Snowflakes.
Jun. 17th, 2005 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsA couple of weeks ago, George W. Bush stood up at his bully pulpit with 21 babies from three weeks to almost two years arrayed about his feet as if he were some Jesus figure suffering the little children, and he used them to illustrate Snowflake Embryo Adoption, an organization whose mission is obvious in its name. His point was that discard embryos should not be used for stem cell research because there were other things that could have been done with them. His comment was "there's no such thing as a spare embryo."
Well, yes there is. One of the things Snowflakes won't tell you is that, in order to ensure that donated embryo catches, the organization guarantees a minimum number of embryos per donation and the implantations are done two at a time. In order to provide that minimum, Snowflakes frequently mixes viable batches; it is entirely possible for a woman who undergoes this procedure to end up giving birth to twins who are not only not related to her, they're not even related to each other. Slate magazine called this a "freaky, cutting-edge niche" of medical practice. It does have that science-fiction air to it. So, no matter what, in order to get the dramatic image of a live baby for politicians to kiss, embryos are wasted, discarded, and treated as "spares" anyway.
Senator Bill Frist went further, decrying this wastage and declaring that his "next step" would be to look at what happens to frozen embryos that fertility clinics now discard. Frist recommended a "professional code of conduct" for fertility clinics much as other branches of medicine have. He's apparently unaware that such guidelines already exist.
If George Bush is going to maintain that in-vitro fertilization is a moral option, then he cannot complain about the destruction of embryos. Most IVF embryos are tossed aside during the culling process because they failed to develop in healthy ways, and if they're frozen, over 70% of them will be discared later due to freezer burn during the suspension process. If each one of those is, as Bush's cadre feels, "a life," then Bush is advocating what he honestly believes is mass murder.
The New York Times this weekend reminded us that "It's not so easy to adopt an embryo." I would argue that it isn't possible to adopt an embryo, and changing the definition of the word "adoption" to include embryos perverts much of the meaning of the word.
There are millions of kids worldwide who don't have a place to live or parents to care for them. Indian and Chinese girls end up in orphanages all of the time because of the cultural imperatives honoring boys, but they're just the cases in the popular memory; this is a planet-encompassing problem. The people who adopt a child from some Godsforsaken hellhole and give them a better chance are real heros, trying to make a difference in the world.
I am sorry for all those couples who can't have children on their own and who, having exhausted all their fertility options with their own DNA, still want a child in their lives. But couples who go the Snowflake route aren't giving a child a home because they have a home and want to have a child, as the inestimable David Velleman points out, they're creating a child because they want a child to fill their home. (And yes, if I make it sound like the kid is an accessory or furnishing, that's on purpose. I'm sure David meant it that way too.) The child is just like an adopted child in that he has no genetic lineage in common with his parents, but rather than have been saved from a life of deprivation and hardship, it has been conjured literally from non-existence.
And, forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but while Snowflakes does mix embryos, the result is that they also match for racial preference. It is extremely unlikely that anyone using the Snowflake program is going to get a brown-skinned child, as the number of brown-skinned people in the U.S. seeking (rather expensive) IVF is vanishingly small, and that is Snowflakes's donor pool.
This perversion of the word "adoption" is meant to make us consider the embryo as a person-- one can only adopt another person, while embryos are still legally property-- and to obtrude the concept of personhood into the embryonic stage, and thereby reach the stage where abortion is made to seem untenable. And when that happens, IVF too will be untenable. Bush can't attack it now, that would be political suicide. But that is, ultimately, the goal. A little moral incoherence, a little deceptiveness in one's ethical stance, is apparently a small price to pay for some good political capital.
Well, yes there is. One of the things Snowflakes won't tell you is that, in order to ensure that donated embryo catches, the organization guarantees a minimum number of embryos per donation and the implantations are done two at a time. In order to provide that minimum, Snowflakes frequently mixes viable batches; it is entirely possible for a woman who undergoes this procedure to end up giving birth to twins who are not only not related to her, they're not even related to each other. Slate magazine called this a "freaky, cutting-edge niche" of medical practice. It does have that science-fiction air to it. So, no matter what, in order to get the dramatic image of a live baby for politicians to kiss, embryos are wasted, discarded, and treated as "spares" anyway.
Senator Bill Frist went further, decrying this wastage and declaring that his "next step" would be to look at what happens to frozen embryos that fertility clinics now discard. Frist recommended a "professional code of conduct" for fertility clinics much as other branches of medicine have. He's apparently unaware that such guidelines already exist.
If George Bush is going to maintain that in-vitro fertilization is a moral option, then he cannot complain about the destruction of embryos. Most IVF embryos are tossed aside during the culling process because they failed to develop in healthy ways, and if they're frozen, over 70% of them will be discared later due to freezer burn during the suspension process. If each one of those is, as Bush's cadre feels, "a life," then Bush is advocating what he honestly believes is mass murder.
The New York Times this weekend reminded us that "It's not so easy to adopt an embryo." I would argue that it isn't possible to adopt an embryo, and changing the definition of the word "adoption" to include embryos perverts much of the meaning of the word.
There are millions of kids worldwide who don't have a place to live or parents to care for them. Indian and Chinese girls end up in orphanages all of the time because of the cultural imperatives honoring boys, but they're just the cases in the popular memory; this is a planet-encompassing problem. The people who adopt a child from some Godsforsaken hellhole and give them a better chance are real heros, trying to make a difference in the world.
I am sorry for all those couples who can't have children on their own and who, having exhausted all their fertility options with their own DNA, still want a child in their lives. But couples who go the Snowflake route aren't giving a child a home because they have a home and want to have a child, as the inestimable David Velleman points out, they're creating a child because they want a child to fill their home. (And yes, if I make it sound like the kid is an accessory or furnishing, that's on purpose. I'm sure David meant it that way too.) The child is just like an adopted child in that he has no genetic lineage in common with his parents, but rather than have been saved from a life of deprivation and hardship, it has been conjured literally from non-existence.
And, forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but while Snowflakes does mix embryos, the result is that they also match for racial preference. It is extremely unlikely that anyone using the Snowflake program is going to get a brown-skinned child, as the number of brown-skinned people in the U.S. seeking (rather expensive) IVF is vanishingly small, and that is Snowflakes's donor pool.
This perversion of the word "adoption" is meant to make us consider the embryo as a person-- one can only adopt another person, while embryos are still legally property-- and to obtrude the concept of personhood into the embryonic stage, and thereby reach the stage where abortion is made to seem untenable. And when that happens, IVF too will be untenable. Bush can't attack it now, that would be political suicide. But that is, ultimately, the goal. A little moral incoherence, a little deceptiveness in one's ethical stance, is apparently a small price to pay for some good political capital.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 10:32 pm (UTC)This whole thing is still about trying to push women back in to their place as breeders and slaves, by having legislative control over women's bodies, the bit about honoring life is just a convenient smokescreen for the real goal.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 11:37 pm (UTC)