The Miracle of Life (Devalued)?

 

When I hear about someone not being able to have children my heart breaks. Being infertile is one of my greatest fears in life because I want to be a mother so badly. My aunt and her husband were trying to have a baby for years and she ended up never getting pregnant. After seeing how terrible being infertile is for her, I could not ever imagine something to terrible happening to me. That is why when I think about surrogacy and medical technology that aids people in having babies if they are having trouble I am immediately filled with compassion and awe. Helping someone have a baby when they cannot or are having trouble getting pregnant seems to be such an honorable thing to do. The biggest favor of all favors. Those women deserve everything and more. Except in Outsourcing the Womb, France Twine explains how gestational surrogacy and other forms of surrogacy has become a commercialize marketplace especially for those of low socioeconomic backgrounds as well as a system of based on privilege.

            “Today it is relatively easy to use the Internet to research and identify agencies that will provide one-stop shopping for assistance in conception including the purchase of genetic material (ova, sperm) and to find a surrogate to hire. For example, www.iwanttogetpregnant.com is a website that offers services in India. The Internet now provides access to online shopping for a surrogate-an international database of women will sell their ova or their reproductive services.”(Twine, 2011,30)

This quote from Twine made me cringe. I go on the internet to online shop or look up information for school or check movie times. I do not associate going online with “one-stop shopping” for assistance in conception. Having an international database of women that will sell their ova or reproductive services is terrifying to me for a few reasons. 1) Because it seems that the miracle of life is being forgotten or devalued if it is being turned into a consumer culture. 2) Having an international database full of women really takes away from the whole process. It reminds me of anonymous websites. Or shopping using a debit or credit card. There is an invisibility associated with online databases which is blurring out these women as people.  And finally, 3) The idea that a woman’s body has now become even more commercialized. Yes women’s bodies have been sexualized for years but now that the consumerism has reached a whole new level of using a woman’s body for childbirth? This goes beyond the loss of a woman’s subjectivity because their personhood is completely and entirely nonexistent based on this consumer culture of google babies.

The last way that the consumerism of the womb devalues the miracle of life is the knit picking of certain traits. “In the commercial egg and sperm market individuals select and purchase genetic material (egg and sperm) based on the physical and social characteristics include age, skin color, height, hair color, eye color, body shape, and perceived racial or ethnic origin.”(Twine, 2011, 33) These consumers are making choices about the desirability of the egg and sperm based on those factors listed above. While yes, I still view giving up your reproductive services as a gift, this process is just shopping for a child. I view childbirth as this amazing thing that happens that gives us all life. But picking an egg or sperm based on those factors seems way too much like shopping and not enough like what is supposed to happen naturally. This process just seems like me picking out the color and size of my Christmas sweater except it is not a sweater it is a human child. It is just so unnatural. I understand that all medicine is technically unnatural but this system is messing with birth in such an invasive and unnatural way.

            Because the woman’s womb has become a place for consumerism and has entered a process that is like “shopping for your baby” I found the perfect video to share that explains why “shopping for a baby” rubs me the wrong way. An expecting mother emailed a Down syndrome advocacy group asking what to expect because her baby has Down syndrome. This video basically shows many of the things a child with Down syndrome is able to do and will do. I know mothers of children with Down syndrome and many other mental disabilities and they all love their children just like any other mother. I fear the concept of “shopping for a baby” because it erases natural processes that could occur and while yes having a child with Down syndrome is difficult, “isn’t every child difficult”? If a couple or person is shopping for a certain type of child what would happen if that baby turns out to be flawed in any way? Especially when legal documents are in place. I just think that just because you can’t have a baby of your own does not give you the right to pick out your future child’s specific eye color or body type.