COMMENTS: Resetting the Biological Clock Women and the New Reproductive Technologies

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...The lessons of illegal abortions in back alleys should be sufficient warning that people will take desperate measures to exercise reproductive choice...

...We can safely assume that further improvements in technology will extend the viability of frozen embryos for ten or even more years...

...The donation of genetic material by a male is acceptable...

...In its fourth recommendation, the Warnock Committee states: "AID [artificial insemination by donor] should be available on a properly organized basis . . . to those infertile couples for whom it might be appropriate...

...While laws now exist to prevent the sale of children, do such laws apply to the sale of embryos...

...Career development and the present childbearing years do not follow the same schedule...

...At the very least, the woman has to go through the psychological stress of waiting for test results while carrying the fetus...

...The resetting of the biological clock would narrow the gender age gap...

...In England, the term surrogate mother is used for both 2 and 3.) Furthermore, the development of techniques to freeze embryos and to thaw and implant them at a later time will enable a child to be born after both genetic parents are dead...

...In addition to extending the period available for childbearing, the new reproductive technology can telescope the time required for having a family...

...Now that ova can be retrieved, will a double standard operate...

...Separating the undifferentiated cells by methods that will be developed to produce multiple births will provide a sample of cells for examination, with the remaining cells kept in a holding pattern...

...While this might not necessarily be harmful to either the woman or the child and would give the man the freedom to reproduce in ways hitherto denied him, one can envision a cottage industry in impoverished areas of this country or other parts of the world where women will trade the use of their bodies in return for a nutritious diet that the contractors would demand and provide...

...5) the nurturing or social father...

...A single man, perhaps homosexual, who decides to have children outside the legal boundaries of marriage, is now able to obtain ova from one woman, to fertilize them with his sperm and contract for implantation in another woman...

...Parents generally want boys first...

...This may give rise to profound psychological problems for the child and the mother...

...In this way, the years of widowhood, so prevalent now, would be diminished...

...The biological constraints in reproduction and economic constraints in the social order reinforce a double standard in the choice of partners...

...Theoretically, since differentiation into cell types, such as kidney or liver, does not occur until several cell divisions after fertilization, a woman can now choose to have identical twins or triplets...

...Is there a right to be a grandparent, and does this right extend to obtaining sperm (a simple process) or ova (an invasive and potentially harmful procedure) from a sick or dying child...

...Thus reproductive technology is used for femicide...

...Recently published in Great Britain "by Command of Her Majesty," it has already caused great dissension...

...Although sperm banks have been in existence for a number of years, there are no ova banks as yet...

...This technology has expanded from artificial insemination to in vitro (in a glass container) fertilization and from the use of surrogate mothers to gestational mothers, making it possible for a child to have up to five parents...

...One positive aspect of the new reproductive technology is that it now makes imminent the resetting of the biological clock for women so that the childbearing years may be extended for those who want them to be...

...But since in most societies early motherhood entails economic dependence, young women frequently marry older, financially more secure men, a practice that perpetuates male dominance...

...such legislation should be wide enough to include both profit and non-profit making organisations...

...Why ova age and whether the process may be arrested are questions that research must address...

...for these, the pregnancy must be well beyond the initial stages...

...A woman's ova could then be removed, fertilized, and frozen before she is 30, then implanted when she is 40 or older...

...Yet rather than eliminating motherhood— as in Brave New World, where the term is a dirty word—such technology has thus far made parenthood possible for those who formerly would have been deprived of it...

...Such technology, if applied, might also change the sex ratio, with unforeseen results for the future...

...If it is the male partner who has died and the woman decides against implantation, what are the rights of his parents to the frozen embryos...

...However, what the Warnock Report actually reveals are deep sexual and class biases...

...There is no question that the new technology poses dangers to women, but to discard it is not the solution...

...Some even fear that the next step would be the elimination of women entirely...

...Older women are often excluded from the group considered desirable by younger men who want to have children...

...A similar method was used with other species more than a generation ago...

...Fetal chromosomal disorders increase two- to three-fold when mothers are over 40 as compared with those just a few years younger...

...This will also be its most important benefits...

...In fact, the Warnock Committee's opposition to surrogacy prevents the legal safeguards needed by all the concerned parties, and by the child as well, from being developed...

...Rapid developments in reproductive engineering, where reproduction shifts from a seemingly private act to a process increasingly under public scrutiny and control, appear to parallel the antiutopian accounts of Orwell and, even more so, Huxley...

...Women can now have all their children at the same time rather than over several years...

