For almost as long as I can remember, voters who understand the vital importance of the pro-life cause have had their consciences held captive by politics. Every election year, pro-lifers have been bullied, and have bullied each other, into voting for one candidate and shunning the other, with their very souls allegedly on the line.
People who more or less held the same views were invited or outright commanded to denounce each other as the enemy. But now that’s over. It’s done. We’re free.
Oh, folks on both sides are still arguing that it’s crystal clear we absolutely must vote this way or that way if we want to call ourselves pro-life. But now, neither party is willing to even fake an interest in actually being pro-life. The masks have come off entirely.
“But Simcha,” you may say. “I thought Trump and the Republicans were the pro-life party? Sure, Trump isn’t perfect but we’re looking for a politician, not a saint, and he’s clearly the only one who is willing to stand up to protect the unborn. At least compared to the alternative.”
Then, when people got upset, his campaign said he didn’t really mean it or really say anything and we’re just dumb for thinking he said anything.
He also said that, if he’s elected, his government will cover the cost of IVF for anyone who wants it, because “we want more babies.” IVF is intrinsically immoral because it replaces a sacred, creative act of love with a mechanised act of production in a lab. But even if that doesn’t bother you, IVF means millions of extra embryos are made, and then either imprisoned in a freezer indefinitely, or thrown away.
There is no IVF that is untainted by this wholesale murder of tiny humans. Babies are good; but cranking out babies like widgets and then throwing most of them away? That’s wrong.
This same Republican party absolutely lost their minds a few years ago when President Barack Obama said he was going to require Catholic employers to include contraception in their insurance coverage for employees. We were told this was a direct violation of religious freedom, and we must vote for Trump so he can liberate us from a government that would spend our tax dollars on the culture of death.
And now here we are. Maybe you will reply, “Well, this is all a shame, but you have to admit, he appointed judges to the supreme court who did what he promised, and they overturned Roe v Wade! Hard to argue with that as a pro-life win!”
Remember the scene in Monsters, Inc. where all the various monsters are getting ready to be scary? They each have their own style: One is a blob with many eyes, one has retractable spikes; some are sneaky, some are creepy. And then there is the one who makes his point by flailing his orange tentacles around and rushing forward with a hysterical shriek.
Currently, preemies must adapt prematurely to breathing air and receiving nutrition orally — an ordeal which sometimes saves lives, but still often leaves survivors with profound, lifelong disabilities. Rather than being intubated in an incubator, sedated and on a respirator, premature babies in an artificial womb would grow in a pouch filled with lab-made amniotic fluid, which would be gentler on their tiny bodies, and would allow their lungs and brains to develop more normally.
But this blogger calls the artificial womb a “travesty.” In nearly 3,000 words, he devotes only a few brief paragraphs to the idea that the invention, if successful, will keep premature babies alive, and he allows half a sentence for the idea that it’s a good thing to keep premature babies alive.
And the rest of his post is flailing tentacles, as he drags in everyone from Descartes to Dune to homeless schizophrenics to Simone de Beauvoir to Octomom, to the right to spank and homeschool, to (of course) the gays, and finally to – shudder – “feminists,” saying, “The artificial uterus is fraught with danger to the point of moral disaster on the par with abortion.”
He looks into his crystal ball and sees nothing but horrors:
Now that artificial uteri are to soon be a possibility, how many more made-to-order pedophile sex slaves are we to expect? How many of more will a liberal media refuse to shed a spotlight on?
Also, can a woman who has used an artificial womb truly bond with her child? Can the child develop normal feelings for the person who purchased its birth in a plastic Ziploc baggie?
Does he have a leg to stand on?
Well, it’s true that some folks will immediately scheme how to use this medical advance in ways that are harmful and contrary to human dignity — like incubating a child entirely and electively in an artificial environment, so that women no longer have to give birth, or so people can design and purchase a child to their specifications, with motives ranging from selfish to monstrous. I’m no fool: I know that there are people who desire these things. (It’s already being done, only we use poor Indian women rather than a plastic bag.)
