Contents:
PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON CLONING
CLONING AS A REPRODUCTION ISSUE
SECOND WAVE THEORY
REPRODUCTIVE ROLES AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY AND REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY
THE GENDER REVOLUTION AND UNRESOLVED ISSUES OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
FAMILY VALUES, NOT FAMILISM
HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
TOWARD A SANE POLICY ON REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
THE NEW GENERATION AND THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION
BLACK SHEEP, ARISE: YOU ARE NOBODY'S DOLLY!
PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON CLONING
The night of the announcement that a sheep named Dolly became the first mammal to
be cloned, the PBS Evening News Hour featured a panel including a Jesuit priest,
a physician, and an ethics professor. A week later, a New York Times article
purporting to discuss the ethics of cloning proclaimed that: "The most fundamental fear is that the soul will be taken by this
penetrating [sic] new photography called cloning." To those who are familiar
with the real-life impacts of reproductive technologies, this statement
rates along with the preoccupation of medieval theologians' over how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin.
When conceived for human application, cloning is discussed by ethicists either as a tool for medical purposes, such as replacing vital parts or processes of the body, or as a reproductive technology that would be used by infertile couples.(1)
The medical aspect of cloning of tissue or at early embryonic levels offers major benefits for the future.
Benefits for infertile couples are somewhat less clear in that in vitro fertilization techniques are still painful and potentially harmful. A focus on technologies addressing infertility itself would seem to be a more direct solution.
In addition to these widely discussed applications, cloning to serve other human reproductive ends, for example, self-cloning and the bearing and birthing by individuals of children who are not their own genetic offspring for the sole purpose of relinquishment.
Public discourse on cloning must transcend the manipulation of cultural blind spots and the un-answering of questions unasked. Popular and academic discourse proceeds on the issue largely in the absence of gender analysis. As was the case in the PBS program mentioned above, public panels discussing the topic are often all male, and when including women have not offered a feminist view, much less the view of a birthmother, surrogate mother, adoptee or AI child, or an adoptive parent.
An assessment of the ethics of cloning and the potential impact of human cloning requires a social and historical perspective as much as a ethical/theological one.
As is already true of human reproduction, the most profound impact of a new reproductive technology will be experienced:
What is ethics in the absence of consideration real-life experience? In the lofty rhetoric of the bioethicists and religious authorities, little attention is given to the fact that the social environment determines the ethical implications of any technology, and so will it be cloning. It is cultural and social discourse that puts new technologies "in place".
A real life perspective on the potential human experience of cloning can be gained by hearing from surrogate mothers who have borne children through in vitro fertilization methods. Authors like Gena Correa, who have extensively researched reproductive techniques have much to say in this respect. The mourning related to relinquishment is long-term and may interfere with mental health and social function. Secondary infertility (not having futher children) is significantly more prevalent in these mothers than in the general population.
CLONING AS A REPRODUCTION ISSUE
Cloning is essentially a reproductive technology, hence an ethical perspective
related to cloning necessarily involves considering the social, historical, and
contemporary context in which reproductive techniques have been invented and
utilized.
Carolyn Merchant asserts that the major realms of human existence are production, reproduction, and consciousness, and that history can be understood in terms of the interaction of these spheres.(3) Cloning and reproductive technologies transept these spheres, suggesting that social and political insights are as germane or more so than bioethics in understanding the cultural implications of this technology.
Reproductive issues go to the heart of what it means to be human, to be a woman or a man, to be born, to bear a child, to parent. Reproductive issues relate to the broad issues of human freedom and gender.
The social revolutions of the sixties and seventies have been largely obliterated from the public arena of fin de siecle consciousness. The absence of such an analysis in current discourse about cloning leads one to wonder if the core issues of the gender revolution—among its fulcrum issues being human reproductive rights—have been totally dropped from public consciousness. Still, there was a gender revolution that transformed our society—culturally if not institutionally. This revolution has been effectively turned around by elite political institutions and especially the right wing, though in popular culture the movement has retained some of its vitality. Even though current reproductive technologies were entirely unknown in the sixties, early theorists of the second wave of feminism had a great deal to say that is relevant to understanding the social context of cloning.