...Recently, rejecting the idea that biology is destiny, some feminist thinkers have also advocated reproduction ex utero (outside the womb) as a means of liberation...

...Sperm production begins at 273 puberty and continues throughout the lifetime of a healthy male...

...There appears to be an increasing use of amniocentesis in this country, too, for sex selection...

...The reasons for this may have less to do with sexism than the difficulty of freezing and thawing ova...

...These facts have produced conflicts in many women...

...3) the gestational mother, who has been implanted with an embryo to which she has made no genetic contribution, but which she carries to term for herself or for others...

...Furthermore, since mortality rates at present favor women, this technology, which affects biological timing, would strengthen the logic in women marrying younger men...

...These women would not be sexual objects...

...It would give a woman greater personal freedom with the opportunity for career development before parenthood...

...By contrast, the reproductive years for a woman are more limited...

...Should reproductive technology succeed in preserving viable ova in vitro over an extended period, a woman will be able to have them fertilized later by a partner of her choosing...

...Safe procedures that reset the clock internally would not only be more economical but also more satisfying psychologically...

...At present there is no body of law that would prevent such exploitation and manipulation of women...

...Her more secure economic position would enable the father to take greater responsibility in parenting than has traditionally been the case...

...While we may never have utopia, ongoing national and international examination of the benefits and dangers of this technology by humanists as well as scientists, women as well as men, will (we hope) keep the coming decades from turning into Brave New World...

...Sperm have been sold for years with little public comment...

...There is no question that some women would prefer that research be directed toward resetting the biological clock within the body, by hormonal or other means, rather than outside it...

...In theory, the technique is as simple as using a looped hair to divide the undifferentiated cell mass into two or three parts, which will then develop individually...

...These are (1) the sperm donor, who may or may not be the nurturing or social father...

...The advanced preimplantation diagnosis, which enables the sex to be chosen before the actual pregnancy, could institutionalize this bias...

...Rather than be its passive recipients, women must become actively involved in determining the development and values of reproductive technology to end or at least mitigate the male domination of reproduction...

...In some quarters the provision of ova and the nurturing uterine environment by the surrogate mother has been savagely attacked...

...Uteruses would become a product in the international balance of trade...

...So vehement is the committee's opposition to surrogacy that it would treat even private arrangements punitively...

...Chorionic villi sampling, which removes cells from the placenta for examination after eight weeks of pregnancy, is still in the experimental stage...

...Here again, a woman may choose to carry the fetuses herself or use gestational mothers instead...

...In contrast to conditions in France, where the courts have allowed Corinne Parpalaix access to the sperm of her dead husband, the Warnock committee feels that "The use by a widow of her dead husband's semen for AIH [artificial insemination by husband] is a practice which...

...Should parents have access to the frozen embryos of a daughter who has died...

...This is the case in the long-awaited Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology, known as the Warnock Report for its chair, Dame Mary Warnock...

...Mechanisms for changing the timing of reproduction will have an important influence on how women and men select mates...

...While parents have the right to know the negative information available from preimplantation diagnosis, should they have the right to use this diagnosis as a method of sex selection...

...However, most women will use the preimplantation diagnosis, which occurs outside the time of the actual pregnancy, to decide which embryo to bring to term...

...should be actively discouraged...

...Furthermore, when molecular probes become available to determine which embryos will produce a high level of growth hormone, should there be a right to choose the embryo that will produce the tallest male or the shortest female to fit preset stereotypes of masculinity and femininity...

...4) the nurturing or social mother, who rears the child but has made no genetic contribution to it...

...Superovulation procedures, now used to counter infertility, frequently result in multiple births...

...Even more threatening to some feminists is the possibility that the current male control of reproductive technology, which accounts for its machineoriented approach, will end by taking reproduction out of the body altogether, in effect removing women from the reproductive process and decision-making entirely...

...UNLIKE THE WARNOCK COMMITTEE, we are not categorically opposed to pregnancies contracted for others...

...However, in recommendation 56, they urge that surrogacy be a criminal offense: Legislation should be introduced to render criminal the creation or the operation in the United Kingdom of agencies whose purposes include the recruitment of women for surrogate pregnancy or making arrangements for individuals or couples who wish to utilise the services of a carrying mother...

...Some women over 40 may not wish to carry the fetus, although they want to be the genetic mother...

...Yet there are some feminists who would also welcome reproduction ex utero...

...A solution to this problem already exists since the transplantation of embryos to women who act as gestational mothers has resulted in successful births in both California and Australia...

...they would be reproductive objects...

