Technology As Destiny

...Most feminists and, I would guess, most people generally belong somewhere between the radical pro- and anti-interventionist positions, hoping that real help might come to infertile couples but in ways that seem human and humane...

...The latest twist is to keep anencephalic newborns alive in order to "harvest" their organs...

...But to counterpose good female values (feminism rightly understood) to bad male values gets us nowhere...

...Decision pending...

...To condemn the latter required a critical look at the former and at what was now being done under the banner of individualist versions of such freedom...

...But matters are by no means so clear-cut...

...And that means freeing women from what has been tagged as "biological tyranny" in the interventionist credo...

...Some feminists did point to the fine print in the surrogacy contract: Whitehead was to abort on William Stern's demand should the fetus show any signs of "physiological abnormality" following amniocentesis...

...The hospital in question, Loma Linda in Los Angeles, seems to specialize in the macabre, having pioneered the unsuccessful transplant of a chimpanzee heart into a baby...

...A powerful feminist anti-interventionist presence has taken center stage in current debates, conjuring up nightmarish worst-case scenarios of the eugenically engineered world to come...

...The techniques for manipulating human reproduction are upon us now, and most of these techniques take place in, or are practiced upon, or require the use of the female body.' Once women have been liberated from biological tyranny, the pro-interventionists assert, all systems of oppression—the economy, the state, religion, and the law-will erode and collapse...

...Yale Researchers to Test Transplants of Fetal Tissue...

...The search for intervention in human reproduction comes, at least initially, from those able to command the resources of genetic engineers and medical experts...

...Each of the articles detailing these late-breaking developments indicates that they raise "profound" and "troubling" ethical questions...

...Either one does or does not have moral permission to eliminate the unborn solely on the basis of gender...

...It has all come to us in the guise of "quality of life," and "reproductive choice...

...for others, a morally sordid situation that raises the specter of pregnancy-for-hire to "harvest" fetal tissue from aborted fetuses for a variety of purposes...

...Surrogacy and other new eugenics questions bring us back, inevitably, to concerns about the nature of human intimacy and the family...

...The reasons are social and political...

...Thus, some feminists claim that the lesbian who wants to assert her right to "independent motherhood" is entitled both to artificial insemination and to sex selection as a basis for abortion should the fetus turn out to be male when she wants a female...

...For the radical pro-interventionists, the new eugenics presents no problem so long as it can be wrested from male control...

...the Sterns did not, in fact, seriously investigate adoption...

...Here was a situation in which biological motherhood and social parenting were severed—as feminists had long claimed they should be...

...The new eugenics, in the meantime, has passed one green light after another and is rolling at breakneck speed, claiming "gender equality" and "freedom" on its side...

...The hazards of reproductive freedom are not easily visible to liberal politics...

...Many found this repugnant, even immoral, because the male got to order it, not because such abortion is dubious on principle...

...Reproduction is shaping up as a kind of industrial production: the manufacture of particular goods for a price...

...As the surrogacy case demonstrated, women's attachment to their own children is a problem...

...This follows a course that has become almost routine: First, certain techniques are perfected or modeled...

...All approaches to eugenics with which I am familiar—from Plato's elegant Republic to Hitler's vulgar Reich—aimed to eliminate, undermine, or leap-frog over the family to achieve their aims...

...Eggs...

...For some, this is a potentially marvelous medical advance...

...The new eugenics cannot be separated from the wider cultural and social environment...

...While sexual prostitutes sell vagina, rectum, and mouth, reproductive prostitutes will sell other body parts: Wombs...

...Quality Embryo Transfer Company, Ltd...

...Yet the business of surrogacy had, in fact, taken off as a venture at the furthest frontiers of reproductive freedom—and, of course, of profit...

...Others will be inferior, having been placed lower on the preference list...

...Here was a case in which everyone "freely" agreed to a contract...

...Feminist philosopher Anne Donchin contends that feminists have sorted themselves out into three major, conflicting positions on the matter of reproductive technology and its mind-boggling implications: pro-interventionists, who celebrate techniques that sever women from "biological determinism...

...Erecting a stop sign at future intersections requires that we reject the view that freedom can be narrowed to contractual terms, that human bodies can be bartered, that we have a "right" to eliminate those human beings who don't look or act like our perfect image of ourselves...

