Francoeur. Utopian Motherhood: New Trends in Human Reproduction . London: George Allen & Unwin. 1971, pages 11 to 13.
[16] Tom Paskal. “Tampering with the Machinery of God.” Weekend Magazine, September 18, 1971, page 7. Also see Bernard Nathanson, M.D. Aborting America . Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday Press, 1979. Page 282.
[17] Joseph Fletcher. The Ethics of Genetic Control . Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday Press, 1979. Page 103.
[18] Isaac Asimov. “On Designing a Woman.” Viva Magazine, November 1973, page 8.
[19] Edward Grossman. “The Obsolescent Mother: A Scenario.” Atlantic Magazine, May 1971, page 49. Also see Shulasmith Firestone. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution . New York: William Morrow, 1972, page 238.
[20] Committee on Small Business. Consumer Protection Issues Involved in In-Vitro Fertilization Clinics . Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1988. Pages 26 and 27.
[21] “Selective Abortion in Multiple Gestation.” Obstetrics and Gynecology News , August 1-14, 1989.
[22] As quoted in Debra Evans. Without Moral Limits: Women, Reproduction, and the New Medical Technology . Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1989. Page 116.
[23] “Selective Abortion, AKA Pregnancy Reduction.” New England Journal of Medicine , April 21, 1988.
[24] Rene Frydman et al . “Reduction of the Number of Embryos in a Multiple Pregnancy: From Quintuplet to Triplet.” Fertility and Sterility , August 1987, pages 326 and 327.
[25] A. Rosenfeld. The Second Genesis: The Coming Control of Life . Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969. Page 145.
[26] Eugene Diamond, M.D. “A Call for Moratorium on In-Vitro Fertilization.” Linacre Quarterly , November 1979.
[27] Time Magazine, July 31, 1978.
[28] Claudia Wallis. “A Surrogate’s Story.” Time Magazine, September 10, 1984, page 51.
[29] James Watson. “Child From the Laboratory.” Prism (American Medical Association), May 1973, Volume 1, Number 2, page 13.
[30] Paul Ramsey, Ph.D. “On In-Vitro Fertilization.” Human Life Review , Winter 1979, pages 17 to 30.
[31] R.G. Edwards and D.J. Sharpe. “Social Values and Research in Human Embryology.” Nature 231:87-91(1971).
[32] David Q. Liptak. “Catholic Hospital begins ‘In Vivo’ Ovum Transfers.” The Catholic Standard and Times , September 22, 1983. Page 14. Also David Q. Liptak. “New ‘Infertility Bypass (LTOT)’ Assessed.” Catholic Transcript , January 6, 1984.
[33] Orville N. Griese. “Promising Approaches to Human Infertility.” International Review of Natural Family Planning , Fall 1986. Pages 243 to 255.
==========================================
Bruce L. Anderson. The Price of a Perfect Baby: What Christians Should Know About the Genetic Revolution, Test-Tube Babies, Surrogate Motherhood, and Selective Genetics . Originally entitled Let Us Make Man . Bethany House Publishers, 6820 Auto Club Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438. 1984, 181 pages. This book deals with the Christian attitude toward the reproductive revolution, and discusses new questions: Should man create and destroy life in the laboratory? Does surrogate motherhood constitute a violation of God’s laws? What impacts do these new technologies have on the family? Is the practice of making babies without pregnancy acceptable?
Apropos , Volume 5. A.S. Fraser, Editor, Burnbrae, Staffin Road, Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland, IV51 9HP, United Kingdom. Subscription price is $12.50 by regular mail, $25.00 by airmail. This is a magazine devoted to developments in the European Catholic Church. Lately, the European Church has become deeply embroiled in the continuing controversy over fertility science, including various forms of in-vitro fertilization.
Lesley and John Brown with Sue Freeman. Our Miracle Called Louise: A Parents’ Story . Reddington Press, 1979. 188 pages, $8.95. Reviewed by Sharon Effrein Donehey on page 8 of the February 8, 1982 issue of National Right to Life News . A rather simplistic and unenlightening look at the events surrounding the world’s first ‘test-tube’ baby.
Gena Corea. The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs . New York: Harper & Row, 1985; New York: Harper & Row Perennial Library, 1986. 374 pages. Hardback, $18.95, softcover $7.95. Reviewed by Leslie Bond in the November 6, 1986 National Right to Life News . This book discusses the various drawbacks to reproductive technologies, including in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer. However, the author warns in her introduction that she is extremely anti-male, and this sexist attitude mars her presentation rather badly, because all problems are portrayed as the fault of men. Strangely, she emphasizes the hazards of getting pregnant artificially, but totally ignores any and all of the dangers associated with getting unpregnant artificially (i.e., abortion).