SECOND WAVE THEORY(4)
According to such writers as Roxanne Dunbar(5) and Shulamith Firestone(6), who
attempted to reconcile first wave feminist theory with the historical analysis
of Marx and Engels, at the dawn of the patriarchal revolution that swept through
the Near East, North African and Mediterranean region between 3000 and 2000
years ago, young shepherds and hunters to overturn the matriocentric power
structure of the agrarian villages of their mothers and sisters. One of the
cultural myths that spurred this revolt was the belief (of barely antecedent
invention) that a woman's womb was a mere vessel in which the male seed, once
planted, found fertile soil in which to thrive. In other words, infants were
"clones" of the father implanted in the mother's womb, which fed and nursed the
cloned creature into human existence. This myth persevered well into modern
times, when microscopic and other evidence produced irrefutable proof that
maternal genetic traits were equally present in the offspring.(7)
With the cloning of the first mammal, this early patriarchal fantasy is within
the grasp of reality. To those who cry: Nonsense!, these second wave theorists
would respond that they are merely demonstrating the extent of their own bovine
naiveté.
Second wave theorists also noted that animal husbandry (the industry by and in which cloning was developed) is not a recent pursuit of science but a ancient practice. In fact, it was the most important social and economic activity upon which patriarchy historically emerged. Animal husbandry derived originally from men's ownership of animals, an ownership later extended to cover slaves, women, and children. The term meaning property, "chattel", comes from the same root as "cattle". Female livestock were the raw materials of patriarchy, their reproductive slavery an essential stratagem of emerging patriarch. This marked the transition from or difference between primarily agricultural societies which were fairly egalitarian and those in which pastoralism enabled greater surpluses of wealth to be acquired.
Patriarchy was built partially upon the anxiety of some men (especially wealthy men) that the children they were providing for might not be their own. Women's reproductive capacities, previously honored during early agricultural phases of civilization, became too threatening and the lives of women were constrained from any degree of autonomy. (Modern genetics now ensures that when and if such a question must be answered definitively, it can be. This increases the level of reproductive responsibility on the part of both men and women, and reduces the need for oppressive customs that limit the lives of women.) It was by and through the "husbandry" of animals that pastoralists accumulated the necessary surpluses and skills by which to establish the pater familias, the early patriarchal family. In the pater familias, the male head of household had absolute rights over his wife or wives, children, slaves, and of course, his livestock.
REPRODUCTIVE ROLES AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
One line of second wave feminist theory, holding that the law should be blind to
reproductive roles, has been welcomed and coopted by patriarchal jurisprudence.
Another theory equally powerful within the second wave of feminism has been
ignored, that is, that women's reproductive function was and is central to her
oppression.
Today a mother enjoys the right to the fruits of her body and her "labor" only when such rights are not contested. A birthmother in a custody fight with the non-biological parents of her child is almost sure to lose, despite a few widely publicized cases to the contrary. When fighting for custody with the biological male parent, women are also more likely to lose.(8)
Most current focus in reproductive rights centers around the important arena of defending the right to abortion. Infertile women are seen to have made great gains in acquiring medical tools to become mothers. Little is said of the painful processes that are involved, even though chosen by these women. Even less consideration is given to the possibility that such "choices" on the part of infertile women reflect an age old onus of blame for the "barren" woman, and an escalating pressure for all married couples to see their union as somehow incomplete if childless.
More disturbing is an almost invisible new class of women brought about by the application of new reproductive technologies. Today small minorities of women bear the onerous burden of surrogacy, and only a small portion of this is of a non-biological character (ie., she bears no relationship to her offspring). Anyone who cares to look can see an emerging caste engaged in reproductive prostitution or slavery. Cloning as a technology within a capitalist patriarchal society has, however, the potential to geometrically increase the frequency of such exploitation. For the foreseeable future, it is the human rights of women and that will be violated by unethical (or even "ethical") uses of cloning. However, as the second wave feminists perceived, the breeding experiences of female mammals is a prelude to the reproductive experiences of human women.
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY AND REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY
Every major reproductive technique ever employed by animal husbandry has been
used and is being used upon women. Gena Correa and Susan Griffith, among others,
have documented this. So will cloning be used upon human women. The question is
not if, but how, why, and to whom.
