(The following is the final post of a multi-part series entitled “In vitro Fertilization and Parental Dominion“, modified from a paper I wrote for an M.Div. course in Marriage, Infertility, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies, November 2007)
The Proper Dominion of Parenthood
The questions of man’s dominion in parenthood forces us to deal primarily with rejecting IVF from the standpoint of its denial of parental responsibilities and instead, heeding the call to respect the lives of our offspring from the single cell stage. What effect does IVF have on the institution of parenthood, and what issues arise that cast a shadow over the wisdom and assumed freedom to pursue this particular assisted reproductive technology? The answers to these questions should bring us to the realization that IVF undeniably undermines man’s proper dominion in parenthood.
The primary aspect of this idea of parental domain is the parent’s responsibility to ‘care for’ their child, rather than expose them to imminent harm. Today, a parent who puts their child in great danger of either death or harm can be charged with criminal negligence, or have their rights as parent of that child usurped by the state. A parent who allows their child to play in the street, as car after car swerves to miss them is failing to fulfill their responsibility as a parent in protecting life. In the case of IVF, you have a set of parents who determine that their desire for offspring is cause enough to decide (on behalf of the child) to submit their in vitro fertilized offspring to imminent harm. While this gives us an apparent paradox, O’Donovan puts it in perspective:
“These paradoxes arise only because the beginning of a human being has come to be at the same time also as his making; and that transformation has occurred, not, as a result of the separation of acts, but as a result of the taking of risks which place those who take them above the interrogation of those who suffer from them.”[1]
Knowing that the natural procreative process is risky in and of itself, those who oppose O’Donovan’s argument would say that we must “lose all sense of difference between nature and artifice,” and accept the same “cost-benefit calculus” for IVF that we have for natural procreation.[2] But just because many embryos die naturally in the procreative process, does that then put the decision to subject an IVF embryo to the same (or perhaps increased) risks into the domain of the parents? Should the child’s will in this process be viewed as neutral? Paul Ramsey argues negatively.
“The putative volition of the child we are trying to learn how to manufacture must, anyway, be said to be negative, since researchers who work with human beings do not claim that they are ever allowed to ask volunteers to face possibly suicidal risks or to place themselves at risk of grave deformity.”[3]
Furthermore, Ramsey notes that “a parent cannot legitimately submit a child who is as yet a hypothetical nothing to additional hazards” than they would experience in natural procreation.[4] The manner in which IVF views embryos as genetic material to be created, transferred, frozen, thawed, and if need be disposed of, is only an outward sign of an inward moral framework that is feeble at best, and non-existent at worst. We should not be surprised then, when IVF patients are presented with this framework, they are forced to make decisions that parents should not have to make.
CONCLUSION
IVF undermines the institution of parenthood to the extent that it forces parents to make a decision that ultimately puts their potential offspring in imminent danger. Not only that, but the technology itself gives couples the assumption of total dominion over the procreative process, basically fueling the idea that “if it is possible, then it is permissible.” It turns the procreative process into a life and death gamble, where parents are expected to lose one, two, or more children to have the chance of begetting one. In the context of IVF, the question of “playing God” is not one that can be shaken off as easily as Cutrer does in saying that “unless scientists start commanding matter to emerge from nothingness, we’re in no danger of anyone ‘playing God.’”[5] As Ramsey argues, “Man becoming his own self-creator raises far more than vague religious trepidations.” When looking at the ethics of IVF, the alienation that it brings to the natural procreative process and the natural institution of parenthood, becomes quite clear.
“The theological and moral concern is not to create a redemptive technology. For Christians, the source of redemption is God, though this is exhibited through a variety of physical, social, and historical means. Rather, the task is to identify those sources of a technological world which produce and perpetuate alienation; that prevent a union and consent with God’s creativity.”[6]
Rather than revere the procreative process, IVF seeks to divide it, sanitize it, and mechanize it. Rather than strengthen the bonds of parenthood (as its end may claim to do), the technology of IVF severs it, and replaces it with a calculated risk. In fighting the war with infertility, the philosophy of IVF seems to be: “Causalities are just a part of war.” And this my friends is unacceptable…
[1] O’Donovan, Begotten or Made?- 85
[2] O’Donovan 82
[3] Ramsey, Fabricated Man 134
[4] Ramsey 134
[5] Cutrer, The Infertility Companion- 164
[6] Waters, Pilgrims and Progress: Technology and Christian Ethics- 29
