CultureWatch » Bioethics

Killing Babies to Have Babies

Bill Muehlenberg — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 01:00:24 +0000

When you combine moral relativism, a war on truth, out-of-control radical individualism, and a pro-death culture, you get the madness that passes for our daily newspaper headlines. Indeed, it can be argued that as we lose the ability to think straight, we also lose the ability to act right.

The sheer madness of modern thought on almost any social issue today is coupled with a moral vacuum in which anything goes. We are becoming dumbed down mentally and morally, and the tragic results are everywhere to be seen. Simply open any newspaper and the ugly effects of all this are clearly on display.

Consider some recent items in the press about abortion, IVF, and morally and mentally confused parents. Earlier this year we heard about parents who aborted twin boys conceived through IVF, because they wanted a girl instead. I wrote this story up here: www.billmuehlenberg.com/2011/01/08/designer-babies-means-dead-babies/

One news item on this incredible story says in part: “The husband said sex selection should be determined on a case-by-case basis. He said: ‘Girls will go and get abortions and terminate when they know it’s not the right sex. That’s the reality. We think it’s our right to have a chance to do it. It’s ridiculous that sex selection is illegal, actually.’ And one of the country’s IVF pioneers said he agreed the couple should be allowed to choose the sex of their next baby. Professor Gab Kovacs said: ‘I can’t see how it could possibly harm anyone’.”

No harm? What about the death of the unwanted baby, simply because he or she is the wrong gender? How totally bizarre is this? We are creating babies by artificial means, but if they don’t meet our particular specifications, we kill them.

But sadly this schizoid life/death arrangement has become a regular occurrence. In fact, it is so common that the New York Times recently featured a lengthy article on all this. Entitled “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy,” it speaks to this widespread practice with barely a trace of ethical concern.

The article offers some personal stories of couples who have had twins through IVF, only to kill one of the babies for various reasons. It is a great example of the mental gymnastics people will engage in to push their immoral agendas. The article begins, in part, this way:

“For all its successes, reproductive medicine has produced a paradox: in creating life where none seemed possible, doctors often generate more fetuses than they intend. In the mid-1980s, they devised an escape hatch to deal with these megapregnancies, terminating all but two or three fetuses to lower the risks to women and the babies they took home.

“But what began as an intervention for extreme medical circumstances has quietly become an option for women carrying twins. With that, pregnancy reduction shifted from a medical decision to an ethical dilemma. As science allows us to intervene more than ever at the beginning and the end of life, it outruns our ability to reach a new moral equilibrium. We still have to work out just how far we’re willing to go to construct the lives we want.”

At least the word “moral” is mentioned. But it is all downhill from there. Consider this clear-cut case of mental and moral confusion: “What is it about terminating half a twin pregnancy that seems more controversial than reducing triplets to twins or aborting a single fetus? After all, the math’s the same either way: one fewer fetus. Perhaps it’s because twin reduction (unlike abortion) involves selecting one fetus over another, when either one is equally wanted. Perhaps it’s our culture’s idealized notion of twins as lifelong soul mates, two halves of one whole. Or perhaps it’s because the desire for more choices conflicts with our discomfort about meddling with ever more aspects of reproduction.”

What a minute – stop right there at the first sentence. What do you mean, “terminating half a twin pregnancy”? Just how foolish is this? Twins, as the name clearly indicates, means we have two babies – two, distinct and separate individuals.

When you kill one of the two babies, you have not killed half of anything; you have killed an entire and complete human being. As always, by playing fast and loose with language, the moral relativists think they can cover up a multitude of sins.

And so much of this killing involves the worrying trend in designer babies. We want to create children to order – much like we go to the counter of a hamburger joint and tell them whether or not we want pickles or mustard with the burger. Our cafeteria lifestyle has now even extended to how we have children.

The article continues: “Who doesn’t want to create a more certain and comfortable future for themselves and their children? The more that science makes that possible, the more it has inflated our expectations of what family life should be. We’ve come to believe that the improvements are not only our due but also our responsibility. Just look at the revolution in attitudes toward selecting egg or sperm donors. In the 1970s, when sperm donation took off, most clients were married women with infertile husbands; many couples didn’t want to know about the source of the donation. Today patients in the United States can choose donors based not only on their height, hair color and ethnicity but also on their academic and athletic accomplishments, temperament, hairiness and even the length of a donor’s eyelashes.”

This is brave new world sort of stuff, and it is getting worse all the time. Today it is hair colour, but tomorrow it is what? A perfect race to rule the world? Have we not seen all this before? Have we not yet learned the lessons of history?

Al Mohler recently penned some commentary on the NYT article. His insights are worth sharing. “Those who have tried to justify any and all means of controlling reproduction must face squarely the fact that they have created what amounts to a consumer market for babies — and customers eventually find someone to provide what they demand. When it comes to human life, the stage is set for tragedy.”

He concludes this way: “‘The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy’ is one of the most significant articles of recent years. With chilling and unflinching candor, Ruth Padawer virtually forces her readers to see the twisted thinking that justifies the killing of the unborn, and then she tries to evade moral responsibility by calling the procedure a ‘reduction.’

“There is a story behind this story, of course. The intersection where modern reproductive technologies and legal abortion meet is now a deadly place for many unborn babies. In the name of personal preference and for ‘social reasons,’ some women now demand that their multiple babies be aborted so that they will have only the one baby they want.

“Padawer says that many Americans are uneasy about this knowledge, perhaps ‘because the desire for more choices conflicts with our discomfort about meddling with ever more aspects of reproduction.’ But the procedure so dishonestly called ‘reduction’ is really not about mere ‘meddling.’ It is murder.”