The following quotation from the Scottish scientists who cloned the ewe provides a picture of techniques and outcomes common to animal husbandry and its accompanying experimentation:
"In total, 62% of fetuses were lost, a significantly greater proportion than the estimate of 6% after natural mating... At about day 110 of pregnancy, four fetuses were dead, all from embryo-derived cells, and postmortem analysis was possible after killing the ewes."(9)
Let's ponder a moment on what these ewes went through: in vitro fertilization which even under the most benign protocols is painful; bearing dead fetuses; abortions or still births; finally, being sacrificed. Women are spared the atrocity of being killed for the purposes of "postmortem analysis". However, the possession of cultural symbols and meaning by humans initiates new forms of reproductive suffering. First, as mentioned above, infertile women or couples may feel stigmatized and to the degree that such a sense of being "barren" causes them to seek fertility treatments, so that extent the pain of these treatments is hardly worthwhile. In addition, new reproductive technologies increase and diversify the expressions of an age of practice that has already shown to damage lives. Much emotional suffering derives from the relinquishment of an infant a woman has carried in pregnancy and given birth to.(10) Grief, guilt, alienation and other long term emotional consequences of relinquishment have been well documented in birth mothers (as well as relinquishing fathers, or fathers losing custody or visitation rights).
Given the potential variations on surrogacy inherent to new reproductive technologies, the surrogate mother's' emotions as well as those of all the contributing parents, could be greatly complicated. Issues of class cannot be ignored (as they have been) in the field of bioethics. Surrogate mothers are often of the underclass, and those who will bear unrelated children are more likely to be. Not all women, to be sure, need fear even a passing encounter with cloning. But if you're poor, of color, or from a poor country, your chances are greatest.
THE GENDER REVOLUTION AND UNRESOLVED ISSUES OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
In the early to mid 20th century, especially visible in the 1950s, powerful,
changes took place during affecting the family and male/female relations. The
patriarchal nuclear family and its accompanying imbalance of the sexes and
devaluation of women showed itself to be unable to accommodate to changing
exigencies of the modern age. In response, the second wave or gender revolution
broke upon America and the world in successive overlapping stages. I will
briefly summarize these as: the young male (youth) revolt (1958-1973); the
feminist revolution (1965-1979); the lesbian/gay rights movement (1968—); and
finally androgyny/transgender movement (1975—).
Those who would like to view the gender revolution as solely the "women's
liberation movement" must be reminded that in the late fifties and early
sixties, young men were the first to strike "blows against the empire" (11) of
the patriarchs. The beatniks strove for greater self-expression than had been
previously sanctioned. Some of the beats, like Allen Ginsberg, were also
gay—eventually an identified gay male movement emerged as well. Around the same
time, middle class "Playboys" struck out against the sole breadwinner role of
the male.(12) The beatniks prefigured a far more massive youth movement of
yippies, hippies and antiwar activists led by young men that embraced peace,
cooperation, non-materialism and non-competitiveness, all values in direct
defiance of the patriarchy.
Meanwhile a profound new theory of feminism began to be articulated, reaching
its zenith in the years of 1966-1970. Feminists borrowed anthropologists use of
the term patriarchy as a social and political system that accords power to
certain males while keeping it out of the reach of most men and almost all
women. It was system that was not about men or fathers but about power
relationships centered around rigid definitions of gender.(13)
The gender revolution wrought powerful changes upon modern patriarchal society.
But a counterrevolution from the religious right swiftly followed which was well
organized and highly successful. The second wave proposed several radical
premises, and its accomplishments were profound:
The gender revolution transformed men and women from superior and subordinate to equal partners, and set a course toward economic rights for women. In violation of the ubiquitous prior myth of female dependency, some feminists asserted that "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" and went on to demonstrate that women were capable of independent lives and actions. This increased the value of women's sphere (domesticity and the family), and greatly extended the spectrum of behavior and appearance considered "desirable" by men (short hair, athleticism, etc.).
One of the first posters of the second wave came out of France depicted a woman lying supine with a bishop and a statesman standing on top of her. She was saying: "Church and State: Off my belly!". This symbolized the message that women must seize power over their own bodies and hence, reproduction. Paradoxically, securing the right of a women or couple to "choose" to have or not have child increased the value of children. The reproductive rights movement accomplished a stunning turnaround regarding pregnancy, childbearing, and childrearing, moving it from a proscribed and purely female realm considered inferior and animalistic, to a realm of wider social function valued and participated in by both sexes. Prior to the second wave, to see a man carrying a baby in the streets (in the U.S.) was a rare sight indeed. The youth, gay, lesbian feminist movements turned the whole concept of gender upside down, proposing and expressing androgyny as a desired norm. This created cultural permission for a far wider range of human expression in both men and women, heterosexuals and sexual minorities.
