The baby market’s gone wrong!

Posted by admin on Jan 20, 2009 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

The controversial technology on the agenda today is in-vitro fertilization. The debate is heating up over the ethics of what to do with the “extra” embryos created: should they be discarded, frozen indefinitely, or what?

This question, though it will inspire passionate debate, ultimately should never have to be asked. It’s not the technology that brings tyranny and moral dilemma so much as the ability of narcissism to have such an outlet. The entire market is fuelled by people otherwise unable to have babies composed of their own genetic material, and thus they turn to technology to overcome their nature. Test-tube babies are a fairly simple commodity to produce. The process is, after all, just a subversion of a natural biological process, not a fundamental alteration of it.

But wait – people as commodities? When did the acquisition of progeny become a self-centred event? Narcissism is a cold poison for our soul, but here, oh irony, the icing over our humanity has become both literal and metaphorical. And that is the problem.

It is very disturbing that, sitting in a freezer, are undeniable proto-human beings, whose kin are now toddling about the Earth. If we all were once one of these, aren’t they people too?

But this argument fails, at least in practice. Western heart has such deep-set apathy against emotional appeals to humanity. If we didn’t, this whole issue would have never arisen.

If you don’t believe me, here’s a test:
1. Babies “aborted alive” are left to die in ostensibly-civilized nations. Did this twist your soul? Where are the tears?
2. If you had to choose between saving a baby and saving a puppy, which would you choose? Why? Would you hesitate?
3. God invaded Earth with self-sacrificial love for us all, in full knowledge of our worst flaws and the deepest evils of the human heart. Where was your paroxysm of joy and your radiant gasp of hope?

Yes, the weary, postmodern West has gone cold. Selfishness, reductionism and anti-humanism has invaded our very reproduction, once the domain of only the warmest, most vibrant vices and the most extravagant and human misguided sentiment.

So I propose that now it is time to combat evil with pragmatism and carefully applied reductive logic. Maybe the bizarreness and poetic justice of it all will awake people to their deadness.

Here’s a new spin, in the language of our robot masters: in-vitro fertilization is a market driven by a view of property law with no legal foundation, for our dear State makes no delineations between genetically-related and adopted children. Even many of the most flawed A-list celebrities have caught on to this. And by the time you’re being shown up by sundry A-list celebrities, you know something is very, very wrong.

As a solution, let’s go with an argument that is dehumanizing, but less so than its counterargument: the State should provide major incentives for women to birth unwanted pregnancies. In fact, entirely on the basis of practicality, abortion should be done out with altogether. It would save ethical dilemmas, provide a steady flow of healthy, easy-to-adopt children to the myriad legions of willing couples, and reduce psychological damage. It would be a patriotic endeavor, be fiscally favourable, and allow Western nations to rely less on immigration. Most wonderfully, it would kill the market for misguided pseudo-scientists who tinker with our humanity.

In short, if, instead of making babies in the lab, we simply eradicate less of the next generation, we could actually concretely benefit our nation. It would strike a blow in favour of the nobility of our civilization and the warmth of our soul.