A reader writes:

What do you think about this? Something about it disturbs me.

I’ve been thinking about this issue for a while now (I’ve read a number of articles on it), so I have a lot to say about it. For starters, I liked the article. It was a very balanced one in a realm where balance is VERY rare. Many of the articles I’ve read in the past were too biased on either side to take an honest look at the future of the abortion catastrophe from this perspective.

As for the issues of artificial wombs and viability, I think that it holds much promise, but like every new technology is ripe with possible abuses.

Celebrities are already routinely inducing labor 4-6 weeks early to avoid stretch marks and the rest of the body altering aspects of pregnancy that can be minimized by shortening a pregnancy. These type of people will likely be the first on board to manipulate a natural process for reasons of vanity and self centeredness.

One can also imagine a world where lots of women who are unwilling to deal with the difficulties of a pregnancy are willing to give it a go if they can do it artificially. One wonders how someone who is unwilling to make the sacrifice of pregnancy is going to be able to make the sacrifices of motherhood.

Additionally you’ll get the “I’m a mom” homosexuals who intend to further manipulate the concept of a family to cater to their political agenda. The article even mentions research to create an embryo without a man being involved. Gee, I wonder who wants that? The artificial womb opens up the idea of a baby without a woman involved too. Ugh.

And from a Catholic perspective (and some Protestants I’m told), the continued trend of people “playing God” and excessively manipulating the life creation process to be able to conceive a child when they were unable to do so naturally, will only get exacerbated by the creation of an artificial womb.

But even with all of these potential abuses, the artificial womb could do much good. Babies like Susan Torres, the daughter of the comatose woman who was kept on life support as long as possible so that the baby could be born and have a fighting chance, but ended up dying in the end, may have better success at a sustained life. There are a number of scenarios I can think of where this can be very beneficial without any moral questions.

As for abortion, I think it is a red herring solution from the perspective of women choosing this over an abortion. Women who get abortions are looking to avoid shame and to forget. Putting the baby up for adoption isn’t a “viable” option for most who get abortions because it both doesn’t avoid the shame (because everyone knows you were pregnant) and makes it hard to forget because your child is out there somewhere. The artificial womb does not solve the problem of the child being out there somewhere. That child may try to come and find you some day. It makes it hard to forget.

As well, while science continues to amaze me, I suspect it’ll be a long time after we can create a pregnancy in an artificial womb before we can TRANSFER a very small fetus from a natural womb to an artificial one. Fetus’s are very delicate and we’d have to figure out how cut the umbilical cord and re-attach it to the artificial one. This would make it so that a woman would have to carry the child for a number of months, probably past the point of the pregnancy showing (a key moment to avoiding the shame).

But all of these factors should not stop us from embracing the technology. I think the underlying theme of the article was that embracing these technologies will be the key to getting beyond the current “stalemate”. Said another way, whoever is able to effectively embrace the technology and use it to their advantage (whether that be continuing down the road to objectifying life or towards having a great respect for the value of life by going to amazing ends to save it) will likely be the victor in this war. I’m not sure this is the case, but I think it is a reasonable assertion to test out.

To sum up, I’ll quote what I think is the key admission in the article to why this provides promise to the pro-life movement:

“Many pro-choice women, like me, have been deeply disturbed by ultrasound scan photos that show fetuses, at earlier than once thought periods of gestation, sucking their thumbs, appearing to smile and otherwise resembling a full-term baby.”

Those same people (I’ll include men too) will be awful disturbed to know that the baby they’re allowing young women to flush down the toilet could be saved, without them “forcing” a pregnancy on those same young women. While the young women may not be sympathetic to that logic for the reasons stated above, it could, along with further progress in early viability, help turn the tide on this very important issue by forcing many to admit that the current lack of substantial limitations on abortion is treating life far to casually.

To use this technology to that advantage, we must embrace it, lest it be used against us.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Catholicism, Catholicism - Morals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.