Feminist theorists took on the nuclear patriarchal family based on the stewardship over women and children by men. At that time the sustaining mythology of the family was female inferiority/dependence and male supremacy. Feminists said that if this is the way the family was to be they wanted out. And they did bail out, en masse. The general public understood the position of radical feminism but did not want to carry it to a point of separatism. The result was a scramble on the part of men and women in general, to reform the family.
Thus, through both intended and unintended results, feminism was wildly successful in transforming culture. Yet the gender revolution made few inroads into the hoary institutions of the ruling elite and the government representing them. The second wave was repulsed by the established powers in the U.S. and reached a level of powerful elite opposition by 1980 when Reagan took office. Throughout the 70's and 80's the gender war was fought between the new consciousness or liberated culture constituting the largest and most progressive segment of the population (both male and female) and patriarchal elite joined and supported by a rising religious right. While only a minority of Americans support their positions the religious right currently dominates U.S. national discourse on gender.
THE COUNTER REVOLUTION: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN JEOPARDY
Let's state it flat out that in many important areas the second wave was
defeated and co-opted. The cultural transformation was real but institutional
resistance and opposition took its toll. Even as both sexes now bask in the
comfortable notion that issues of sexual equality are no longer a part of their
relational agenda, the actual status of women and of gender minorities is
undergoing serious backsliding.
The task of the new right, whether stated or implied, is to restore the patriarchal family and to gird all new technologies to this end. Though remnants of the gender revolution are extant and even continue to evolve in small cultural islands, the broad front of the movement has dispersed. "Family values" discourse was initiated as part of the ideology of the right wing. Insofar as "family values" focuses on real issues like deadbeat dads and generational welfarism, it has made some contributions. However, most of the ideology related to "family values" is a new virulent form of revisionism. For example, recently the female author of a book on divorce, called for making it more difficult and also spoke of holding "consciousness raising" sessions about the evils of divorce for the family. Consciousness-raising, invented and developed in 1966-1969 by radical feminists like Katie Sarachild, was precisely the social strategy by which women (and men) were able to identify oppressive relationships (including marriages) and leave them.(14) This illustrates how today's agenda-pushers are boldly co-opting strategies invented by the second wave using these strategies subvert the gains of feminism. It also points to another paradox of the gender revolution.
Just as increased accessibility of abortion raised the social value of childbearing during the 1970's, during that same period the social accessibility of divorce resulted in a new marital focus on the part of men as well as women. Fathering became a more important domestic role and domesticity itself took on enhanced value. Thus divorce improved marriage during this period at least, and indeed the ready availability of divorce is probably a necessary part of enhancing the real relational commitments necessary for a strong marriage. It is impossible for any serious individual to be against "family values"—a phrase that can be added to the already unassailable American triumvirate of God, motherhood and apple-pie. Individuals who are unmarried themselves can be reverent upholders of family values: preserving the memory of their parents or ancestors; fostering cohesiveness among their relatives; nurturing children within the extended family; taking on roles that complement or compensate for parental roles; undertaking vocations of indirect service to the family such as teaching, ministry, social work, etc. To parent, to be married, or to stay married, are only some among many ways that family values can be expressed. The presence of a father is clearly an asset to any family, assuming that he is a reasonably good father, as the great majority or fathers are. However, there are other factors involved in a successful family that supersede the presence or absence of any particular role: mature love, a degree of peace and security, consistent discipline and a reasonable livelihood being among these factors.
But the presence or absence of a specific parental role, even that of mother, should not be used as an acid test to define a family. The right wing's family policy is to reinitiate the tyranny of the pater familias in a kinder, gentler format. The actual ethics of "family values" is a reassertion of two old and worn social strategems: familism and laissez faire. Familism, a strategy of some premodern cultures, was defined by anthropologists as the social attitude that those who were not a part of the immediate tribe were not subject to the same moral considerations as those who were. Thus non-family members were not necessarily considered human and thus could be robbed, raped, and otherwise exploited with impunity.
To some extent family values represent and derive from the second wave itself, which demanded and received a higher social valuation of the domestic realm and greater engagement on the part of men in activities such as childbearing and rearing that before had been sequestered as women's work not worthy of male preoccupation.