Donald DeMarco, Ph.D. Biotechnology and the Assault on Parenthood . Ignatius Press, 1991, 269 pages, $14.95. Reviewed on page 45 of the August-September 1991 issue of ALL About Issues . The author examines the various types of assisted-reproduction technologies, including in-vitro fertilization, gamete intra-fallopian transfer (GIFT), and self-insemination (“marriage for one”). This book is heavy on the ethical and spiritual aspects of advanced reproductive technologies, and provides a very good foundation for discussion of these areas.
Donald DeMarco, Ph.D. In My Mother’s Womb: The Church’s Defense of Natural Life . Hardcover $14.95, paperback $8.95. Order from: Life Issues Bookshelf, Sun Life, Thaxton, Virginia 24174, telephone: (703) 586- 4898. An eloquent defense of the Catholic Church’s defense of human life. An examination of abortion’s languages and perspective, the unborn, contraception and bio-engineering. Also covered are the Church’s perspective on new technologies, including in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, fetal experimentation, and genetic engineering. See especially Chapter 1, “Abortion and Church Teaching,” pages 7 to 25, “Abortion and Bio-Engineering,” pages 82 to 88, and “ In Vitro Fertilization,” pages 143 to 159.
Sherman Elias. M.D., and George J. Annas, J.D. Reproductive Genetics & the Law . Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, Inc. 1987, 310 pages. The medical and legal backgrounds of some of the hottest topics in artificial reproductive technologies today: Newborn genetic screening, genetic counseling, prenatal diagnosis, treatment (and nontreatment) of handicapped newborns, “noncoital reproduction,” frozen embryos, and gene and fetal therapy.
Debra Evans. Without Moral Limits: Women, Reproduction, and the New Medical Technology . Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1989. 288 pages. See especially Chapter 5, “Egg Harvesting and Embryo Experimentation: Lab-Oriented Concepts,” pages 68 to 81, and Chapter 6, “Infertility Diagnosis and Treatment: To Catch a Falling Star,” pages 84 to 97; Chapter 7, “ In-Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer: Sex in a Dish?,” pages 100 to 117; and Chapter 8, “Embryo Transplants: The By- Products of Manufactured Conception,” pages 120 to 137.
Greenhaven Press. Biomedical Ethics: Opposing Viewpoints . Greenhaven Press Opposing Viewpoints Series, Post Office Box 289009, San Diego, California 92128-9009. 1987, 216 pages. Each section includes several essays by leading authorities on both sides of each issue. The questions asked are: “Is Genetic Engineering Ethical?;” “Are Organ Transplants Ethical?;” “Should Limits Be Placed On Reproductive Technology?;” “Should Animals Be Used in Scientific Research?;” and “What Ethical Standards Should Guide the Health Care System?” Authors include Tibor R. Macan, Malcolm Muggeridge, and the Ethics Committee of the American Fertility Society. A catalog is available from the above address and can be obtained by calling 1-(800) 231-5163.
Greenhaven Press. Science and Religion: Opposing Viewpoints . Volume I. Greenhaven Press Opposing Viewpoints Series, Post Office Box 289009, San Diego, California 92128-9009. 1988, 233 pages. Each section includes several essays by leading authorities on both sides of each issue: “Great Historical Debates on Science and Religion;” “Are Science and Religion Compatible?;” “How Did the Universe Originate?;” “How Did Life Originate?;” and “Should Ethical Values Limit Scientific Research?” Authors include Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan, The Roman Curia, Bertrand Russell, and the National Academy of Sciences. A catalog is available from the above address and can be obtained by calling 1-(800) 231-5163.
Ted Howard and Jeremy Rifkin. Who Should Play God? Dell Publishing Company, 272 pages. Reviewed by Doug Badger on page 22 of the March 1980 National Right to Life News . An excellent primer for pro-lifers that holds that the test-tube baby is just the beginning of a cascade of biotechnological horrors that may soon engulf and destroy whatever is left of medical ethics.
D. Gareth Jones. Brave New People: Ethical Issues at the Commencement of Life . Eerdmans Publishing Company, 255 Jefferson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503, telephone: (616) 459-4591. 1985, 225 pages, $8.95. This book was so ‘controversial’ (which means that Leftist censors didn’t like it), that it was withdrawn from the market after its original release in 1984. The author addresses complicated issues that apply to the beginning of human life: In-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, cloning, and genetic tinkering.
Carol Levine (Editor). Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Bio-Ethical Issues . Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., Guilford, Connecticut. 1984, 297 pages. Leading thinkers on both sides of bioethical issues express their opinions in scholarly essays on subjects including abortion, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, involuntary sterilization of the retarded, informed consent, active euthanasia, withholding treatment from handicapped newborns, suicide, the insanity defense, animal experimentation, prisoners volunteering for research, justifiable deception in research, organ harvesting from the dead, and genetic engineering. A good primer on the bioethical issues.