But it’s also true, once artificial wombs are functional, that some of the tens of millions of babies born prematurely may live instead of die, and may be born closer to full term, with less trauma and more of a chance of avoiding life-long health problems. This is not nothing. This is not some negligible perk that we can easily decline for fear of potential abuse.
Artificial wombs are not intrinsically evil. They may someday be used for evil, but so may every other medical advance you can name. The medical syringe, for example, was invented to inject painkillers; now it’s also used to heal the sick, to administer vaccines, and to save lives. Syringes are also used for delivering heroin, and consequently are responsible for the spread of HIV and hepatitis, which is transmissible to unborn children of the infected. Bad, bad stuff. Things that make the world undeniably worse.
But that doesn’t mean that syringes are a travesty on par with abortion. It means that human beings are prey to original sin, and will immediately set to work perverting the use of everything they can lay their hands on.
The outraged blogger fails to draw a vital distinction between two kind of scientific advances:
Things that are morally neutral, and may be used well or misused, and so should be approached with caution, and
Things that are intrinsically immoral, even if they may be used for good ends.
IVF and abortion fall into the second category. The artificial womb falls into the first category. But he seeks to blend the two categories, essentially arguing, “Just think how very wrong this could go!”
And what if God the Father had made this very persuasive argument when He made our first parents? Lots of potential for abuse there. Should He have scrapped the whole project?
There should always be special caution when we see medical advances related to the conception and gestation of humans. Because human life is sacred, it is especially heinous when it is treated as a commodity, as a means to an end, or even, God forbid, as a trinket.
Because human life is sacred, it is wrong to use technology to create a human life in a petri dish, even if the parents of the child love him. It is wrong to use technology to deliberately end human life through euthanasia, even if the patient is suffering.
So I have some grudging sympathy for the blogger. Medical advances and human gestation make uneasy bedfellows, and modern folks are not especially particular about which bedfellows they choose. It’s no use pretending that there are no dangerous possibilities when medical technology makes another leap ahead. It’s no use pretending that everyone who might use new technology will be pure and noble. Horror are all around us, and technology is advancing faster and more recklessly than we can keep up with.
But nothing will be gained — nothing but more horrors– by shrieking hysterically and wishing for the good old days when people just went ahead and died. “It’s a braver, newer world suddenly,” says the blogger. “It’s moments like this that make me long for simpler days.”
I was at a cemetery yesterday. One large grave plot included one man, his first wife with a string of child’s headstones, and his second wife with her own string of dead children.
Those were simpler days.
Babies died, women died, over and over and over again, because the medical technology available was a bowl of hot water, a poultice, and a prayer. Things were simpler then, and children flickered in and out of life like stars, too tiny ever to send their light all the way to earth.
Was it simpler? Yes, it was. Was it better? No, it was not. Evil ebbs and flows. It adapts to whatever the current age can offer. There was evil, and carelessness, and the devaluation of human life back in the old days, and there is evil, carelessness, and the devaluation of human life now. An artificial womb may look scary and dystopian to us. For perspective, maybe browse baby coffins.
I won’t lie: I’m horrified when I look into the future (or even the present) and see that science is separating us more and more from our humanity. But I’m equally horrified when I see Catholics retreating into a sort of sentimental brutality that sighs heavily, dons a cloak of false nobility, and grandly chooses death for others over hard choices for us all.
The only response is, of course: What the hell do you mean, ‘extra?'” What is an extra child? Who is disposable and extraneous, and who gets to decide? Are you “extra,” Bill Nye? Am I?
The founder asks, “What a better way to celebrate your most treasured gift, your child, than through jewellery?”
Well, you could let him live, I suppose. You could allow him the basic dignity of spending time in the womb of his mother, to live or not, to grow or not, but at least to have a chance. You could celebrate the life of your child by giving him some small gift of warmth and softness, however brief, rather than letting him travel in an insulated pouch from lab to lab, frozen and sterile from beginning to end. You could conceive a child so as to give him life, and you could rise like a human should above the blind proliferation of biology.