Quite so. Call it what you like; seek to dress it up all you like; play all the verbal engineering games you like, but at the end of the day we still end up with a dead baby – all in the name of choice.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1345057/Couple-sons-abort-twin-boys-IVF–try-baby-girl-daughter-died.html

www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/magazine/the-two-minus-one-pregnancy.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

www.albertmohler.com/2011/08/17/this-isnt-meddling-its-murder/

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The Manufacture and Commodification of Children

Bill Muehlenberg — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 04:24:01 +0000

A hallmark of contemporary Western culture is an obsessive fixation on the wants and desires of adults, to the exclusion of all else. As long as individual adults are happy, who gives a rip about anything else, be it the rest of society, or even any children involved.

But most human choices and actions are not done in isolation, but will have an impact on others. And plenty of the new “reproductive rights” have a huge impact on others, especially children. Yet children are the real losers in the new reproductive technologies, with adult whims trumping the wellbeing of children.

We find three explicit examples of this in today’s press. The first concerns a brief item about a woman in Victoria who is selling her kids on eBay. Yes you heard me right. The story begins this way: “A Victorian woman is being investigated after she offered her children for sale on the internet. Police were called in last week when an auction notice appeared on eBay offering two children for sale. A Geelong woman was selling her son and daughter, both under the age of 10, to the highest bidder. Police tracked her down but she told detectives she was only joking.”

Yeah, some joke. The kids probably love it alright. As I said in one media interview, there are plenty of children, certainly around this age, who are struggling with issues of identity and self-worth and so on. To know that your own parent has put you up on offer like a used CD is certainly a concern and could well have a negative impact on these children.

The full details of the story are not yet in, so we don’t know if this in fact was a sick joke or even more sadly, the real deal. Either way it does not say much about the mother. But it is something we can expect to see happening more often I suspect. Kids can now be purchased as commodities, so why can’t they be sold as commodities a well?

The next two stories have to do with IVF. The first one has to do with winning a chance to get an IVF baby through the lottery. Here is how the news reports are covering this: “Experts have reacted with dismay to a plan by the organiser of the world’s first IVF lottery to bring it to Australia.

“The lottery, which experts have blasted for preying on desperate infertile couples and ‘demeaning human life’, gives ticket holders a chance to ‘win’ a baby. Thousands of £20 tickets will go up for grabs on July 30 in the UK, giving the winner £25,000 ($37,000) worth of fertility treatment to realise their dream of parenthood. The competition has the approval of Britain’s Gaming Commission.

“The prize includes accommodation at a luxury hotel, a chauffeur to take the winner to appointments and a personal assistant. The winner will choose their own fertility clinic, as well as having their fertility drugs and therapies paid for. And if the standard treatment isn’t successful, the winner can choose another way of fulfilling the deal, such as reproductive surgery, donor eggs or a surrogate birth.

“Lottery organiser Camille Strachan, who set up the fertility support group To Hatch after her own failed IVF treatment, said the competition would help relieve financial pressures on would-be parents. ‘Bringing this to Australia this year is at the forefront of my mind because I do get a lot of members from Australia and infertility is just as big a problem in Australia as it is in the UK,’ said Ms Strachan, who is also considering starting lotteries for expensive cancer treatment and aged care.”

This is not just the commodification of children but the commercialisation of the entire reproductive process. The truth is, IVF is an intrusive and intensive procedure, which often does not bring “success” after just the first cycle. And there are plenty of reasons why even in the best of cases we should be cautious about IVF.

I highlight some of these concerns here: www.billmuehlenberg.com/2007/08/30/concerns-about-ivf/
And here: www.billmuehlenberg.com/2009/06/15/more-concerns-about-ivf/

Children are – or should be seen as – one of life’s greatest treasures, and not seen cynically as just some raffle prize or giveaway in some cheap contest. Beginning life in that cynical fashion cheapens their chances of a normal life. They may well struggle with issues of self-image and worth, knowing they were simply the product of a contest.

Life in general is already full of enough gimmicks without turning one of the great experiences into a trivialised affair. But again, this is just part of the way we have cheapened life, with our children becoming mere commodities and objects in an increasingly sick adult world.

A third example has to do with proposed changes to Australian IVF laws, allowing for gender-selection IVF. A review is now under way to see if the law should be changed to permit this. It appears to be yet one more move to cater to selfish adult lifestyles, instead of focusing on the wellbeing of children.

We need to recall that when IVF was first allowed in Australia it was only available to married couples who were genuinely infertile. Even that was a questionable move at the time, but things have changed radically since then, as the slippery slope has well and truly entered into all this.

Soon enough de facto couples were also allowed access to these IVF programs, and then more recently, lesbians and singles were granted access. Medical infertility gave way to “social infertility” in other words. Even those who are perfectly capable of having a child if they simply stick to the means given us by nature have now won the right to expensive and invasive assisted reproduction technologies.

Using IVF to now simply pick your child’s gender is simply more of this move to elevate adult rights above every other concern, and it is yet another case where children have simply become political guinea pigs in our attempts at radical social engineering.

Today it is selling kids on eBay, IVF lotteries, and gender selection. Tomorrow it will be what? One can only imagine – and cringe. Children are clearly the big losers here, and their fate will only further worsen as we allow adults to do whatever they want for whatever reason they want, irrespective of the consequences to others.

We should have heeded the warning signs two or three decades ago. Things now may be too late. But any society which calls itself civilised must do all it can to stand up for those who cannot defend themselves. What we do to our children will determine what kind of society we will have to look forward to. And at the moment things are not looking very promising.

www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-17/kids-for-sale-ebay/2797604

www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/win-a-baby-lotto-sparks-disgust/story-fn7x8me2-1226096009441

www.bodyandsoul.com.au/parenting+pregnancy/pregnancy/gender+selection+should+we+get+a+sayr,13241

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Peter Singer’s Twisted Ethics

Bill Muehlenberg — Thu, 05 May 2011 16:11:27 +0000

I was absolutely gobsmacked to read this headline: “Child’s life is the best Mother’s Day gift.” And I was further bowled over to read the next line: “Eight million deaths a year can be prevented – we only have to learn how to give.” I was absolutely flabbergasted because of who the author was.