J. Robert Nelson. Human Life: A Biblical Perspective for Bioethics . Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1984, 194 pages. Reviewed by James Manney on pages 9 and 15 of the October 24, 1985 National Right to Life News . The author contrasts the philosophies and resulting actions of bioethicists who are believers and those who are not.
Paul Ramsey, Ph.D. “Shall We “Reproduce?”“ Part I: The Medical Ethics of In-Vitro Fertilization. Part II: Rejoinders and Future Forecast.” Journal of the American Medical Association , June 5, 1972, pages 1,346 to 1,350, and June 12, 1972, pages 1,480 to 1,485. Available as Reprint #613 from the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, Hastings-on- Hudson, New York 10706 (The Hastings Center).
Sean O’Reilly, M.D. Bioethics and the Limits of Science . Christendom College Press, Route 3, Box 87, Front Royal, Virginia 22630. 1980, 176 pages, $5.95. Reviewed by Robert E. Joyce, Ph.D. in the Fall 1980 issue of the International Review of Natural Family Planning , pages 274 to 276. Recommended for college students working in a Christian context. This book covers the definition of life and person, how technology has complicated the debate, the norms of bioethics, the definition of death, and a description of false and true humanist ethics and the foundation of Christian ethics and the authority of the Church.
Peter Singer and Deane Wells. Making Babies: The New Science and Ethics of Conception . New York: Charles Scribner and Sons. 1985, 245 pages, $14.95. Reviewed by William May in the October 24, 1985 issue of National Right to Life News . This is an enthusiastically pro- in-vitro treatise by two people who laugh at the idea that the preborn are human. Anyone who opposes IVF technology for any reason is automatically labeled “irrational,” “undemocratic,” and “obscurantist” (you can always quickly identify a typical intolerant and judgmental pro-abort, because they invariably whine and call people who disagree with them nasty and fancy names). In fact, the authors state that IVF is what sets us apart from animals -- not free will, but the ability to manipulate technology. They also state baldly that anyone who thinks humans are superior to animals in any way is guilty of the heinous sin of “speciesism!” This book is a classic example of the mentality that assert, “if it can be done, it must be done.” Shows how so-called ‘bioethicists’ lend a veneer of respectability to biological atrocities.
United States Government. Artificial Insemination: Practice in the United States, Summary of a 1987 Survey . Covers the extent of AI in the United States, the patterns of donor and recipient screening for genetic and infectious diseases, and the economic and other obstacles to performing AI. Serial Number 052-003101129-8, 1988, 120 pages, $5.00. Order by mail from Superintendent of Documents, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, or by telephone from (202) 783-3238.
United States Government. Infertility: Medical and Social Choices Summary . Illustrates a range of options for Congressional action in nine principle areas of public policy related to infertility, collecting data on reproductive issues, infertility services, transfer of human eggs and sperm, and embryos, surrogate motherhood, and reproductive research. Serial Number 052-003-01100-0, 1988, 38 pages, $2.00. Order by mail from Superintendent of Documents, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, or by telephone from (202) 783-3238.
United States Government. Mapping Our Genes, The Genome Projects: How Big, How Fast? Focuses on how to assess the rationales for conducting human genome projects, how to fund them, how to coordinate scientific and technical programs, and international impacts and repercussions. Serial Number 052-003-01106-9, 1988, 224 pages, $10.00. Order by mail from Superintendent of Documents, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, or by telephone from (202) 783-3238.
United States Government, Committee on Government Operations. Medical and Social Choices for Infertile Couples and the Federal Role in Prevention and Treatment . Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1989.
Robert M. Veatch. A Theory of Medical Ethics . New York: Basic Books, 1981. 387 pages. Reviewed by Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., on page 19 of the January 6, 1983 issue of National Right to Life News . The author attempts to construct a parallel pro-life framework of medical ethics that can be applied in all or most of the many new areas of bioethics that are being explored today.
=================================================================
“It is very hard to make a moral argument against terminations for sex when you can have abortions for any reason.”-- Dr. Mitchell Golbus, UCSF Medical School.
“Neither statistics nor records exist to document the occurrence of gender selection abortions in the United States. The idea of gender selection abortions is a myth.”-- ‘Religious’ Coalition for Abortion Rights.[1]
The
abortion mentality has finally presented Neofeminists with an ethical Gordian
Knot.
The
shrill and relentless insistence of the NARAL and NOW types for abortion on
demand for any reason has inevitably led to convenience abortions on a massive
scale.
And
perhaps the ultimate in ‘convenience abortions’ is the selective killing of
perfectly healthy unborn women solely because of their sex -- in other words,
the ultimate sexual discrimination has been brought about by the Neofeminists
themselves.
Syndicated
columnist Mona Charen has correctly pointed out that “Abortion on demand has
given birth to boys on demand.”[2] The irony of this situation has not been
lost on pro-lifer activists, who secretly smile as they watch NOW, NARAL, and
other pro-abortion groups futilely attempt to untangle themselves from this
insoluble dilemma.