This aspect of family values emerged not from the right wing nor certainly from government policy, but from men and women themselves, and is one of the most successful extant legacies of the second wave. It was not, therefore, in rising to defend the honor of domesticity that the right wing discourse on family values began, but rather to the defense of male supremacy and narrow-minded categories of gender and sexual expression. The right was confounded and shocked by the plethora of alternative family types that began to thrive in the late sixties and throughout the seventies, corresponding to the high-point of the second wave. Their prejudices were further greatly offended by the new freedom of gender expression accorded to sexual minorities and to men and women in general.
Therefore the phrase "family values" repeated so liturgically by the right obviously does not mean what it purports to mean. Those who originally formulated and most often mouth the term are not referring to such virtues as nurturance, responsibility and love which are readily found in families headed by single mothers, gay families, collective families, families "of choice", or extended families, as well as in the nuclear family. In the memorable words of Reagan's first attorney general, "we are talking about the nukular monigamous family." (sic.)(15) The nuclear, sexually exclusive and patriarchal family is precisely what family means to the right wing and what is to be defended. Custody issues are now largely determined on the basis of "family values". Despite a few highly publicized cases to the contrary, the general drift of court judgments over adoption custody cases is such that if you are a married couple, however unfair your initial arrangements or the breaking of them, the baby belongs to you. If you are a single women, even the genetic parent, you will almost certainly lose custody to the non-biological married couple, even if the initial arrangements were illegal.(16)
"Family values" are further denied gay parents and couples. Adoption is a reproductive right of infertile parents but only if they're heterosexual. A gay person or couple has great difficulty in most states in adopting a child. The passage and signing of DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) not only denies gays the right to enjoy the same partnership benefits as heterosexuals, but it reaches into the future to ensure that if ever and whenever such freedoms are secured in any state they will be automatically annulled by the U.S. government.
A new family ethic must consider that the reproductive labor of women in the bearing and initially biological nursing/nurturing of children is not a biological accident but an important work of nature given human dimension and value. Such a consideration will be important as new reproductive technologies usually require the cooperation of a woman. The potential to demean individual women as a means to an end must be avoided, regardless of how beneficial the end may be from someone else's perspective. For example, a surrogate mother may be poorly treated and shut out after bearing a child for an infertile couple. The tendency is to think that she was "paid off" for her services. But bearing a child is not a service, it is a lifelong event. The rights of childbearing women will become more and more difficult to defend in the face of new technologies like cloning.
Diversity of family forms is inevitable in the global economy of neocapitalism. Social institutions need to actively support, rather than discourage, diverse forms of the family which would include but not be limited to:
FAMILY VALUES, NOT FAMILISM
The "family values" agenda (now dominant) is a red herring, a return to
patriarchal values without the former safety net of the broad scope of
commitments once attached to the pater familias of earlier and simpler times. It
is this backdrop against which our society faces a plethora of new reproductive
and genetic technologies. The puerile manner in which current social discourse
addresses the potential impact of these technologies points up the need for an
authentic family ethics.
Gay bashing, mean-spiritedness, and anti-abortionism, along with draconian moralism, are the key issues of the new familists. Family values are intrinsic and universal. Family values are not so flimsy that they need to be built upon the oppression of the "other", justify homophobia, or social apathy, the neglect of social action.
There is no use standing on the sidelines crying, "You can't do that!" Progressives faced with the counterrevolution have too often resorted to that strategy. Technology once developed tends to be used. It is social values and political priorities that will determine the use of new technologies, and to which our attention must turn. To turn a phrase, "It's Society Stupid!" Into the current paralysis of anti-ideology and apoliticality, the seeds (read ovum and sperm) of creativity must be resown.
Neither religion nor familism has a solution to the real human issues posed by advancing reproductive technologies like cloning. What the new familism says is in essence the same thing that used to be said about sex in the fifties: if the end product outcome is a child born and reared within the framework of the patriarchal family, anything goes. Outside of this framework, nothing will be allowed. This is a repressive norm. Just as the repressive fifties sexual norms collided with birth control technologies to create the sexual revolution, familism confronted with neo-reproductive technologies is going to produce a revolution for reproductive rights.