...As they continue to demand the right to choose, noninterventionists ponder the many "coercive choices" the new reproductive technology seems to entail...

...To be sure, we have a long way to go before we approach the ruthless rules of Nazi biopolitics, which required eliminating unworthies of all sorts—the physically and mentally handicapped, inferior races, and the useless elderly, among others...

...Shorthand for this technique might be, "Parkinson's is the disease...

...As younger and younger women submit to amniocentesis, physicians speak of "maternal anxiety" as the motivation...

...The erosion of human equality—the fragile insistence that each of us has an ontological dignity that we did not create and over which society has no control-requires that we accept and welcome life in all its variety...

...That is as it should be...

...Yet as the case unraveled, more and more feminists expressed opposition to commercial surrogacy and outrage at the initial court decision, which got all woozy over the man's desire for genetic offspring while dismissing Mary Beth Whitehead's frenzied struggle to keep the child to which she had given birth...

...In the words of one thirty-two-year-old woman, "Having a baby isn't like buying a car, but in a way, he [her husband] wanted to know what he was getting...

...Not all statements of anti-interventionists are so extreme...

...But we have gone farther down this road than most Americans realize or want to acknowledge...

...But the new eugenics is •here...

...Radical anti-interventionists insist that just as males moved successfully to control female "sex parts" through various forms of prostitution (including marriage), so they now seek a new reality: the reproductive brothel...

...it will advance even more the exploitation and humiliation of women...

...But, in the meantime, newer and better ways to convince people to participate in eugenics (under other names, of course) must be devised...

...then, we consult professional ethicists to advise us on whether we ought to be doing what we are, in fact, already doing...

...The Times piece goes on to note that it is only "in very rare instances" that "there is a valid medical reason for sex selection...

...The pro-interventionists, whose voices once tended to dominate the movement, are now on the defensive...

...As Betty Friedan pointed out, the initial decision denying Whitehead any claim—she was no mother of any kind in any way—had "frightening implications for women" because it was a "terrifying denial of what should be basic rights for women, an utter denial of the personhood of women, the complete dehumanization of women...

...In-vitro fertilization, embryo flushing, surrogate embryo transfer, surrogate motherhood, sex preselection, cloning—the entire panoply of real or potentially realizable techniques for manipulating, redirecting, controlling, and altering human reproduction are upon us now...

...Once we claim that we do, in fact, have such control—that we can ensure more males and fewer females, that we can prevent the appearance of the Down's syndrome child and, maybe, in the even braver new world to come, manipulate genes to get the musical prodigy—we pave the way for nightmarish biological totalitarianism...

...The names that genetic-engineering firms choose for themselves tell the tale: Select Embryos...

...And still others will be disallowed life at all...

...What are the implications when life becomes a commodity...

...In this brave new world, who speaks, or claims to speak, for women...

...Should any of this last sort sneak through, there will be no moral basis for insisting that they be given decent treatment as members of the human community since, if the controls had been working right, they wouldn't be here in the first place...

...He wanted a perfect baby with his genes and a medically vetted mother who would get out of his life forever immediately after giving birth...

...it solves none of our basic problems...

...abortion is the cure...

...By sanctioning sex selection of the "right sort" as the basis for abortion, radical feminists are playing with fire—and with social reality...

...There are women as well as men who support these technologies—some in the name of feminism...

...And it requires that we forge alliances, however fragile, to preserve human dignity, which must be the basis for any genuine project of human equality and justice...

...Many feminists are troubled by the Frankenstein monster we seem to be unleashing...

...Ovaries...

...They regard that as the only political dilemma, and assess all moral questions with reference to women's freedom...

...Ethics has a kind of desperate post-hoc character these days...

...When we do that, we undermine the very basis of human equality...

...There is no doubt that the modern technology of sex preselection will result in a higher proportionate destruction of female fetuses— at least for the first birth...

...The political battles over definitions of motherhood—and, indeed, of human life itself—are only beginning...

...Biomedical technology, on the other hand, is preemptive, agJean Bethke Elshtain is the Centennial Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board...