I have not experienced the anguish of infertility. I can easily imagine how the ancient, unquenchable desire for a child would drive a couple to consider IVF. Who would fault a loving couple for wanting a child?
I can imagine, if I had no guidance, seeing IVF as a way of simply bowing to the inevitable awkwardness of life. We’d rather do things the natural way, but sometimes nature fails us. If science offers us a workaround, and we end up in a place of love, what does it matter? I can imagine thinking this. It is natural to want children.
And it is natural to want our children to remain with us even if we can’t hold their plump, warm baby bodies in our arms. We want something we can touch. I can imagine this: Knowing, no matter who thinks they’re just “extras,” that these embryos are more than just specimens. I can imagine wanting to keep them safe, or something like it.
And so the mother does the thing that makes the most sense to a pagan, when nature fails her: She bows to artifice, and finds a way to bring her children with her, clumsily, sentimentally, but grasping at something that seems true: We are made to be with the ones we love. We are supposed to be able to give them life, and to keep them safe.
She knows they are her children. But does she know what children are?
In order to turn embryos into jewelry, one must believe that all children, and all people, can be made safe. One must believe there is such a thing as safety in this world.
But mothers, and fathers, and you barren ones, listen to me. You cannot have any loved one forever. Don’t you know that they all go? Don’t you know this?
Sometimes it happens before we even knew they existed; sometimes it happens when they are old and feeble, frightened and crying for death. But they all go. No one is safe. No one can be preserved. Why are you lying about it? Haven’t you been through enough springs to know that winter always comes? Haven’t we been through this? No one is with us always, until the end of time.
Anyway, hardly anyone.
Imagine, a body encased in glass, made portable, made consumable. But not jewelry. Instead, a sunburst, a fountain of life, a wellspring, the maker of worlds somehow contained, first in His mother’s womb, and now on our altars, through springs and winters and then through springs again.
The body inside is a willing victim. Not preserved in death, but alive forever, immortal. Here is the difference between the scandal of the Incarnation and the scandal of sentimentality. The Incarnation invites us to accept forgiveness, bought for us through His death. Sentimentality puts our sin always before us, but tells us we can be comforted through everlasting death.
I do understand. We want the body. We grieve when the beloved one is lost to us, even if, like the parents who make “extra” embryos, it’s entirely our fault that our children are cold and dead. We want to heal our grief, to control it, to contain it.
That is not how sin is healed. That is not how death is conquered. Healing comes when we send our dead to be with Him, not preserved forever in death, but to be restored forever in His life.
I commend all the dead, all my beloved ones who are passing away like the grass: Go and be with Him. You don’t need to stay here with us, to comfort me in my weakness. Go and be with Him.
Two weeks ago, “mercy” was a dirty word that only thug-loving bleeding hearts would use, and according to my prudential judgment, the fifth commandment calls for killing ‘em all, even the mentally ill, and letting God sort ‘em out.
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Today, Dolce and Gabbana are here to save us with their breathtaking clarity about family life, so we need to extend mercy and tolerance and the benefit of the doubt and meet them where they are, because after all, we’re all on a journey here. Hell, let’s launch a petition supporting them against Elton John’s scurrilous boycott (eek, a boycott!), because we are always and everywhere in favor of supporting bitsy weensy scraps of truth from people who routinely use gang rape in their ad campaigns.
And can you explain to me why it’s okay for the world to see pro-lifers fawning all over a couple of guys who referred to human babies as “synthetic children”? Am I the only one who remembers when Catholics were openly debating whether or not “test tube babies” had souls? Is that the road we want to go down again?
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I’m not saying “Stone the witch!” whether that’s Elton John or Dolce and Gabbana or anyone. I’m saying we need to calm the hell down, pick our battles better, and above all stay out of celebrity cat fights that have very little to do with us.
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Kat has it right. Catholics need to stop being so desperate for crumbs of affirmation from the secular world. Or if we are going to give credit where credit is due, then we need to be a hell of a lot more consistent about it. If D+G are our new besties, then let’s see if we have any of this astonishing outpouring of mercy and understanding to spare for people who aren’t rich and influential.