These lines are from none other than Peter Singer, one of the world’s most infamous proponents not only of abortion on demand, but of infanticide. In today’s Melbourne Age he urges us to act on early childhood deaths due to malnutrition, disease, and so on.

No one would argue against this. But who is calling for this action? Who is making these weighty moral pronouncements? This world-renowned ethicist is not only pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia, but he is also fully in favour of euthanasia. Thus his concerns about human life here don’t exactly seem to stack up.

Peter Singer is the atheist utilitarian philosopher who is full on about animal rights, and is a committed vegetarian. He has even written serious articles informing us that there is really nothing wrong with bestiality. For this bioethicist, the golden rule seems to be this: feel free to have sex with animals as long as you don’t eat them afterwards.

And Singer has explicitly stated that the newborn have no inherent right to life, but must earn that right if they pass various tests for personhood which he has laid out. He says it is unreasonable to expect the newborn to be classified as persons, and we should not automatically assume they have some basic right to keep living.

As he notoriously wrote with Helga Kuhse in the 1985 volume, Should the Baby Live?: “We do not think new-born infants have an inherent right to life”. Or as he wrote in a July 1983 edition of Pediatrics: “Species membership in Homo-sapiens is not morally relevant. If we compare a dog or a pig to a severely defective infant, we often find the non-human to have superior capacities.”

There you have it: abortion, euthanasia, and even infanticide, with a bit of bestiality thrown in on the side. And this is from a world leading ethicist. No wonder the world’s ethics are so incredibly screwed up. With a guy like this teaching thousands of students a year about these kinds of values, it will be hard not to be heading for moral meltdown big time.

In the article he refers to the death of children due to poor drinking water, or lack of basic healthcare, saying, “You can help to stop these unnecessary deaths”. Yes a very worthy cause indeed. But his words ring absolutely hollow. I wait for the day when he says similar things about children still in the womb, or those newly born.

He really should spare us these moral motions about a child’s life. Indeed, with 45 to 50 million unborn children killed each year by abortion – all with the full approval of Singer – these 8 million tragic childhood deaths almost seem to pale in comparison.

Why in the world should we buy his jaundiced naturalistic worldview which allows him to show compassion to some human beings, but results in so much cold-heartedness concerning so many other human beings? What kind of worldview is this which sees only some humans in only some conditions as being worthy of life?

Where have we heard this kind of twisted and poisonous morality before? Oh yeah, it was back there in Germany just a half century ago. We certainly have heard all this before. Lots of lives are just not worthy of life and the “experts” will inform us as to which lives will be allowed to live, and which must go.

If Singer were around in 1920 it is not hard to imagine him lecturing ethics students about the great value of a new book which appeared then in Germany. He would probably have this volume on his required reading list, and even test his students on it at the end of term.

I refer of course to the work by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding. It was called Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (The Authorization of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life). It nicely laid the groundwork for the sordid activities of the Nazis.

Indeed, so marred and scarred has the German psyche been since the Holocaust and the Nazi reign of terror, that when someone like Singer goes to Germany today to deliver lectures in “ethics” he is roundly booed and rejected by angry protestors. Some of his talks have even been cancelled as a result.

The Germans have good reason to be wary of the Singer gospel of death. They lived through it, and millions died as this utilitarian philosophy was put into lethal practice. Yet incredibly Singer has expressed surprise at such reactions, especially from German disability groups and the like.

But none of this has stopped Peter Singer from traipsing around the world, teaching us about his version of morality, or rather, immorality, or amorality. He expects us to take him seriously when he writes about sickly children, yet he thinks we should be able to bump off other sickly children, and sick old folks, and all sorts of other expendable “non-persons”.

Singer will undoubtedly keep drawing large crowds and earn hefty fees as he preaches his version of morality. And morally-vacuous newspapers like the Age will be happy to keep running with his stuff. But just remind me again: what was that word that starts with ‘hypo’ and ends with ‘crisy’?

www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/childs-life-is-the-best-mothers-day-gift-20110505-1ea53.html

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Let’s Create a Master Race – Again

Bill Muehlenberg — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:31:08 +0000

It seems that learning from the mistakes of history is not one of the strong points of many intellectuals. Although we can be taught so much by the study of history, especially truths about the avoidance of its past mistakes, it appears that some intellects live in a history-free bubble.

Consider the call to breed a superior race. Now where have we heard that sort of lingo before? I would not have thought that the mega-monstrosity of the Nazi programme took place all that long ago. The horrors of the third Reich really should be fresh in our collective memory.

How can we so readily forget what the Second World War was fought over? Have we no longer any idea of what the aims of the Nazis were? The idea of creating a master race, a race of superior beings, was at the heart of Hitler’s nefarious schemes.

He wanted to breed a superior race – the Aryans – while weeding out inferior races. Thus a combination of eugenics, selective breeding, mass killings, and compulsory sterilisation was used to create this master class. The whole world knows – or should know – about the horrors of such a vision.

While most people today shy away from any similar ideals or goals, the new biomedical technologies, coupled with secularist hubris and the desire to play God have resulted in newer, but equally sinister calls for a superior race. Indeed, new biotechnologies make many of the Hitlerian dreams of the past potential reality today.

Thus when we read about influential ethicists calling for the breeding of superior human beings, we all should shudder – big time. And that is exactly what one Australian-born ethicist is proposing. Here is how a news item in today’s press breaks the story:

“A leading Australian ethicist has advocated genetically screening embryos to create a smarter society of superior ‘designer babies’ with higher IQs. Melbourne’s Julian Salvulescu, now Oxford’s practical ethics professor, has said it is our ‘moral obligation’ to use IVF to choose the smartest embryos, even if that maintains or increases social inequality.

“Experts have criticised the Gattaca-style idea, saying the money involved could be better spent improving quality of life in Africa. They have also warned IQ screening could result in unintended results. But Dr Salvulescu has said we have a moral obligation to create a smarter society, thereby dramatically reducing welfare dependency, the number of school dropouts, the crowding of jails and the extent of poverty.