Familism must be replaced with a new social ethos. Social anger, social despair, social creativity, social action, social justice, and social change, must again be part of open discourse within and between the sexes. Social anger needs to be understood for what it is, not the latest skirmish in the so-called "war of the sexes" but as the expression of real pain and need on the part of women, men, and children whose lives are increasingly limited and dehumanized. We need a new system of ethics adapted to the complexities of global capitalist society. A return to religiosity or patriarchy merely postpones the necessity for developing this new language and discourse of ethics. The liberation movements of the sixties and seventies, so maligned by the the new right wing establishment, needs to be reassessed. Their ideas when combined with new insights of human and social science can serve as a foundation for a new moral complexity.
A thorough revisit of second wave theory and history will lead to an analysis and strategy. The Third Wave is not in the foreseeable future, but the horizon may drop swiftly off the edge. Anyone who lived through the sixties knows that, and generation X will find out too.
HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
Today, few of us are not talking about younger women's decreased access to
abortions; instead we're talking about whether third trimester abortions are
allowable. Third trimester abortions would be virtually non-existent if overall
policies and programs focused on genetic counseling, accessibility of
reproductive education, birth control, and free access for all women to first
trimester or early abortions. These original proposals of second wave feminists
have never come close to realization.
Incursions upon abortion rights in this country have brought about in many states a situation similar to that of a woman in the late fifties and early sixties: if you're knowledgeable and have resources, you can find your way to a first trimester abortion but if you're an ignorant scared kid (and especially if you live in the south or the midwest), you're likely to be stuck with a second trimester abortion (more brutal to both mother and fetus), or bearing a child and relinquishing. We discuss the possible emotional damage of abortion but are quite silent about the long term psychological consequences of relinquishing a child, such consequences being well documented in the literature.
The reproductive right of a mother to bear her child and to obtain social support in the process is a "natural right" generally affirmed in mammalian and primate societies. Anthropologists have stated categorically that despite the rule of patriarchy, mother and child remains the basic family unit.17 One of the attainments of the second wave was to promote social understanding and support for the mother-child unit. For example, by 1971, the term "illegitimacy" pretty much disappeared from popular discourse, and the wages for housework movement had made important gains internationally. But this gain was short-lived. By the early 80's, the single mother and her family were confronted by renewed condemnation against "illegitimate" births and antiwelfare legislation. This withdrawal of support was not based on fear of overpopulation, since the single woman's married sister is encouraged by new tax law to bear large families regardless of whether she and her husband can afford it. Nor is the stigma of "illegitimacy" based upon the actual economic burden of single motherhood to society. The few studies that have been done indicate that when single parent or alternative families are compared with traditional families of the same income level, there are no discernible differences in the outcome of the children.(18) If the single mother has support from an extended family, an extralegal relationship or make a high salary, her children are just as likely to prosper in life.
No one denies that well functioning and well matched male and female parents are likely to raise healthy and well functioning children. But the issues involved in family adjustment are more complex than can be handled or solved by a caste system approach that separates the nuclear household for all other forms or kinds of families. Yet this caste system is precisely what has been reinstituted since the 1980's. The single mother, extended family, the single father, the childless couple, the single woman or bachelor, in addition to gay families, and alternative forms of co-parenting, have all been shunted into a lower caste and subjected to both social and economic discrimination.
Meanwhile with no effort on the part of society to shape any sort of reasonable population policy, the nuclear family enjoys superior caste privileges. Social policy, then, precedes reproductive policy and the threat to biological diversity inherent in cloning follows the current diminishment in social diversity.
TOWARD A SANE POLICY ON REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
In the face of cloning and other runaway reproductive technologies, the task of
society is to establish broad principles governing the research, technologies,
and laws pertaining to reproduction. In light of these broad principles, each
case can then be judged. Where they conflict, effort needs be made to balance
out these social principles with special attention to individual rights,
non-discrimination, and compassionate use. Principles of reproductive policy,
many of them already envisioned by second wave theorists(19), might include the
following:
-- Each individual's body and reproductive capacities belong to that person and cannot be controlled or intruded upon by law, unless there is a compelling interest on the part of the government; OR by another individual through direct or indirect force or coercion.
-- Each individual, and any two or more individuals have the right to reproduce, so long as in this process other rights and principles are not violated. All individuals bearing and raising children should be subject to the same laws and benefits.
-- If physical or emotional damage has been incurred by an individual participating in a reproductive activity, even if the individual "agreed" to participate, the individual should be able without time limits to seek redress through a civil suit.
