Making Babies

We went to the used bookstore this weekend at one point. I know, horrible idea, especially considering we still have about half our books in boxes as not all of our bookshelf space is assembled.

Anyhow, our neighborhood used bookstore (a dangerous place!) has a "discount" area for books that they've had in stock for a long time or have too many copies of. I found a really interesting book about reproductive technology (published in 1999 by a lawyer who specializes in laws and ethics surrounding reproductive technology) and bought it for $2. I spent most of yesterday reading it.

Holy crap! The history of reproductive technology is just insane. There are so many issues that I had never even thought of, despite my genetics/ethics class in college and despite online perusal of infertility blogs. I think it's a strange thing that many women spend years and years trying NOT to get pregnant, and then when they want to, they spend years and years TRYING to get pregnant - often taking advantage of whatever the latest reproductive techniques might be. I've always been fascinated with the subject of reproductive technology since I learned about Louise Brown, the first "test tube" baby (she's only a few months older than I am). Then in middle school I first learned of the idea of "made-to-order babies" and have been intrigued and saddened by news stories about pregnant women in comas whose partners are waiting to become single parents, etc.

I had considered myself pretty liberal about most things before reading this book, but there are some ideas at which I just plain draw the line. I'm not sure how I feel about gestating a baby to (maybe) provide life-saving tissue for an existing kid (the Ayala family, for example). I am disgusted by the supertwin families like the McCaughys that have a whole bunch of embryos transferred or whatever and end up with seven children of indeterminate future health and life quality. I know I do NOT like the idea of using the product of an aborted female fetus to provide eggs for infertile women - stem cells, OK. Gametes, not OK. Nor am I comfortable with male comatose or PVS patients having their sperm extracted without consent to be used to impregnate a current partner (or given to the parents of said patient to make a grandkid! ack!).

There are so many things we can do to manipulate the original process of making babies - many of which are enabling women all over the world to get pregnant with and have the children they want. I don't begrudge those families their children, yet sometimes I have to wonder about people's motives when (and I am trotting out a probably very stale and possibly offensive position) there are so many kids out there that need homes. Seriously. They aren't all white babies without health problems, of course, and that's what most people in this country want. And if you have the money to do it, you can purchase just about any kind of reproductive service in this country - capitalism, yay! - so why shouldn't you be able to?

Another idea that gave me a bit of pause was that, as of the writing of the book, none of the children born from IVF or "test tube babies" had ever tried to have children. Checking Wikipedia, I see that Louise Brown got married in 2004. There is no mention of her having (or trying to have) children. My google-fu doesn't seem to bring up any cases of kids concieved through IVF who have gone on to have children of their own. That doesn't mean that it hasn't happened - but don't you think there would be some sort of news article? The point is, we DON'T KNOW what will happen to these million kids as they grow up.

At some point recently there was a dateline or something on TV about special-needs foster kids that need homes. And I know that the few kids they showed on TV, mostly adolescents, were the very tip of the proverbial iceberg. It totally makes me sad when there are thousands and thousands of kids, right here in the US, that would have much better lives if adopted earlier instead of being fostered out to home after home, each day growing a little more hopeless at ever being adopted and having actual parents. But that's just my personal soapbox, and I know that for some people, having children means either giving birth to their own (despite all odds, despite the risks of things like prematurity and placenta previa and disabilities) or choosing the child's biological parents (sperm donor, egg donor) or being the child's biological parent (gestational surrogate with IVF of parents' gametes).

I've never given much thought to what I, personally, would do if I found out I was unable to have children "the old fashioned way" if my partner and I decide to do that. I guess maybe I'll cross that bridge if I ever have to come to it. But a quote in the book from the Official Rabbi of England or something really stuck with me. It was something along the lines of "We don't give thanks on the Sabbath because of G-d's creations, we give thanks that He knew when to stop." And I guess that's the thing, because there really AREN'T a lot of laws or prescedents about new reproductive technologies - it's all kind of being made up as we go along. Will we know when to stop?