In
1973, American abortion pushers achieved victory beyond their wildest dreams --
abortion on demand for any reason whatever, and unlimited Federally-funded free
abortions for poor women. At this time, only one percent of geneticists
believed that abortion for sex selection was morally acceptable, and this small
minority generally kept their opinions to themselves for obvious reasons.
Abortion for selection of the baby’s sex was recognized and criticized by many
doctors even before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.[3]
By
1988, the number of geneticists approving of sex-selection abortions had jumped
to 20 percent, and this trend shows no signs of abating.
Dozens
of sex-selection clinics have sprung up all over the United States since the
mid-1980s. These clinics offer amniocentesis solely for the purpose of
determining the preborn baby’s sex by the 18th week of pregnancy. Chorionic
villi sampling (CVS), a newer fetal diagnostic technique, can be used to detect
fetal gender as early as eight weeks’ gestation.[4] Most of these same clinics,
‘coincidentally,’ of course, offer abortions for babies of the ‘wrong’ sex.
So
a brand-new medical discipline has sprung up in response to public demand:
Andrology. Those doctors who specialize in determining the sex of children are
called andrologists.
Doctors
who perform sonograms, but who abhor the practice of sex- selection abortions,
say that it is common for pregnant women to lie in order to obtain an
amniocentesis just to find out the gender of their preborn babies so they can
abort.[5]
Perhaps
the medical “advance” of sex-selection abortion will itself be rendered obsolete
by further advances in the near future. Physiologist Ronald Ericsson of
Gametrics Ltd. in Sausalito, California has developed a technique by which it
is possible to separate the X and Y chromosomes in human sperm with a 75
percent accuracy rate. Many scientists predict that this method will be refined
to the point where parents will be able to select the sex of their children
with 100 percent accuracy by the year 2000.[4]
Of
course, this type of questionable ‘business’ can be colossally lucrative. As of
September 1987, Dr. Ericsson had franchised 65 sperm separation clinics
throughout the world for about $10,000 apiece. The cost per sperm separation
procedure is about $2,500 in 1993 dollars.[6]
These
technologies will undoubtedly have a colossal impact upon our country’s
population demographics.
According
to the results of a recent survey of a very large group of people who were
willing to employ sex-preselection methods, 91 percent of the women and 94
percent of the men polled stated that they would like their firstborn baby to
be a boy.[7]
Researcher
Dr. Roberta Steinbacher said that “I asked people if they would use the [sex
selection] method if it were available and about one quarter said they would. I
then asked the members of this second group which sex they would prefer, and 91
per cent of the women and 94 per cent of the men said they would prefer their
firstborn to be a boy. I think this overwhelming preference for firstborn males
would, if widely carried out, institutionalize a second-class status for women
because of their ranking in the birth order.”[7]
Dr.
Steinbacher’s survey confirmed other polls that showed that the American
preference is predominantly for firstborn males, and that the resulting sex
ratio for all children (including subsequent births) would be as high as 122
boys to 100 girls. In fact, other studies have shown that women said that they
preferred boys by a ratio of 126 to 100.[8] Dr. Linda Fidell of California
State University even found that 85 percent of women college students, who have
been subjected to the full range of Neofeminist propaganda, said that they
wanted their firstborn child to be a boy.[9]
If
such sex preselection could be accomplished without a messy and morally
questionable abortion procedure, it is quite possible that our population
gender balance could be thrown seriously out of kilter -- especially
considering that the kind of people who would ‘special-order’ their children
are the same type of people who would probably have only one child in the first
place.
The
creation of a ‘andrological’ technology invariably leads to a greater and
greater demand for it -- the principle that “invention is the mother of
necessity.” The American public is being led to believe that one or two [or no]
children are sufficient for happiness, and that so-called “gender-balanced”
families are desirable. Nobody wants to get “stuck” with two children of the
same sex -- this is very ‘nonprogressive,’ and connotes a certain backwardness
and an old-fashioned unwillingness to take advantage of the beneficent
cornucopia of the God of American Technology.
Popular
publications are presenting this technology to the American public in
attractive packages, and are making it appear desirable and eminently
obtainable. For instance, The Saturday Evening Post’s October 1988 article
entitled “New Ways to Choose Your Baby’s Sex” described various natural and
unnatural methods that tinker with the reproductive process in order to produce
a child of a specific sex.
If
such methods do not work, of course, there is good old abortion as a backup,
and then you can try, try again.
The
reaction of Neofeminist groups to the practice of gender selection is
interesting to say the very least. Some groups, like the ‘Religious’ Coalition
for Abortion Rights, simply do what they do the best -- cram their heads into
the sand and simply deny that a problem exists; “Neither statistics nor records
exist to document the occurrence of gender selection abortions in the United
States. The idea of gender selection abortions is a myth.”[1]
Other
groups, such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), have denounced the
practice of gender selection, and have even managed to push through a law in
one state forbidding amniocentesis to determine a preborn baby’s sex. Not
surprisingly, their arguments against sex-selection seem to be borrowed
directly from a Right to Life pamphlet.
