The womb draft

Catholics Split on Embryo Issue: 'Adoption' Embraced by Evangelicals in Stem Cell Debate

Tanner [Brinkman] celebrated his fourth birthday with a cake at the White House last week, and President Bush offered congratulations on national television. That is because Tanner is the product of what evangelical Christian groups call an "embryo adoption." [WaPo]

I think the fundamentalists are being too soft on this issue. They make it sound like this is a morally optional procedure. But these are little people. Surely every Christian family must do its part.

The believers should divide up all outstanding embryos and assign them to wombs immediately.

A reproductive draft is the only fair way to settle this. I don't care how many kids a lady fundamentalist has, or whether it's healthy for her to be pregnant, or what she might rather be doing with her uterus. If her number's up, it's up. No excuses. Jesus hates whiners.

Update: Ol cranky drafts a workable policy proposal.

Comments

[TomK]

Best.majikthise.post.EVAR.

[eleventhwheel]

You should be writing for the Daily Show.

[eleventhwheel]

you should be writing for the Daily Show

[eleventhwheel]

OOps. Sorry about the double entry. I have given my computer a stern talking to.

[rea]

If Jesus hates whiners, why did He make so many of them?

[mutant cat]

It's a great idea in theory, but if it would be put into practice that would just mean more children brought up by morally upstanding godfearing folk, therefore more numbers on their side, which would be a real blow to the evil socialist lesbian satanist cause.

[Barbara]

The goal of these folks (i.e., the Snowflake program) is to outlaw IVF. Its website is explicit. I know that this is satire for you, you are probably too young to think much about your fertility, assuming you even think you want children, and so on, but the only people whose liberty is going to be curtailed by anything Snowflake stands or lobbies for are women seeking fertility services, the majority of whom are like you but 10 to 15 years older than you are. I am sorry, I don't think it's much to joke about.

[mudkitty]

Outlaw ivf...outlaw contraception...outlaw sex...

[Barbara]

I don't know about the last two, certainly there are interests that want to outlaw contraception and premarital sex, anyway, but Snowflake explicitly wants to outlaw IVF. I know that many people view assisted reproduction as the province of affluent women (well, since it's usually not covered by insurance except in Illinois, New Jersey and Massachusetts it's hard to see how it could be otherwise), but the truth is, it gives a degree of greater autonomy over one's fertility to know that just because you didn't get married and start having babies before the age of 32, you need not necessarily hope for miracles. Women most likely to avail themselves of it are those who focused on finishing degrees and starting careers before making babies. Anything that prolongs female fertility makes the female life cycle more like that of the male, and therefore, the prospects of family life less dependent on entering into early marriage and procreation, and the prospects of non-family goals less personally "expensive." I hate it when I see liberals knocking this "affluent" woman's recourse without acknowledging the context in which it takes place, in effect playing the same tune as evangelicals like Snowflake.

I noted that the couple profiled in the WaPo used frozen eggs from a donor cycle (the woman in question was most likely anonymous to the couple that originally retained her), and that out of 11 embryos, they conceived one child. This is the best case scenario for frozen embryos and it underscores how uncertain "life" is at the microcellular level.

[Flint]

Mudkitty: You are such an anarchist! Please don't ever mistake me for an authority figure on anything... I wouldn't want to get on your bad side.

XXXOOOXXX

Flint

[Flint]

Barbra:

Of course your right about it being a very serious issue and Snowflake can kiss my grits! Sarcasm can be a very effective weapon though in deflating your opponent in arguments, so I still give Lindsay high marks on her post... because it was intended to elicit a response and discussion. It suceeded... we're talking about it and I didn't know about the Snowflakers or the Vatican's positon on it.

[mudkitty]

Back atcha Flintman!

[Flint]

One additional note on embryos and such. Bush held his IVF children fest as a response to the House's stemcell bill.

Much of this was a response to the Korean geneticist that recently cloned human tissue cultures and a veritable torrent of TV talking pundits that it was human cloning and the sky is falling.

I read an article by the Korean scientist and he's furious at Bush and the press because he claims that this is utter nonsense.

He said the he never used fertilized eggs from IVF, but harvest unfertilized eggs from women donors. Then he took DNA from human cells from tissue samples from a subjects arm and inserted it into the donor eggs, applied an electric shock, and grew the tissue culture in a dish.

At no time was this ever a fertilized human egg or human cloning in the traditional sense of combination of sperm and egg DNA. It was never in the womb of a woman.

What he wanted to demonstrate and perfect was the ability to grow a tissue culture specifically for on human being the could be used to repair their spinal cords, heart, liver, injuries. No fear of rejection by using a precise tissue match.

[Barbara]

Yes, that is the irony of Bush's entire position here: In reality, what the Korean scientists are doing is cultivating the perfect medium in which to culture new "stem" cells from an existing human being. Thus, a "uniquely" new human is not being created -- even if, in theory, if you transferred the resulting organism into a receptive uterus it might implant and create a self-sustaining fully independent human organism. It is the latter, theoretical possibility that is the real object of fear and loathing. The ethical objections to using frozen embryos created through fertility treatments are more logical in terms of what they are supposed to be based on (creation of unique DNA sequence, separate soul, etc.). So this "assembly line" creation of cells via the injection of an existing person's DNA into an unfertilized egg should be good news -- with the only downside being the possibility of cloning, if that is truly objectionable. So you are damned if you use previously frozen embryos because they are unique human, etc., and damned if you work around by using the putative patient's cells because of the theoretical possibility of creating a clone of an existing human being. At any rate, the bottom line is that what the Korean scientists are doing has no relationship to Snowflake or donated embryos.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Barbara, I realize that these people want to ban IVF, and that makes me furious. That's why I ridicule their superstitious asses at every opportunity.

I don't mean to trivialize IVF, not by any means.

[Ol Cranky]

Sherri Nichols posted a thoughtful piece on the issue from the perspective of a woman who's not only gone through IVF, but has not had any success with it. YOu guys might want to check it out.

[mudkitty]

Here's a perspective on IVF...it's f-ing expensive.

[Herbert Browne]

Re "Catholics Split on Embryo Issue:"
My satanic dyslexia gave me "Catholic embryo split on issue" (hevvin help it!). But who could ask for more anticipatory ecumenism than
"..'Adoption' Embraced by Evangelicals.."???
They are SO FAR ahead of the (belly?) curve!

Yo, Flint- not so fast! I'm gonna challenge you to arm-wrestle for a shot at mudkitty's cast-off cackleberries. If i win I'm gonna clone myself- with a mother like That!.. even if my soul is split in two! hot darn... then I'm gonna grow up an' be a Pragmatist! (a WHITE.. sportCOAT.. an' a PINK.. tranSISTER wa-wa-WA.. I'M all dressed up.. for the DANCE) ^..^

[Herbert Browne]

no no... I meant "a white.. LABcoat.." dang... i nearly drowned in the puny trickle of my own stream of consciousness... ^..^