--Practices that have been shown to be emotionally damaging (for example, childbearing without a further familial relationship to the child) should be discouraged.
-- When possible, research funding and the application of reproductive technologies should be rewarded if they advance general public health and genetic diversity, and discouraged if they reduce or threaten health or genetic diversity.
-- The extent of an individual's contribution to reproduction (ie., participation of their bodies, lives and labor) must be considered as well as genetic relationship, in determining parental and custody arrangements.
-- Parent-assignment and custody arrangements should ensure that when possible the child is able to relate to all contributing parents including the genetic parent(s), the birthmother or birthparent(s) and/or the social (legal or adoptive) parents.
-- Payments for reproductive services should either be prohibited or standardized at a beyond-market level that takes into consideration external personal costs such as long term consequences to the emotional and/or physical health of the non-social parent.
-- Current and planned practices of animal husbandry should be brought to public light through open investigation and discussion. The effect of technologies and practices on animals (especially on mammals and primates who are closely related to human beings) should be considered and compassionate policies set in place and enforced.
THE NEW GENERATION AND THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION
The young women and men of today seem to bask in the cultural detritus of the
second wave—sexual equality and partnership—even as these extant phenomena
move inexorably toward extinction. The new variety of gender discourse, all
about parenting and stock options, fits like a condom over newly erected
postfeminist neocapitalist patriarchy. In the face of new reproductive
technologies, the myth of equal sexual partnership among the "middle class" will
continue to be sustained only through the subjugation of poor women and women
from poor countries. Just as prostitutes upheld the chastity of virgins and
wives, the growing slave caste of reproductive prostitutes will sustain (for
awhile) the mythology of reproductive rights.
Unless a cosexual reproductive rights movement intervenes, the advent of cloning and its addition to the already oppressive stockpile of unregulated reproductive technologies and practices, will create a new opportunity for a new era of reproductive brutality.
Reproductive rights is an issue that can stimulate a spark of interest in the largely counter-revolutionary Generation X. Reproductive rights in the face of new genetic and prenatal technologies may be that issue.
It's great that both sexes now share in the parenting experience and that much conscious emphasis is now placed on the parenting process. But let's not hide behind that experience. Parenting can become an obsession that deprives adults of their own self-actualization, therefore deprives their children as well. In addition, meeting the model of the nuclear family does not justify exploiting poor women whether in one's own country or across the world.
BLACK SHEEP ARISE: YOU ARE NOBODY'S DOLLY!
We conclude that while large scale human cloning is not a present threat, human cloning will indeed take place with increasing frequency and will eventually become a widespread practice. The social burden of cloning will fall upon women of the poorer classes and of the Third World, who will be used as breeding machines for the rematerialization of the genetic identity of others. The eventual genetic collision of large numbers of cloned individuals could lead to a shriveling at the edges of humanity's genetic wealth and eventually enfeeble human diversity.
I do not believe that prohibition is the answer but rather, socially responsible regulation. Family and adoption law and social norms must promote the importance of all forms of parenting rather than placing the nuclear family (real or fake) at the top of a caste system. International arrangements need to carefully protect birth mothers and fathers from "adoption" systems that amount to kidnapping.
Most importantly, society must reward scientific technologies other than cloning, methods that will produce a richer diversity, that are now virtually unexplored and given no emphasis in current funding or research. Intrasexual reproduction would enable the human population to explode its genetic pool, greatly enhancing the natural genetic vigor of the species, expanding birth and parenting opportunities. Research and practice of advanced technologies of birth control and abortion have been virtually blocked by the right, yet such technologies remain humanity's major safeguard against overpopulation with its consequent malnutrition and disease. To ensure human reproductive freedom and versatility in the face of cloning, in vitro fertilization, bioengineering and other technologies necessitates a rebirth of reproductive strategies such as those proposed by Shulamith Firestone and others in the liberation movements of the sixties and seventies. It will also require support for alternative families so exiled and despised in current U.S. policy.
The cloning of ewe by ewe was masterful as the first publicized exercise of the technology. This female to female match insured that during the surge of initial press coverage the reality of cloning was concealed: female livestock by the millions will be de-gene-ed (shall we call this practice gene-cide?) and cloned with the DNA of prize rams and bulls. Patriarchal research vis a vis animal husbandry thus continues to push the envelope of male supremacy by inserting en masse males' DNA into the dechromosomasized ovums of females.