Any
port in a storm.
But
Neofeminist attempts to ban sex-selection abortions are doomed to failure,
because the retort given by the moneymakers (the abortionists) is predictable,
persuasive, and, for once, totally agreeable to pro-lifers: How can the NOW
condemn these abortions when it has pushed so long and so hard for abortion on
demand? After all, the ‘contents of the uterus’ aren’t human, aren’t alive,
aren’t persons. They’re just ‘blobs of tissue,’ right? How can ‘blobs of
tissue’ have a gender?
So
what difference does it make?
Curiously,
an article by a member of the stridently pro-abortion American Medical
Association (AMA) stated the pro-life position on gender- selection abortions
best; “A sad irony now confronts the feminists who fought so hard and so long
to make abortion on demand legally available. Abortion is increasingly being
used to end the life of healthy unborn infants just because they are not of the
sex their parents prefer. And almost all of the unborn babies being aborted for
no reason except that they are of an unwanted sex are female ... It’s a
Pandora’s Box of potential trouble --and it was abortion, with the insistence
on the legal right to eliminate human beings unwanted for any reason, that
opened the lid first.”[10]
Commenting
upon a related issue, Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women, when
she learned that teenage rape is increasing, complained that “Our children are
learning that it is acceptable to victimize women.”[11]
Why
should this be surprising?
It
is a great contradiction for the Neofeminists to wholeheartedly support free
abortion on demand, promiscuity, homosexuality, and what they quaintly call
freedom of expression (i.e., hard-core and violent pornography), and then
object to something that is a natural part of this conglomeration of immorality:
rape!
Sexual
gratification has now been completely separated from procreation and is seen by
the Neofeminists as a sacred “right,” so sacred that it is even permissible to
kill or wound in pursuit of it.
Why
shouldn’t a few unbalanced men see it the same way?
“What we would have in the next generation, then, would be about 90 percent boys and 10 percent girls. That would destroy everything for man -- his basis for emotion, for life, everything would be destroyed.”-- Professor Nikolai Dubinin, Chief of the Soviet Institute of General Genetics.[12]
It
is no secret that many societies place a much higher value on male children
than on female children. In China, baby boys are greeted as a “big happiness;”
baby girls are a “small happiness.” A traditional Hindu bridal blessing says
“May you be the mother of a hundred sons.” Indian parents blow horns, have big
parties, and give the midwife a large tip if she delivers a boy. If she
delivers a girl, she guiltily slinks out the back door.[13]
In
China, India, and many other Eastern countries, there is far more emphasis on
the extended family than there is in the West. It is natural for children to
care for their parents when they are no longer able to care for themselves.
Therefore, boys are seen as an asset because they guarantee that the parents
will not become destitute or be abandoned in their old age. Boys are also able
to labor in the fields if they stay with the family.
On
the other hand, girls are considered liabilities because they require a dowry
and then leave the family to care for their husbands and children. The
prejudice against women in these societies is pervasive and extreme in many
instances. Women must endure conditions unheard of in the West.
The
result of this attitude is quite predictable. In China, Korea, and India, the
abortion of girls has exploded. In 1985, the world sex- ratio average for
newborns was 102.5 boys per 100 girls; in Korea it was 117 to 100. The
situation in Korea became so intolerable that it is now illegal for doctors to
reveal the gender of preborn babies to parents in that country.[4]
It
is no coincidence that two of the world’s leaders in abortion -- China and
India -- also are in the forefront of committing and rationalizing femicide.
In
some areas of these countries, the average lifespan of newborn girls can be
measured in minutes. As soon as their sex is known, they are immediately
drowned or strangled.
Steven
Mosher, the China cultural expert who first exposed that country’s program of
coercive abortion, sterilization, and contraception, states that “It is
primarily the first-generation Chinese, the South Koreans and the Chinese who
repopulated in Malaysia and Southeast Asia who are the offenders. It is those
ethnic groups, rooted in the Confucian culture that has a male bias built into
its very core, that says little boys are precious and little girls are
worthless.”
The
Chinese one-child program has inevitably led from abortion to female
infanticide. Since boys are valued more than girls, female infanticide
(femicide) is common in China. Even the March 3, 1983 People’s Daily admitted
that “The butchering, drowning, and leaving to die of female infants has become
a grave social problem.” This “problem” was widely reported in the American
press as early as 1977.[14]
It
is now not at all uncommon to find Chinese towns with populations of more than
10,000 persons where little girls are almost nonexistent. For example, Jin
Mingai, mayor of Daijiawan village, claimed that “There is no infanticide here.