...They are prepared to accept a remarkable degree of surveillance and manipulation of their lives to satisfy their demand that babies be made (or unmade) whenever they want and as soon as a "valid contract" can be drafted...

...Thus it is easily drafted to the side of the status quo, once so-called negative liberties are intact...

...Who become our candidates for what was tagged, in Nazi biopolitics, "life unworthy of life...

...Deploying rhetoric dominated by market metaphors, strong pro-interventionists seek an end to the "barbarism" of biological reproduction and foresee a feminist Utopia to come when every aspect of human life rests in the beneficent hands of a "new elite of engineers, cyberneticians"—the words of Shulamith Firestone, who set the tone for interventionist feminism...

...Radical intrusion into human biology is an especially vexing issue for feminists because most of these techniques take place in, or are practiced upon, or require the use of the female body...

...At that sorry point, some among us— "perfect" white males—will have been given top priority by a three-to-two majority, if current studies are any indication...

...The case demonstrated, at times with almost unbearable pathos, the inadequacy of such terms as "procreative liberty," "gestational hostess," "womb rental," "risk pay for pregnancy services," and the host of other depersonalizing euphemisms which seek to transform childbearing into a morally and emotionally neutral activity...

...Paradoxically, the new eugenics, operating under the umbrella of reproductive freedom, may have opened women's lives to more invasive forms of control...

...Reproduction Enterprises, Inc...

...The decision to withhold treatment and nourishment from imperfect newborns is usually directly traceable to the premises of a eugenics politics that dictates that a handicap devalues life and undermines any right to it...

...gressive, on-the-move—and searching for big profits...

...Here was a situation in which a biological father insisted he wanted to assume the responsibilities of fatherhood—as feminists had long claimed men ought to want to do...

...Treasure Valley Transplants...

...Feminist interventionists share an overall world view with the new eugeni-cists for they, too, believe that nature must be overcome and that human beings should aspire to godlike power...

...In this bizarre case, a Tennessean divorcing his wife went to court to stop her from becoming pregnant with fertilized eggs they had put in frozen storage as a couple...

...And, should she choose sex selection as a basis for abortion because she and her husband want a male child, that suddenly becomes "feticide" rather than the "right to choose...

...We have reached the point of disrupting the "natural lottery"— the fact that no human being can control whether he or she is white or black, male or female, a Down's syndrome child or a musical prodigy...

...But the anti-interventionist position unravels philosophically—and politically—where one finds assertions of an absolute right to choose, but only so long as the choices are "true," not "false," according to ideologically correct doctrine...

...Writes social critic Jeanne Schuler, "Reproductive liberty sounds as if it was written for women but it signals a new level of alienated sexuality____Behind the effort to make all things equal in the realm of reproduction figures a new form of discrimination...

...And, of course, it has a lofty rationale: to "free" women of "unwanted" fetuses (unwanted because they are defective or, increasingly, because they are of the wrong sex), or to "free" women to have babies by means of highly touted, enormously expensive, rarely successful methods such as in-vitro fertilization or through the costly but physically painless route of surrogacy, where another woman's body labors...

...For example, is amniocentesis really a free choice or is it more and more a manipulated, subtly coercive procedure with only one correct outcome—to abort if the fetus is "defective...

...They are deeply skeptical that this technology can be turned to good purpose...

...and those who share bits and pieces of both the pro- and anti-interventionist positions...

...This won't do...

...To modern eugenicists, too, the family and "traditional morality" are obstacles in the path of radical social and genetic engineering...

...The procedure in question involves transplanting brain cells from aborted fetuses into patients with Parkinson's to stem the degenerative course of the disease...

...Feminist discourse since the mid-1960s has been lodged securely, with few dissenting voices, in the notion of reproductive freedom...

...Many of the scenarios conjured up by Gena Corea in her book The Mother Machine are genuinely frightening, showing how methods first developed as part of animal husbandry—to control the reproduction of non-human animals—are making their way into human lives...

...According to anti-interventionists, all modern technology is designed to deepen and extend patriarchal control...

...But the woman in a heterosexual relationship who, with her husband, opts for in-vitro fertilization is viewed as a hapless dupe of patriarchal wiles...

...It is an important human-rights case...

