Will the WTS Ban Ectogenesis?

by Mindchild 7 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Mindchild

  If you are keeping up with scientific developments in the health sciences you might already know that Ectogenesis is the next ?Big Thing? in the reproductive sciences.

  By definition, ectogenesis is the development of life in an artificial environment or artificial womb. Scientists have been working towards creating artificial wombs for decades but it wasn?t until recently that they have had much success. We are now nearing the time when it will become as safe as or even safer for the development of a child in an artificial womb. If you think this is science fiction you better think again.

  Why will artificial wombs become popular? Here is some information I read on the topic: (from: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/1/124441/622 )

  • Women who are diagnosed with Preeclampsia or HEELP early in pregnancy would no longer need to spend months hospitalized or in bed. The only cure for these conditions is delivery of the baby, and right now all that can be done is to keep the woman as immobile as possible until the fetus can survive outside the womb. If an artificial womb was an option, the fetus could be transferred to it while the mother regains her heath.
  • Artificial wombs will allow women with damaged uteruses (or other medical conditions that make pregnancy dangerous) but viable ovaries to have their own genetic children without resorting to surrogacy, which can bring all sorts of legal hassles into the picture.
  • Premature babies could be placed in artificial wombs instead of incubators, and allowed to continue development in the proper environment. Currently, mechanical ventilation damages lungs, and many very premature babies end up brain damaged or developmentally delayed due to lack of proper respiration.
  • From a purely selfish point of view, it would even allow women who simply do not want to be pregnant to have children. Although it is the most natural thing in the world, pregnancy can turn a woman's life upside down in Western society. Careers are interrupted or no longer possible, education must be postponed, and unemployed pregnant women find it almost impossible to find a job other than temp work.
  • Artificial wombs would be a reasonable and perhaps welcome alternative to abortion.

  Ethical Issues Surrounding Artificial Wombs

  • If artificial wombs provide safer environments than natural ones, it might be possible for pregnant women to be forced by the courts to have their fetuses placed in artificial wombs instead. In the case of a crack addict mother, this is probably not a bad thing, but given the nature of our court system, a social worker could see a pregnant woman wearing a seat belt improperly or performing a risky activity, and have the fetus removed from her for its own good.
  • Combine artificial wombs with cloning technology and a donor egg, and gay males can actually have their own biological children. While many people would see this as something amazing and wonderful, right wing conservatives and the ultra-religious would become apoplectic.
  • Health insurance companies might encourage or even require that pregnancies occur this way, simply because it would be cheaper for them in the long run.
  • Companies might attempt to write clauses into employment contracts stating that if a pregnancy interferes with work, then the fetus must be transferred into an artificial womb. While the average fast food clerk, secretary or computer programmer might not have to worry about that, female executives or laborers would.
  • Would mothers feel less attached to babies to whom they did not give birth to?
  • It would be easier for researchers to harvest fetal tissue for research, giving rise to numerous ethical and legal issues.
  • Could this lead to eugenics?
  • Would their be any complications or developmental issues for the fetus before or after birth due to things that might be missing from an artificial womb, such as maternal heartbeat, hormones generated by mood, touch, etc.

  You can bet the WTS will have something to say about this. It is hard to read them sometimes though because they will for example allow organ transplants but will flip flop on blood technology issues. I bet though they will be against it, and I think likewise that some of you individually will be also.

  Personally, I think it is a good thing and it will become a standard part of medical science. What worries me though is the social consequences and poor choices of individuals.

  Some background material for your further research:

  Guardian Unlimited: Men Redundant? Now we don't need women either
  Nature Magazine: Artificial Wombs: An out of body experience
  Reason Online: Babies In a Bottle

  Skipper
• 

  logansrun

  You know, the Society doesn't allow artificial insemination. They classify it as fornication.

  Bradley

  **Of course, insemination from someone other than your husband. I'm not sure what they would say about non-coital insemination from a husband to his wife. At the very least they would condemn it due to the fact that masturbation would be involved.
• 

  Scully

  They already ban surrogate motherhood. Awake, March 8, 1993, if I remember correctly. I'll check the CD ROM and post the article later today.

  Like Bradley says, they equate it to fornication and adultery.

  I guess that means Jehovah is an adulterer, since Mary was already engaged to Joseph when she became pregnant with Jesus. Say that to a JW and then watch them crap their drawers.

  Love, Scully
• 

  rocketman

  Good point Scully.
• 

  GentlyFeral

  gay males [could] actually have their own biological children. While many people would see this as something amazing and wonderful,

  *waving hand enthusiastically* Lesbians too!

  right wing conservatives and the ultra-religious would become apoplectic.

  ...which just adds to the amazement and wonderfulness, I think.

  GentlyFeral
• 

  Scully

  *** g93 3/8 pp. 26-27 Surrogate Motherhood?Is It for Christians? ***

  The Bible?s Viewpoint

  Surrogate Motherhood?Is It for Christians?

  THE ancient Roman poet Horace knew nothing of surrogate motherhood when he wrote: "It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, so he be a man of merit." The 17th-century French writer?s maxim, "Birth is nothing where virtue is not," was also penned long before the concept of surrogate birth became a legal quagmire. But, as Mary Thom reported in Ms. magazine, with new reproductive technology, "the functions of producer of the egg, incubator of the fetus-becoming-baby, and caretaker of the baby once born" may be divided among two or three "mothers." The question of "virtue" and "consequence" has become both ambiguous and complex.