“‘There are other ethical principles which should govern reproduction, such as the public interest,’ Dr Salvulescu said. ‘Even if an individual might have a stunningly good life as a psychopath, there might be reasons based on the public interest not to bring that individual into existence. My own view is that the economic and social benefits of higher cognition are reasons in favour of selection, but secondary to the benefits to the individual. Cheaper, efficient whole genome analysis makes it a real possibility in the near future’.”

Strange, but I recall Hitler using moral arguments as he made his case for the creation of a superior race. Now we have a respectable ethicist calling for much the same. Of course Salvulescu has made headlines before. Indeed, his radical views have been the subject of several posts of my own, such as this one:

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2008/11/18/those-unethical-ethicists/

Using the new genetics to create a race with enhanced capabilities may sound good on paper, but whenever it has been tried, it always comes with a cost. Even secular filmmakers have been quite aware of the inherent dangers in all this. And it is not only the important 1997 film Gattaca which speaks to these concerns.

Many other Hollywood productions have spoken to these dangerous prospects. Films such as The Sixth Day (2000) or The Island (2005) also come to mind. Of course it is not just those in the entertainment industry who have their misgivings about where we are heading with the new technologies.

Plenty of theologians, philosophers and ethicists have also been warning us for years about such risks. Many could be cited here. Let me focus on just one. Over two decades ago Richard John Neuhaus (who passed away two years ago) wrote a very important and influential essay entitled “The Return of Eugenics” (Commentary, April 1988).

In it he bemoaned where we were heading with the new biotechnologies, the secularisation of society, and the rise of the culture of death. He began his article with these words:

“Eugenics – that is, the movement to improve and even perfect the human species by technological means – arose in the late nineteenth century and flourished in this country and in Europe until the 1930s. Then it was challenged by scientific counter-evidence, and by growing uneasiness about its racialist implications. Later, or so the story was told, eugenics was definitely discredited by the Third Reich, which enlisted its doctrines and practices in support of unspeakable crimes against humanity. But now, in the journals and in the textbooks, the story is being told differently. The problem, it is said, was not so much with eugenics itself but with the Nazis: they abused eugenics, they went too far, they were extremists.

“Thus, in the longer view of history, the horror of the Third Reich may have effected but a momentary pause in the theory and practice of eugenics. For today, four decades later, eugenics is back, and it gives every appearance of returning with a vengeance in the form of developments ranging from the adventuresome to the bizarre to the ghoulish: the manufacture of synthetic children, the fabrication of families, artificial sex, and new ways of using and terminating undesired human life.”

He notes how the new eugenics can do far more damage than the old, simply because of the greater scientific and technological capabilities at our disposal: “The attempt to deny risk and suffering, the use and elimination of the unfit – these were all elements of the old eugenics. But what earlier eugenicists could only dream about can now be done; and, if it can be done, it likely will be done. In the technological possibility of creating ‘a new man in a new society,’ we have a vision that makes the similar ambition of political totalitarians seem modest by comparison.

“Of course there are serious people worrying about that ominous prospect. But it seems that soaring hubris, joined to technical capacity, has broken the bonds of moral restraint. That the bonds are broken is evident enough in the very efforts designed to impose limits.”

He concludes this way: “Perhaps the law, or maybe the remembrance of horrors past, will yet fend off the return of eugenics in its fullness. Perhaps popular moral judgment, drawn from older traditions of moral truth, will, through the democratic process, begin to erect fences. Perhaps our cultural leaders will rediscover modes of moral reason that appeal to a good beyond emotion. And perhaps not.

“And so, quite suddenly it seems, we are facing questions for which we have no ready answers. The questions are being answered, however. Most of us, probably because we want to live with a clear conscience, prefer not to think about the answers that are being given. Later, we can say that we did not know.”

Or we can say, in our self-defence, “I was just following orders”. Whether we bury our heads in the sand and plead ignorance, or whether we just pretend it will all go away, the new technologies – and the frightening prospects that they can generate – are upon us.

We either recall the lessons of history and act, or we allow the horrors of history to once again be unleashed upon us. But for the readers of this article at least, we cannot say that we did not know.

www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/only-breed-smart-babies-ethicist/story-fn6bfkm6-1226005105129

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A New Stolen Generation

Bill Muehlenberg — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 06:38:44 +0000

While many adults applaud the new reproductive technologies, many children conceived by these means are far from thrilled with them. Many are left not knowing who their actual mother or father is. And many go though lifelong agony and grief as a result. They have become the new stolen generation, deprived of the most important people in their lives.

Consider a case just mentioned in the press yesterday. A Victorian woman is so desperate to find her biological father that she has resorted to legal action. The woman, who is now in her mid-twenties, was conceived with the aid of an anonymous sperm donor whom she knows nothing about.

When she was told about this in 2005 at age 21 she said it was a “shattering” experience, and she still suffers extensively because of it. She said, “I cannot fathom going through life never knowing where I have come from, my ancestry and my identity. Every day I look at the faces of people around me and wonder: ‘Could you be my father, my half sister, my half brother, my grandparent?’”

One press account describes the story this way: “In a case that could affect thousands of donor-conceived families, Kimberley Springfield has asked a tribunal to overturn a bureaucratic decision that no action be taken to help identify the donor.

“Her case comes as state and federal parliamentary inquiries due to report in the coming months consider donor conception and the rights of donor-conceived people to gain access to identifying information about their donors. In submissions to both inquiries, Ms Springfield, 26, whose sister and at least four half siblings were conceived with her biological father’s sperm, said she had suffered mentally, emotionally and physically from being denied knowledge about her family since she found out how she was conceived five years ago.”

The tragedy is, however, that she is far from alone in this. There is an entire generation of young people who are suffering in similar ways. But all of this should not be unexpected. New reproductive technologies such as IVF have always been of concern to bioethicists and others.