...When Lee Salk, noted psychologist, called Whitehead a "rented uterus" in his testimony in behalf of the Sterns, he earned a permanent place in the rogue's gallery...

...therefore we do not need it," strikes a sympathetic chord with many, myself included, who do not share the full range of anti-interventionist assumptions...

...Hospital Puts Infant in Organ Donor Ward...

...The voices within the feminist camp that questioned arguments for abortion couched exclusively in the language of absolute freedom of choice, or in terms of contractual rights to control one's own body, did not prevail in the debates...

...anti-interventionists, who oppose the new reproductive technologies as an intensification of patriarchal control over women and nature...

...The Baby M. case crystallized this queasiness and prompted further elaboration of what might be called the moderate position...

...A recent New York Times piece proclaimed, "In a major change in medical attitudes and practice, many doctors are providing prenatal diagnoses to pregnant woman who want to abort a fetus on the basis of sex alone...

...concerned to "do something" about human suffering but worried about eliminating human beings according to someone else's definition of suffering...

...But how liberally are we to define "defect...

...So, it seems, did she as she embraced the ever more common "perfect-baby syndrome...

...To insist, as does anti-interventionist Maria Mies, that the "so-called new technology does not bring us and our children any kind of qualitative or quantitative improvement in our lives...

...Most people support contraception and do not want abortion made illegal—but neither are they "pro-abortion...

...In this way, human procreation is transformed into a technical operation...

...And what about the much proclaimed "right" to bear a child—is this not another imposition of a male-dominant society upon women who see themselves as "failures" if they cannot get pregnant and are thus driven to place themselves in the hands of "techno-docs" (Gena Corea's term) to try to rectify their failure...

...Especially poignant for women is the fact that female fetuses are prime candidates for our version of what might be called "life less worthy of life...

...However, liberalism nurtures freedom without cultivating a vision of family, let alone community...

...Those voices now seem to have astutely anticipated the past decade's runaway developments in reproductive technology and genetic engineering...

...Until recently, mainstream feminism paid little attention to newer technologies for controlling human reproduction, except when it came to issuing briefs in behalf of a 100 per cent safe and effective contraceptive and in defense of abortion-on-demand...

...And warning flags are going up in unexpected places, including The Village Voice, which featured a piece on "the selling of in-vitro fertilization" in which the author, Andrea BorofFEagan, indicated that "tears of gratitude" sprang to her eyes when a Catholic priest on an ethics panel mentioned "conjugal intimacy"—the only person to do so in a week-long discussion of reproduction that was otherwise "desexed, disembodied, dehumanized...

...The most eloquent statement of feminist outrage came from Katha Pollitt who wrote, in The Nation, "What William Stern wanted, however, was not just a perfect baby...

...But for some anti-interventionists, a preferential option for the female fetus is part of the arsenal of weapons to fight patriarchal society...

...It would be far easier if natural pregnancy could somehow be phased out...

...We don't call it eugenics anymore, because the biopolitics of the Nazi regime gave that word a bad name...

...Sunshine Genetics...

...To offer a genuinely compelling argument, the anti-interventionists would have to extend their opposition to eugenics to include gender preselection on the part of female as well as male-female couples going through artificial insemination by donor...

...Studies consistently find a shaky combination of "yes" and "no" answers to the vast array of powers and projects currently, and dubiously, lumped under the heading of "reproductive freedom...

...Writes Andrea Dworkin, "Women can sell reproductive capacities the same way old-time prostitutes sold sexual ones...

...The feminist revolution, in this scheme of things, is a technological solution to women's "control deficit...

...The radical interventionists are right to insist that technical progress is never neutral...

...Her most recent book is " Women and War/' published by Basic Books...

...Those who see only our animal origins and patriarchal control in women's links to biology, birth, and nurture are bound to applaud anything that breaks those links...

...Feminists aroused by this case circled around a vital point—that, in Friedan's words, "the claim of the woman who has carried the baby for nine months should take precedence over the claim of the man who has donated one of his fifty million sperm...

...This is an issue on which feminism surely ought to be heard, raising the alarm against a clear and present danger...

...To put it on the level of contract law is to dehumanize women and the human bond between mother and child...

...All women are affected by these developments...