The peasants would never drown their own daughters.” However, there are no girl
children at all under the age of twelve in his village, which has a population
of 7,500 .[15]
China’s
newborn male-to-female sex ratio was about 1.085 in 1981, compared to the
historical Chinese ratio of 1.06. This means that there was a ‘shortfall’ of
232,000 baby girls in 1981. The Chinese sex ratio climbed to 1.110 in 1983, for
a ‘shortfall’ of 345,000 baby girls for the year.[16] In light of the fact that
amniocentesis, sonography, and other means of detecting fetal sex before birth
are almost unknown outside the largest Chinese cities, it is obvious that the
vast majority of these ‘disappearing’ girls are killed at birth, when their
parents discover their sex.
The
1983 sex ratio remained about the same until 1987, and then rose to 1.125 in
1989 and dropped slightly to 1.113 by May of 1990. The Chinese census also
revealed that the sex ratio for first children is about 1.060, and the sex
ratio for second and later children is about 1.140.[17]
This
means that about 3.5 million baby girls were killed at birth due to their
gender in the People’s Republic of China in the last decade alone .
Kang
Ling of the Secretariat of the All-China Women’s Federation estimates that, by
2010, there will be 40 million males of marriageable age who will be unable to
find wives as a direct result of this mass femicide.[17]
Beijing’s
China News Service has also announced that 93 percent of unmarried adults in
Beijing (Peking) are men. Single men outnumber single women by a million in the
29 to 49 age group in Beijing alone. Men’s prospects for marriage, of course,
are even bleaker in the rural areas, where female infanticide is most
prevalent.
This
is only one ghastly aspect of the wonderful new world that the Neoliberals are
dreaming of: The world where they will have complete control. This is the
ultimate result of losing respect for God and for the lives of the most
wonderful of His creations, human beings. This is what the Neoliberals so
passionately desire for all of us.
We
in the United States need only to look to India to see the future of
infanticide in this country.
Girls
are considered to be a burden in many areas of India for several reasons. They
leave the home when they marry and their parents, when old, therefore have
nobody to care for them. Girls also require a substantial dowry in order to be
considered desirable for marriage.
This
is no mere anecdotal phenomenon restricted to just a few backwards, savage
villages. In virtually every country of the world, women outlive men and
outnumber men by about three percent. However, in India, men outnumber women by
24 million, leading to the highest percentage of men in the world. These
figures suggest that at least one million female infanticides occur in India
every year .
Haryana
State, in north-central India, has a population of 16.3 million. It also has
India’s most skewed sex ratio at 1,144 males of all ages for every 1,000
females of all ages. If this current ratio applies to new births, this would
mean that about 15,000 abortions for sex selection (exclusively to kill preborn
girls) take place every year in Haryana State alone.[18]
According
to a 1990 UNICEF report, which almost certainly understates the magnitude of
the slaughter, a minimum of 300,000 baby girls are killed annually by exposure
or choking, the methods of “choice.”[4]
Shushila
Gopalan, a member of Parliament, stated that “We are living in a country with a
strong sex bias against women. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan [states],
baby girls continue to be killed after birth ... and now killing female fetuses
has become big business.”[19]
The
attitude of Indian families that murder their newborn girls is identical to
that of pro-aborts in the United States. As one 26-year old woman told India
Today ; “If I and my husband have the right to have a child, we also have the
right to kill it if it happens to be a daughter and we decide we cannot afford
it. Outsiders and the Government have no right to poke their noses into
this.”[19]
This
is absolutely classic pro-abortion Newthink, and shows that this type of warped
‘reasoning’ is not peculiar to the United States. The baby girls are usually
killed by forcing them to inhale coarse rice grains. In other cases, husbands
plant a poisonous madar plant upon learning that their wives are pregnant. By
the time the wife delivers, the plant will be ready to kill the baby if it is a
girl.
This
Indian cultural bias against girls appears not to be restricted to the
subcontinent; at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, more than 90
percent of all pregnant Indian women give birth exclusively to boys.
It
is not clear what demographic or sociologic effects a preponderance of men will
have on the Indian economy or society. The only certainty is that the
divergence between the male and female populations will accelerate if trends
and conditions remain as they are now in India.
Despite
its current prevalence, female infanticide in China and India appears to be on
the verge of being stamped out. The cause is not the elimination of sex
discrimination or a more enlightened and progressive attitude among men. The
cause is amniocentesis and abortion. The ‘birth defect’ of femaleness can now
be detected before birth, and this defect can be effectively and efficiently
remedied.
As
the abortionists say, this is much more aesthetically pleasing than the dirty
and bothersome task of strangling a struggling newborn baby with your bare
hands and burying her cold, bruised little body in the parched ground.