How different would be the foundation of the current debate been if Dolly had borne a lamb in which her own genes had been combined with another female to create a new uncloned recombinant human.
Second wave theorists envisioned the uses and consequences of advanced reproductive technologies. They conjectured about what society needed to do so that cloning and other reproductive technologies could be formulated and used in a socially creative and democratic fashion that protected human reproductive rights.
Young women and men must rededicate the gender revolution to gain full rights for women and gender minorities internationally and domestically. This will involve ceasing the milksop jabber about family values and looking at the actual situations of all families, providing social support to strengthen their diverse expressions.
It's time for the reproductive rights movement to shed its cocoon, to reread, revamp, retry, reformulate and rebirth the gender revolution, whose issues are no less and in fact more relevant today than ever before. It is time again for the black sheep to bah. Not in unison. But loud enough to hear one another.
Copyright Celeste Newbrough, Feb. 29, 1997. Revised October 10, 1998; Second revision December 26, 1998.
NOTES
1 "Infertile couples" are actually two individuals, one of whom is infertile. Seldom are both individuals infertile, which the term implies. This is mentioned because the term "infertile couple" is part of the new jargon of infertility "treatment", with political as well as medical connotations.
2 Gena Correa, The Mother Machine
3 Merchant, Carolyn, Ecological Revolutions, 1989.
4 I make a distinction between the writings and actions of second wave feminists, and the current conception of "feminism" which has been greatly modified, diluted and abstracted but subsequent use and events.
5 Roxanne Dunbar, "Female Liberation as the Basis for Social Revolution".
6 Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectics of Sex and essays appearing in Feminist Revolution, Notes from the Second Year, and Redstockings.
7 Some might say the mother's genetic make up is even more compellingly present, though the arguments for this are scientific and both irrelevant to and beyond the scope the of the current discussion.
8 Though mother's are often the main custodians of children by agreement of divorcing couples, the majority of contested custody cases are won by the father.
9 Dr Ian Wilmut and Dr Keith H S Campbell, Roslin Institute (Edinburgh)
10 Studies suggesting the grief of relinquishment are numerous. A popular book on the subject is: Saying Goodbye To A Baby : Birthparents Guide To Loss And Grief In Adoption by Patricia Roles.
11 From the album by the Jefferson Starship
12 Quote from a 1960 periodical: "We will not allow them to dictate to us that we spend our money on their pleasure rather than our own." An angry feminist track? No indeed, a Playboy Magazine editorial. The "they" to which the male author refers were the same the stay-at-home wives Betty Friedan described so eloquently in The Feminine Mystique.
13 During the earliest years of the second wave a rhetoric of anger placed the onus of patriarchy upon the behavior of individual men, which at that time was a necessary strategy to get the feminist point across. But second wave feminists were able to separate out the individual from the system. "Men are not the enemy" was a common a theme among radical feminists by the mid-1970's. Today, a man who retains the knee jerk reaction of thinking that feminism is anti-male has a problem. The second wave brought with it tremendous benefits to men. For the first time the average American man was permitted a wide latitude of emotions and other forms of personal self-expression that under the unchallenged patriarchal system caused a man to be ostracized. He can now relate intimately to childrearing and even to childbearing, grow his hair long, cry, be a sexual object, talk about relationships, expect a degree of economic co-support from his spouse. For the average man of the fifties, such male freedoms were unthinkable. When the issue of patriarchy is once again addressed (as it must be), it will require the resources of many men as well as many women to fight for reproductive and other freedoms. Hey man, the gender revolution was and is about you as much as about anyone else! No one wants to get rid of fatherhood. It is patriarchy that has to go. For those who hoped for and fought for a new authentic gender freedom, the tide has turned and the waters are receding.
14 However, the breakup of marriage(s) cannot be attributed to feminism(as it has by the right wing), since divorce rates were rising well prior to popular dissemination of second wave ideas.
15 Quote from Attorney General Meese, 1981.
16 "Myths and Facts About Adoption", Bay Area Birth Mothers' Association pamphlet, 1985.
17 See for example, Robin Fox
18 Sturgess, J., "Alternative parenting compared with traditional parenting: impacts on ten benchmarks of child well being and achievement" (1987).
19 See especially, Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectics of Sex, 1970.
Copyright Celeste Newbrough, Feb. 29, 1997.
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