...Present techniques other than ultra-sound require invasive procedures...

...In the 45- to 49-year-old group, there is a 30-fold increase in offspring with Down's syndrome compared with mothers 20 years younger...

...To be sure, this dualism would not exist in a more sensibly organized society...

...2) the "surrogate mother," who is the genetic mother that has been artificially inseminated but has no intention of rearing the child herself...

...In her utopia, Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy, for example, sees the elimination of biological motherhood as the necessary condition for strengthening nurturing motherhood and allowing men as well as women to participate in it...

...Its final recommendation betrays a Victorian distrust of women and emphasis on paternal dominance, an attempt to retain control of a woman's body through law despite the potentially liberating effects of technology: Legislation [should] be introduced to provide that any child born following IVF [in vitro fertilization], using an embryo that had been frozen and stored, who was not in utero at the date of the death of the father shall be disregarded for the purposes of succession to and inheritance from the latter...

...The total number of ova are present at birth, and these seem to be subject to aging...

...Should the results be positive, she has the psychological and physical trauma of abortion, or the pain of bearing and raising an abnormal child...

...Ostensibly, these recommendations stem from a concern for the protection of the carrying mother, 275 who might be exploited, and the well-being of the child, "since for all practical purposes, the child will have been bought for money" in a surrogacy agreement...

...If this preimplantation diagnosis shows no measurable chromosomal or enzymatic abnormalities, the remaining cells can be implanted...

...Because the pressure for one-child families is strong in China, and because males are preferred in both countries, female fetuses are frequently aborted...

...Third World women might well become a new kind of reproductive chattle for their hungry fathers or spouses...

...However, a safer and more controlled method may be through in vitro fertilization and embryo implantation...

...In recommendation 58, it proposes that "It be provided by statute that all surrogacy agreements are illegal contracts and therefore unenforceable in the courts...

...It may be objected that the use of stored embryos locks a woman into reproduction with the particular male whose sperm fertilized the ovum...

...Rather than brand the surrogate mother as the new prostitute who functions outside the law, we must shape legislation so that the new technology, with its great potential, benefits women rather than being used as another means of control and exploitation...

...Who will have custody of frozen embryos in the event of a couple's divorce...

...Such implantation may be desirable under other circumstances, for example, if the uterine environment of the genetic mother is harmful to fetal development, either because of her own genetic makeup or because of her exposure to toxic substances at the workplace...

...The technology for freezing and storing embryos before implantation may soon be utilized to change the timing, not only of pregnancy, but also of prenatal diagnosis...

...Underneath the Warnock Committee's ostensible reason lies an ancient concept of marriage and the family, in which the child is the property of the father and the mother is a mere incubator...

...Although paternal aging is implicated in a few chromosomal disorders, its role in most birth abnormalities is not definitive...

...The resulting older brother/ younger sister pattern would, no doubt, increase male dominance...

...The mother/child bond, that seemingly indestructible unit, lauded but also resented by men throughout the centuries, is now capable of dissolution through the new technology...

...Even assuming that ethical choices with regard to embryo selection are made, other problems remain...

...Some might argue that every embryo, whether defective or not, has a right to a womb of its own...

...But now that the male-dominated reproductive technologies have broken the maternal/ fetal bond, women are afraid that the recurrent male fantasy will eventually become a female nightmare...

...However, the extension of the frozen-embryo technique may solve the dilemma faced by women— that of creativeness in the public world versus procreativeness in the private one, a problem seldom faced by men...

...The birth of baby Zoe in Australia, bred from an embryo frozen for two months in liquid nitrogen, will initiate profound changes, not only in the relationship of the sexes and in family structure, but also in the mechanism and timing of reproduction...

...A comparison of Piercy and Huxley reveals that the same technology may be used for humanizing or dehumanizing purposes, depending on the values that inform it...

...THERE ARE PROBLEMS...

...Indeed, for such an act, some Nobel prize winners have been lauded for their public service...

...With regard to childbearing, women will no longer be the prisoners of time...

...Whatever timing of pregnancies a woman chooses, the desirability of prenatal diagnosis re274 mains...

...Amniocentesis, a test for Down's syndrome, which also reveals the sex of the fetus, is done by about the 16th week, but a diagnosis may not be available until 22 weeks of gestation...

...He may no longer be present years later because of divorce or death...

...Amniocentesis is now widely used in China and India to determine the sex of the fetus...

...Right now, single women fear delaying marriage and/or having children in ways that single men do not...

...The biological clock involved in reproduction seems to favor men...