It
is a sad and tiresome fact that abortionists are cut from the same bolt of
rotten cloth the world over. Seeing a glorious opportunity for a few thousand
quick rupees, these ‘champions of women’s rights’ immediately set up
amniocentesis clinics all over India, and advertised with slogans like “Better
500 rupees now than 500,000 later,” referring to the contrasting costs of
abortion and a dowry at a later date.
Dr.
Jaswant Singh of the Rohtak Medical College says that “The doctors who are
doing this [amniocentesis and abortion] have stopped all other kinds of
medicine. This is all they are doing. They are making a lot of money.”[18]
Indian
Women’s rights organizations have banded together under the umbrella group
“Forum Against Sex Determination and Sex Pre-Selection.” A study performed by
the organization in Bombay found that more than 99 percent of sex-selection
abortions were performed on girls. In the country as a whole, more than 90
percent of all women who received notice that their babies were girls aborted
them.[20] Horrified by these statistics, Indian Neofeminist groups condemned
abortion for sex selection as a “Frankenstein monster,” and began to push for a
ban on amniocentesis clinics nationwide.
The
language used by Neofeminists opposing sex-selection technology is virtually
identical in India and the United States. In our country, comical remarks by
pro-abortion groups trying to have it both ways provide continuing amusement
for pro-life activists. For example, Francoise Jacobsohn, president of the New
York National Organization for Women, said that “I think sex-selection abortion
is a horrifying symptom that women are still being ignored and disregarded as
human beings in virtually every society in the world. The real issue in
question here is not abortion, but the treatment of women.”
Notice
that “The real issue is not abortion” (Of course not. It never is). To admit
that the real issue is abortion would be psychic death to pro-aborts. It is
interesting to note that Jacobsohn had nothing at all to say about the more
than 750,000 unborn women who die every year in this country at the hands of
abortionists -- and that many of these baby-killers are themselves female!
But
the Indian pro-abortion protests were doomed to failure. The sneering response
from the abortionists in both the United States and India was totally
predictable -- and, for once, right on the mark. The baby- killers made the
pointed statement “You women pushed for abortion for any reason twenty years
ago, and you got it. Now you want to begin putting restrictions on it. You’re
as bad as those right-to-lifers.”
The
women’s rights groups had no logical reply to this rejoinder, because none
existed.
Of
course, many pro-abortionists have no objections at all to sex-selection
abortions. If they did, they would be displaying “inconsistency,” which is
anathema to the anti-life mentality. As shown by the quotes in Figure 85-1,
Planned Parenthood (who else?) and other radical pro-abortionists heartily
approve of the selective slaughter of preborn baby girls.
|
“... once the state of the fetal diagnostic art moves from second to first trimester, so abortion falls within the menstrual extraction period. Planned Parenthood will increasingly connote planning the sex as well as the spacing of offspring.”-- Dr. Elizabeth B. Connell, president, Planned Parenthood National Medical Committee. “Boy or Girl: Now Choice, Not Chance.” Medical World News , December 1, 1975. Quoted in Lisa Andrusko. “What Are “Sex-Selection” Abortions?” National Right to Life News , March 14, 1985, pages 3 and 10. |
|
“Abortion for sex selection in the eighth month may not be good, but that is for people themselves to decide.”-- Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist. Quoted in Lisa Andrusko. “What Are “Sex-Selection” Abortions?” National Right to Life News , March 14, 1985, pages 3 and 10. |
|
“Alarm over the prospect that prenatal diagnostic techniques, which permit identification of fetal sex and facilitate abortion of healthy but unwanted female fetuses has led some to urge their outright prohibition. This article argues against that response ... conditions in some societies may sometime render excusable the inclination to abort certain healthy female fetuses ... care must be taken to resist ethical imperialism which projects one country’s values onto other communities existing in different circumstances.”-- Bernard M. Dickens, “Prenatal Diagnosis and Female Abortion: A Case Study in Medical Law and Ethics.” Journal of Medical Ethics , September 1986, pages 143 and 144. |
|
“I would never use it, and my wife and I would never use it. However, to deny such a test raises serious questions -- such as, is the geneticist imposing his personal bias on someone else?”-- Dr. M. Neil MacIntyre, Professor of anatomy and human genetics at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Quoted by J.L. Lazarevic. “Ethics Bug Scientist in Child Sex Choice.” The Pittsburgh Press , February 29, 1976, page B-4. |
Notice
how the last two authors whose quotes are listed in Figure 85-1 use standard
pro-abortion slogans to justify even the most insupportable “terminations.” The
last quote is nothing more than the old “personally opposed” copout, and the
second-to-last quote is simply the tired “don’t foist your morality off on me”
slogan dressed up to operate on an international scale. According to Dickens,
it is all right to flood developing countries with IUDs, injectable
abortifacients, and abortion technology, but it is “ethical imperialism” to
suggest that it might be wrong to kill children just because they are girls.