Indeed, of real concern are the possible adverse psychological effects on IVF children. How do they perceive their situation? What disadvantages, if any, do they experience? How is their sense of personal history and identity affected by their unique situation? Such questions could not be properly answered until recently. But now that some IVF children are in their twenties, we can begin to find out.

Studies have found that many people conceived through donor sperm or eggs have not been told the truth about their origins. The exact figure is not known, but a large number of the estimated 20,000 babies born through such donations since the 1970s in Australia are ignorant of their parentage.

Many children conceived by IVF have spoken of the loss and/or confusion of identity. In an age that emphasizes knowing one’s roots and searching one’s genealogy, the dilemma of IVF children is greatly heightened. Many were conceived by donor sperm or egg. Some were housed in a surrogate mother. Indeed, for many, there is not a mother and a father, but a gaggle of “parents” and players. They have in effect been raised by a committee, not a mother and father.

Says one author, “As we know from studies of adopted children and the first testimonies of in vitro babies who are now reaching adulthood, questions of parental origin seem to have great psychic import; uncertainties about our identity on this primary level can have oddly troubling effects.”

Another case in point is that of Joanna Rose, an Australian woman who is still coming to terms with who she is and where she belongs, after learning she was fathered by an anonymous sperm donor. Since making the discovery, she has been desperately trying to discover who her father was.

In a moving interview on television some years ago, she spoke of her dilemma. She spoke of her frustration and despair, and how suicide seemed like the only option. It is worth quoting from the interview at length.

“I’m aware that there are huge aspects of my identity, my self-knowledge, my ancestry, my medical history that I don’t know. I’d rather answer these questions as soon as possible than live with unanswered questions for the rest of my life, and I’ll do whatever I can to answer them quickly so I can get on with the rest of my life without that vortex.

“It’s likely that I have between 100 and 200 brothers and sisters, half-brothers and sisters, and no way of identifying who they are and obviously that’s terribly badly thought out and irresponsible on behalf of the medical establishments and the Government to allow a situation like that to happen.

“I’ve always felt like a social guinea pig, an experimental guinea pig. . . . I am absolutely adamant from my experience and from the experience of other people like me that any form of anonymous donation is a violation of our human rights and our identities. As far as other arrangements are concerned, I have to question the idea of encouraging people to donate their paternity or their maternity under any circumstances, but at least if people had an ongoing relationship with their biological family, regardless of the arrangements, it’s less damage.

“I was the person who didn’t have a say in this whole arrangement in the first place. We are the people who can’t put our needs forward with a voice because we haven’t been conceived yet…”

A more recent story features another young woman with similar complaints. Myfanwy Walker was conceived through an anonymous sperm donor. In her twenties she finally found who the man was. It has been a harrowing experience for her. She is glad she finally discovered her genetic heritage. “But there was a massive amount of loss there for me. There were almost 20 years I could never reclaim, coupled with the realization that I could never have the genetic relationship with my own dad.”

She continues, “Basically my problem is with the ethics of the practice. It doesn’t protect the rights of the child. Once people understand the issues they probably wouldn’t choose to conceive via donor. . . . It should be a question of whether it’s in the interests of the child. You can’t negate that, you really can’t.”

Finally, problems can arise as have occurred in Sweden. A sperm donor there has been forced to pay child support for children he helped to father through his donor sperm. The children were raised by a lesbian couple, and the man played no role in their lives. But the lesbian couple split up, and the courts ordered him to pay the support.

And here in Australia similar problems have occurred. A lesbian couple has sued an IVF doctor because they ended up with twins instead of just the one child they were after. The couple is demanding financial payment for “wrongful birth”. Imagine how the children must feel, knowing that at least one of them is unwanted, and the subject of a “wrongful birth” case?

There are many more such tragic stories out there of children and young people who have been robbed of a mother or a father or both biological parents. We have allowed the ‘products’ of these new technologies to be used as guinea pigs, obviously not thinking through ahead of time the possible negative repercussions they would experience.

But this is always the case when we allow science and technology to race ahead of ethical considerations. We allow what we can do to outstrip what we should do. And as a result, we have all these young people who are now suffering by being part of a new stolen generation.

www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/woman-goes-to-court-to-find-father-20110126-1a5f1.html

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Surrogacy and Fashionable Families

Bill Muehlenberg — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:29:26 +0000

I must confess: I simply do not read all the gossip mags, so I do not know whether Nicole Kidman used a surrogate arrangement because she was biologically unable to have children or not. If she is able to have kids, but chose the surrogate, then one can wonder about her motivation: was it just to keep her Hollywood figure?

If so, that was a pretty lousy reason to use a surrogate. Indeed, in the view of many ethicists, surrogacy is bad news all around. It seems to create more problems than it solves, and is rightly banned in some places, at least where money is exchanged for such services.

I have written elsewhere about the dangers of surrogacy, so I won’t repeat myself here. See this early piece for example: www.billmuehlenberg.com/1995/03/02/womb-to-let/

But let me raise two further points. The first has to do with a common objection raised that ‘surrogacy is just like adoption, and we surely approve of adoption, don’t we?’ The truth is, the two have nothing in common whatsoever. So let me spend a few minutes pointing out these key dissimilarities.

A major difference involves the children themselves. Adoption solves a problem, whereas surrogacy creates one. As one relinquishing mother put it, “In adoption, a family sought a child in need of a family. In surrogacy, you are creating children for adults’ needs.”

Moreover, in adoption legislation, the interests of the child are clearly paramount, something which is not the case in surrogacy. As one commentator notes, “Adoption standards and practice have been constantly revised and refined in the light of new understandings developing in the field. . . . It is illegal to take a consent to adoption prior to the birth of the child, for the reason that a woman cannot be expected to make a lifelong decision for herself and her baby in the vacuum of the non-existence of the child.”

Or as another critic of surrogacy has remarked: “Adoption is a community response to the necessitous circumstances of a child already conceived and born, which differs markedly to the circumstances of a child conceived and born for the purpose of transfer to another couple”.