  The practice of using surrogate mothers burst onto the world scene during the mid-1970?s, raising social, moral, and legal problems not faced before. Some infertile couples were eager to take advantage of this nontraditional mode of reproduction. On the other hand, doctors, lawyers, and legislators have struggled to keep up with the expanding fertility technology in an effort to set guidelines that address the ethical and moral questions raised.

  What Is Surrogate Motherhood?Surrogate, or contract, motherhood is having an artificially inseminated woman bear a child for another woman. So-called traditional surrogacy occurs when the surrogate mother is impregnated through artificial insemination with the sperm of the husband from the couple who have contracted with her. The surrogate is thus the genetic mother of the baby. Gestational surrogacy means that the wife?s egg and the husband?s sperm are united outside the womb in a process known as in-vitro (test-tube) fertilization, and the resulting embryo is placed in the surrogate?s uterus for gestation.

  Why the rise in surrogate motherhood? For one thing, high-tech science has discovered several ways to help women have babies. Couples may desperately want a child, yet because of infertility, inconvenience, or too few healthy babies for adoption, they cannot have one. So they rent another person?s body to have a baby. Since large sums of money are involved, surrogacy has been described in unflattering terms, such as "involuntary servitude and slavery" and "strip-mining the fertility of the poor."

  In the United States, the New Jersey Supreme Court recognized the potential for the rich to exploit the poor and in a surrogacy case stated: "There are, in short, values that society deems more important than granting to wealth whatever it can buy, be it labor, love, or life." The Supreme Court of France stated that surrogate motherhood violates a woman?s body and that "the human body is not lent out, is not rented out, is not sold."

  Problems With Surrogacy
  Surrogacy brings a number of problems. One is the potential for ugly legal battles if the woman who gives birth wants to keep the baby. Whose baby is it, the woman who gives birth or the woman who provides the egg? So the birth of a child, usually a time of joy, sometimes leads to a courtroom battle. Another problem: Some women who agree to become surrogate mothers find their feelings changing with the development and birth of the contracted child. The contract laid out some months earlier becomes harder and harder to accept. A powerful bonding relationship is being formed between the mother and the baby inside her. One surrogate mother, not anticipating this bonding, explains her feelings about giving up the baby: "It was as if somebody had died. My body was crying out for my daughter."

  Also, what long-term effects might such a birth have on the surrogate?s other children, the family that accepts the baby, and the child itself? Or what will happen if a child born by a surrogate mother has a birth defect? Is the father obliged to take the baby? If not, who pays for the child?s support? And an even more important question, What is God?s view of surrogate motherhood?Does Surrogate Motherhood Honor Marriage?God?s Word tells us that he looks upon marriage as something sacred. For example, Hebrews 13:4 states: "Let marriage be honorable among all, and the marriage bed be without defilement, for God will judge fornicators and adulterers." God expects all Christians to consider marriage honorable and to keep it that way. What defiles marriage? Fornication, which can dishonor marriage in advance, and adultery, which dishonors marriage after it has been entered into.

  Does surrogate motherhood honor marriage and keep the marriage bed undefiled? Simply put, no. Traditional surrogacy requires the insemination of the woman by donor sperm. The Bible?s view may be found at Leviticus 18:20, which says: "You must not give your emission as semen to the wife of your associate to become unclean by it." There is no Biblical basis for making a distinction between insemination by intercourse and insemination artificially by donor implantation. Therefore, in either case, fornication or adultery is committed when insemination is accomplished by a male other than the woman?s legal husband.

  What about gestational surrogacy? This too defiles the marriage bed. True, the fertilized egg would be a union of the husband and his wife, but it is thereafter placed in the womb of another woman and, in fact, makes her pregnant. This pregnancy is not the result of sexual relations between the surrogate woman and her own husband. Thus, her reproductive organs are now being used by someone other than her own mate. This is inconsistent with the Bible?s moral principles that a woman bear a child for her own husband. (Compare Deuteronomy 23:2.) It would not be proper for a man other than the surrogate?s own husband to make use of her reproductive organs. It is an improper use of the marriage bed. Thus, surrogate motherhood is not for Christians.

  [Footnotes]The reference work New Testament Word Studies shows that "the marriage bed" of Hebrews 13:4 means that not only the state but also the use of marriage should not be defiled.

  [Picture Credit Line on page 26]Pastel by Mary Cassatt, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Ralph J. Hines, 1960. (60.181)
• 

  donkey

  By the Watchtowers stupid ************ logic then a married couple who have difficulty getting pregnant and can only have a child by In Vitro fertilaztion are indulging in group sex (even if the eggs and sperm are from the married couple).
  
• 

  Scully

  Actually, donkey, I think the WTS's real objection (the one that remains unstated in their publications) to in-vitro fertilization and other fertility technologies is that couples are spending lots of money on these treatments (a single in-vitro attempt in Canada costs about $10,000). I'm sure the WTS would rather have that money in its coffers and have infertile couples cling to the hope of having children in the New System?. The fact that JW couples are seeking these options seems to be an indicator of the lack of faith in the nearness of the end of The Great Tribulation?.

  Love, Scully