Strangely,
this attitude conflicts with the views of many other pro-aborts, which
demonstrates the depth to which the anti-lifers are divided on this issue. An
author in the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s Family Planning Perspectives
recognized the economic principle of scarcity vs. value even as applied to
human beings when she said that “When there are proportionately few women (a
high sex ratio), their status will be low, but when there is a relative surplus
of women (a low sex ratio), their status will be high. According to this
hypothesis, when women are in short supply, men will tend to keep them under
tighter control by prizing virginity until marriage, emphasizing monogamous
relation- ships, and placing high values on the roles of mother and homemaker
...”[21]
The
essence of the pro-life position regarding sex-selection baby- killing was
summarized quite competently and accurately by writer Jo McGowan in the
February 28, 1989 issue of Newsweek Magazine; “Which abortion is not
‘selective?’ The handicapped fetus of the mother who only wants a perfect baby,
the third child of a mother who only wants two, the unplanned baby of a mother
who wants total control of her life -- all of these can be ‘selectively’
aborted ... Perhaps from the undeniable truth that it is wrong to kill a baby
simply because it is a girl, will emerge the larger truth that it is wrong to
kill a baby at all.”
==========================================
[1] ‘Religious’ Coalition for Abortion Rights. Propaganda pamphlet entitled “Words of Choice.” 1991, Washington, D.C., page 4.
[2] Syndicated columnist Mona Charen. “Sex-Selected Abortions Hard to Defend.” The Oregonian , January 6, 1989, page B5.
[3] Eve Glicksman. “Breeding for Gender Encourages ‘Shopping Mentality.’” The Oregonian , June 18, 1991, page B7.
[4] For example, see Dr. Morton A. Stenchever’s letter entitled “An Abuse of Prenatal Diagnosis” on page 408 the July 24, 1973 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association . This letter is available as Reprint #2004 from the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706.
[5] Jeremy Knox, M.D. “Doctor’s Dilemma: Abortion if Fetus is Wrong Sex.” Boston Globe , August 11, 1976, page 1.
[6] Toronto Globe and Mail , September 23, 1987. Also see the Canadian Press Dispatch , September 1, 1987.
[7] Richard Lyons, op.cit ., Roberta Steinbacher, “Futuristic Implications of Sex Preselection,” in Holmes, et.al ., (editors), The Custom-Made Child? Women-Centered Perspectives . New Jersey: Human Press, 1981. A much earlier study on sex ratio preferences is discussed in S. Dinitz, R.R. Dynes, and A.C. Clarke. Marriage and Family Living , 16,128 (1954). Also see the Toronto Globe and Mail , June 18, 1984.
[8] Charles F. Westoff and Ronald R. Rindfuss. “Sex Preselection in the United States: Some Implications.” Science , May 10, 1974, pages 633 to 636. This article is available as Reprint #2003 from the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706.
[9] The results of Dr. Linda Fidell’s survey of 710 women undergraduates can be found in The Toronto Sunday Star , June 1, 1980.
[10] “Signs of Trouble Ahead.” American Medical Association News , November 22, 1976.
[11] Glenn Ellen Duncan. “Baby Girls: The Latest Abortion Victims.” Catholic Twin Circle , March 12, 1989, pages 4 to 7.
[12] Professor Nikolai Dubinin, Chief of the Soviet Institute of General Genetics. Quoted in John Cotter’s pamphlet entitled “Where have all the little girls gone?”
[13] Robert Stone. “Women Endangered Species in India.” The Oregonian , March 14, 1989, page B7.
[14] For example, see Jay Mathews. “Chinese Said to Determine Sex of Fetus, Abort Females.” The Washington Post , March 1, 1977, page A11.
[15] Jin Mingai, mayor of Daijiawan village, whose children are all boys. Quoted in Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times News Service. “Birthrates in China Beg Question: Where Are the Girls?” The Oregonian , Sunday, June 23, 1991, page A14.
[16] Michael Weisskopf. “China’s Birth Control Policy Drives Some to Kill Baby Girls.” The Washington Post , January 8, 1985, page A1.
[17] “China’s Population Policy is Proving to Be Effective.” Beijing Review (English Edition), November 6-12, 1989, pages 42 to 44.
[18] Edward A. Gargan, New York Times News Service. “Ultrasound Changes Face of Third World.” The Oregonian , December 15, 1991, page A20.
[19] Shushila Gopalan, member of the Indian Parliament, quoted in the Toronto Star , June 23, 1982.
[20] R. Rao. “Move to Stop Sex-Test Abortion.” Nature Magazine. November 20-26, 1986, page 202.
[21] E.G. Stockwell. “Sex Ratios, Women’s Status.” Alan Guttmacher Institute, Family Planning Perspectives , November-December 1987, page 239.
==========================================
Marc Lappe. “Choosing the Sex of Our Children: A Dream Come True or ... ?” The Hastings Center Report , February 1974. Also available as Reprint #2002 from the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706.
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