Ethicist Leon Kass says this: “We practice adoption because there are abandoned children who need good homes. We do not, and would not, encourage people deliberately to generate children for others to adopt.”

Or as another has put it: “Surrogate contracts and adoptions are not comparable. Adoption is the fulfilment, not the negation, of parental responsibility. Especially in a country where abortion is cheap and easy, when a woman gives her baby up for adoption she has thereby acknowledged her obligations to her child. Almost always, adoption is part of a conscious attempt to do what is best for the child. The surrogate mother does not admit she has any special obligations to her child; she does not admit that it is hers. The child cannot obligate her, she obligates it: It is a product, conceived for sale and use.”

David Blankenhorn also adds his voice to the fundamental nature of adoption: “Adoption is a wonderfully pro-child act. Adults respond to a child’s loss with altruistic, healing love. . . . Adoption does not deny but in fact presupposes the importance of natural parents. For this reason, despite all the good it does, adoption is ultimately a derivative and compensatory institution. It is not a stand-alone good, primarily because its existence depends upon prior human loss.”

The second issue worth raising is the commodification and dehumanisation that occurs in a surrogacy birth. I and others have spoken to this matter, but a piece in today’s Australian by Melinda Tankard Reist nicely makes this case. Consider the language being used in this process. Nicole and Keith gave thanks to “our gestational carrier”.

Says Melinda: “In those last two words, the woman whose body nurtured this child for nine months is stripped of humanity. The phrase is reminiscent of other terms popular in the global baby-production industry, such as suitcase, baby capsule, oven and incubator. The detached language views women as disposable uteruses. This dismantling of motherhood denies the psychological and physiological bonds at the heart of pregnancy.

“The euphemisms soothe: don’t worry, there is no mother whose voice the baby hears, no mother whose blood carries nutrients to the developing child, whose heart the child hears. No mother feeling first kicks, whose breasts swell, whose entire body and mind prepare for her arrival. US ethicist Wesley Smith said he was reminded of ‘Dune’s “axlotl tanks”, which are women who are lobotomised and then their bodies used as gestational carriers for clones.’ But doctors prefer it.

She lets other women tell their stories: “Donna Hill, who experienced a toxemic pregnancy followed by a traumatic induced labour which she hoped to forget, said, ‘I told myself I was just an incubator. I was just going into an operation and not giving birth.’

“Sydney surrogate mother Shona Ryan told a Canberra conference: ‘I had to forget I was pregnant. There was not the same joy and wonderment. In some ways I felt sorry for this baby that it didn’t receive the same attention [as my others]. I had to deny the pleasures of pregnancy.’

“After the birth: ‘My subconscious, my body, my emotions, knew I’d given birth and were screaming out for that baby. I kept having the urge to tell people, “I’ve had a baby!” The personal cost to me and my family [was too high]. I came to the conclusion I couldn’t recommend surrogacy to anyone’.”

She continues, “Of course the birth of any baby is worthy of celebration. But that doesn’t mean we should avoid hard questions about the fragmentation of motherhood, about a child who may wonder about their birth mother and why she is not raising them.

“We can’t keep our Eyes Wide Shut about the exploitation of women in countries such as India where a booming surrogacy industry, described as womb slavery, attracts rich foreigners. And questions need to be asked more broadly about the global trade in the use of gametes in a range of reproductive procedures.”

She concludes, “The raft of celebrities hiring out surrogates to have babies for them has became almost a modern day form of wet nursing. But the lack of objective evidence about the long-term impact of surrogacy on the surrogate mothers, the children and the families of the commissioning parents is concerning. The process of pregnancy, labour and delivery followed by summoning extraordinary reserves of strength to surrender that baby, cannot be reduced to the science fiction that the woman who does all this is merely a ‘gestational carrier’.”

Quite right. And when Hollywood celebs do this kind of thing on such a grand and public scale, they simply serve as bad role models for others who will be tempted to try the same thing. Many Hollywoodians are already acting as bad examples – we don’t need more such negative fallout from these folk. Especially when children are involved.

www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/gestational-carrier-is-an-ugly-term/story-e6frg6zo-1225990595552

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Designer Babies Means Dead Babies

Bill Muehlenberg — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 01:19:03 +0000

Life used to be seen as a gift. Now it is being demanded as a right. Up until recently every new life coming into the world was seen as a wonderful gift and a priceless grace – a cause of great celebration. But in an age of unprecedented selfishness, new biotechnologies, and designer babies, new life is seen as simply another commodity.

Just as we have luxury beyond our dreams, so that we can gut an entirely acceptable home and start over, simply because we want a change of colour scheme, so too now we can treat the greatest miracle of all – a new born baby – as just another lifestyle choice, to be received or rejected at will.

The rise of new technologies in the life sciences has meant that we can now do things which were never dreamed of even just recently. More discerning voices warned all along that the new reproductive technologies could be a real cause of concern, and at best a mixed blessing.

The fears of those who made warnings to proceed with caution are now pretty much being fully realised. We really have created a brave new world, and the greatest casualty has been those produced by it. There are now dozens of ways to artificially create human life, and with that newfound mastery of life has come a newfound contempt of it.

After all, if the manufacture of life is now no different than what we create in a factory assembly line, then both products can be treated with the same disdain and the same cavalier attitude. Both can be seen merely as the works of our own hands, and if the product is not up to scratch, then simply discard it and improve the manufacturing specs.

Thus human life is now on a par with CDs, clothing, and hairstyles. If we are tired of what we have, we can easily trade things in for something better, or simply discard the old and unwanted. We live in a throwaway age, and now human life itself is seen as just another disposable good.

Sick of the old Eagles albums? No probs. Just chuck them out, or trade them in for some Lady GaGa CDs. Unhappy with your bland colour scheme at home? No biggee. Chuck out the wrongly coloured items and redo the place to meet your new tastes.

Fed up watching a perfectly good television set when all your buddies have plasma? Nothing to worry about. Just toss it out with the other hard rubbish, and get what everyone else is having. Tired of waiting to have a daughter? Hey, don’t fret, just try another bout of IVF, and if you get those nasty unwanted boys, simply terminate them.

Am I being way too far out here? Actually, not at all. I am simply reporting what is in today’s headlines. I am simply commenting on current reality. And if this is not bad enough, just wait a few more months. I am sure we will find even more outrageous and immoral activities taking place all in the name of reproductive freedom and choice.

Here is the headline as found in today’s papers: “Couple aborts twin boys for girl”. And here is how the story begins:

“A couple so desperate for a baby girl that they terminated twin boys are fighting to choose the sex of their next child. The couple, who have three sons and still grieve for a daughter they lost soon after birth, are going to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to win the right to select sex by IVF treatment.

“They say they want the opportunity to have the baby daughter they were tragically denied. An independent panel, known as the Patient Review Panel, recently rejected the couple’s bid to choose the sex of their next child using IVF. They have gone to VCAT in a bid to have that decision overturned.

“VCAT recently ruled that it has the power to review the Patient Review Panel decision. It will hear the couple’s case in March. So determined are the couple to have a girl that they recently terminated twin boys conceived through IVF. The couple said it had been a traumatic decision to make but they could not continue to have unlimited numbers of children. If their test case fails, they say they will go to the US to conceive a girl.

“The couple, who cannot be identified, conceived their three boys naturally. The woman – in her thirties – says she loves her sons but would do anything to have a daughter. The man said: ‘After what we have been through we are due for a bit of luck. We want to be given the opportunity to have a girl.’ The woman, who is consumed by grief over the daughter who died soon after birth, admits she has become obsessed with having a daughter and it has become vital to her psychological health.”

She is obsessed alright – obsessed to the point where two perfectly healthy baby boys were killed so that she could have her wants fulfilled. Millions of people around the world would so desperately love to have these twin boys, but not this couple.

In their obsession to have what they want, it seems they will let nothing stand in their way of getting it. If perfectly healthy babies have to be killed along the way, then so be it. After all, adult selfish demands are all that count today, and nothing should stand in the way of anyone exercising their ‘choice’.

This is the predominant mindset that is found in all Western cultures today. So in that sense I do not mean to pick on this particular couple. They are simply representative of so many others who have bought the lie that the entire purpose of existence is to have your wants and demands satisfied – instantly, and at any cost.

Thus this story should not be surprising. It is fully to be expected in a culture which has placed selfishness and the immediate gratification of wants as the highest good, and anything which prevents this from occurring as the greatest evil.

This is simply Western culture in the 21st century. And a good argument can be made, as Solzhenitsyn once put it, that all this is happening because we have forgotten God. Indeed, the words of Proverbs 8:36 (God speaking) seems to nicely encapsulate all this: “all who hate me love death”.

A culture of utter and complete selfishness will always be an ugly culture which will be quite unpleasant to live in. And such a culture of necessity will always be a culture of death.

www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/give-us-a-girl-plea-couple/story-e6frf7kx-1225983885268

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Children as Commodities, Episode 3,597

Bill Muehlenberg — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:47:08 +0000

Another day, another case of child abuse. But this is politically correct child abuse. Thus it is condoned, approved of, favoured and celebrated. As long as it is done according to the laws of PC, then it is quite acceptable. And who gives a rip about the child anyway?

As long as the children are part of radical social experiments, then anything goes. Consider this case of madness in which a toddler is being kicked around like a football by not one, not two, not three, but four adults – and an activist judge. And of course it is all OK because these four are homosexuals – a federally protected species.

This is how the story opens: “They set out together to create a much-wanted child. But when baby E was born, his lesbian parents, and the gay couple who donated their sperm, were unprepared for the ‘flood of emotions’ that hit them.

“Although the four had discussed parental responsibilities and visiting arrangements at a ‘baby summit’ before E’s conception, the Family Court heard that in the struggle for ‘ownership’ of the child after his birth, the women stopped the men from seeing him. Justice Linda Dessau had to determine what was in two-year-old E’s best interests.”

The madness simply intensifies: “Stressing that the case was not about the socio-politics of single-sex parents or the definition of a nuclear family, she ruled that the boy should spend time with all four adults. ‘E is the product of a number of fine people,’ she said in a recent judgment. ‘He is entitled to know about them, to know them, and to know their love of him’.”

So much insanity in so few words! What did we just read here? We read of a ‘flood of emotions’. Yep, going on feelings is what this is usually about. Never mind what is right, or what is rational. Just do what feels good. That is the only arbiter nowadays of right and wrong.

Then we have talk of ‘ownership’ of this hapless toddler. The child is a mere commodity in this ugly world of adult selfishness gone mad. A slab of meat being tossed around by incredibly selfish and juvenile adults who are only concerned about their wants, not the well-being of the child.

And of course the learned judge thinks that family definition has nothing to do with anything. Never mind the thousands of studies that prove conclusively that family structure does very much matter for the well-being of the child.

Never mind that a biological mother and father cemented by marriage is the strongest indicator of child stability, well-being and health. Never mind that the research now is basically closed on this most vital of matters. But since when does a PC judiciary really care very much about evidence and facts?

But the real winner is this bizarre remark by the esteemed judge: ‘E is the product of a number of fine people.’ There you go. Today we do not have children who come from a loving mother and father. Instead, we have ‘products’ which are the result of any number of players.

Indeed, we now have committees and teams who are hatching these products. I can’t see how things can get much more depersonalised, demeaning, and inhumane. This is all brave new world lingo, straight out of the worst scenarios found in science fiction novels.

Forget families altogether. Let’s just generate these products in the factories. Indeed, we seem to care far more about battery hens and their egg-laying woes than we do about human beings and the infants they conceive. This is simply another indication that humanity is on the path of no return.

That this judge can so cavalierly and glibly treat this toddler as just some product purchased at K-Mart is reprehensible. But the same goes for these four infantile adults who are far more hung up on their own desires than the good – or otherwise – of this poor child.

The destruction of marriage and family is well under way in Western cultures. And the biggest losers of all are the children who are mere pawns in the cruel games played by PC adults who would rather create their dysfunctional new world than put the interests of children first.

When innocent children become the victims of radical social agendas, then we know without doubt that civilised society is nearing its end.

www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/struggle-over-ownership-of-baby-split-gay-parents-20100908-151cr.html

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Parents and Eugenics

Bill Muehlenberg — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:22:32 +0000

There are a number of defining features of the post-Christian West. Some of our highest virtues and values now include personal autonomy, personal choice, and personal convenience. Pleasing self and maximising personal happiness are seen as the epitome of the good life, while concerns for neighbour and community are barely considered.

When self becomes God then all other life becomes secondary. Indeed, in the attempt to elevate and deify self, we in fact demonise humankind and declare war on personhood. Dehumanisation and disrespect for human life follows directly from this.

Instant gratification and complete surrender to our every wish and desire have become the hallmarks of modern man. And the ramifications of this are found everywhere. In the area of family life, for example, babies are now considered to be mere commodities, to be designed and disposed of at our whim.

We live in age of designer babies, throwaway marriages and disposable families. What used to keep families, communities and societies together are now sniffed at. Things such as self-sacrifice, forgiveness, patience, the deferral of gratification, and the consideration of others has now taken a back seat to the gorging of self.

A perfect illustration of all this appeared in today’s press. Consider this gut-wrenching and mind-numbing piece about yet another bizarre lawsuit. Here is how one press account presents the story:

“Two Victorian couples are suing doctors for failing to diagnose Down syndrome in their unborn babies, denying them the chance to terminate the pregnancies. The couples are claiming unspecified damages for economic loss, continuing costs of care of the children, and ‘psychiatric injury’. Both say they would have aborted their pregnancies had they been told their children would be born with Down syndrome.”

The story was also covered on the current affairs shows last night. The parents were complaining of how very hard it is to look after these children, and that they really would have rather aborted the babies had they been given the chance. So now they are seeking damages for their “psychiatric injury” and suffering.

These parents want our sympathy – and government money. Sorry, but I cannot give such sympathy, nor agree to such demands for payments. Do special needs children present special challenges and burdens? Yes, absolutely. But guess what, anything worthwhile in life presents obstacles, challenges and hardships.

Indeed, sacrifice is the name of the game if we want to support anything which is valuable and worthwhile. In fact, every single child ever born is a huge handful. They place enormous demands on you for a good twenty years, and continue to do so for as long as they live.

Not only will they cost you at least a quarter of a million dollars between ages 0 to 18, but they will cost you emotionally, physically, psychologically and mentally. Simply to love another person is costly. And children can be the most costly objects of love around.

Of course real love usually discounts or ignores the tremendous costs. Any parent worth his or her salt will gladly make a dozen major sacrifices a day out of love for their offspring. Indeed, simply to love another person will of necessity impose restrictions and limitations on self.

All true love is self-giving, not self-taking. To love another person is to give away part of yourself, to become vulnerable, to take risks, and to be willing to hurt. If you do not want to hurt, then do not love. A parent’s love may be among the world’s greatest love, because it may hurt the most and cost the most. But love happily embraces such hurts, sacrifices and burdens.

As mentioned, those born with physical or mental incapacities are obviously going to be somewhat more of a handful. But they are all still beautiful sons and daughters who deserve to be loved. They do not deserve the guilt trip put upon them by parents who complain about their very existence, their very right to life.

But these two couples are not alone in this. As mentioned, we now live in an age completely given over to selfishness and the deification of self. We are all looking out for number one now, and anything that will inconvenience us, cost us, or weary us, we would rather just jettison.

So when we weary of the toaster, we chuck it and get a new one. When the plasma TV begins to play up, we quickly grow tired of it and ditch it for a newer, bigger model. And when the children we bring into the world are not perfect, we look to sue someone.

While we all want the best for our children and for our loved ones, the quest for the perfect baby – or the perfect anything – is a futile and ultimately selfish quest. Life offers no guarantees, and love is developed and enhanced in the furnaces of affliction, hardship and trials.

Such talk of course seems quaint today, even offensive. We expect, and demand, perfection. Designer babies are now a part of this demand for only the best, the most convenient, and the most hassle-free. If we don’t get a free ride through life, we will find someone or something to blame – and to issue a lawsuit against.

Of course the social quest for perfection is not new. It has been around for some time now. Indeed, we have a term for it. It is called eugenics. This is a movement which had its ideological origins in naturalistic Darwinism, and came into complete expression in the Third Reich. It has long been an evil which civilised nations shunned – or should have shunned.

However, while in the past it was fanatical population controllers and Nazi doctors who engaged in eugenics, now unfortunately it is ordinary parents who are doing it. We have fully bought into the lies of the eugenicists. We want to create a perfect race, or at least a bunch of kids who will give us no problems, make no demands on us, and only serve to please us and meet our needs.

In that sense we may not be so very different from the monsters of Nazi Germany. Sure, we are refined, civilised, and cultured now. But recall that Germany in the 1930s was one of the most cultured, well educated, and progressive nations on earth.

Such conditions did not stop their fall into complete darkness. Nor will they prevent us from descending into a similar sort of barbarism. Today it is “small” things like suing a doctor for not giving us a “perfect” baby. Tomorrow it may be the passage of a law demanding that only perfect specimens are allowed to be brought into this world.

The Brave New World scenarios as depicted in a film like Gattaca may soon be upon us. We will not get there in an instant, but piecemeal – one innocuous sounding step at a time. But the bitter and bleak end will nonetheless still be reached.

Unless we take steps to turn things around now.

www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/two-couples-suing-doctors-for-failing-to-diagnose-down-syndrome/story-e6frf7kx-1225894768423

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