M.E.T.D.
The sexual revolution of the 1960s was a kind of Marxist coup over traditional morals: instead of a “withering away of the state,” however, this revolution has produced a withering of the family. While Marxist revolutions sought to transform
societies by liberating the “means of production,” the sexual revolution has done exactly this to the means of reproduction. And just as communism stole the dignity of the very workers it pretended to liberate, the sexual revolution dehumanized the very process of human reproduction. Indeed, by separating physical intimacy from its biological end, the sexual revolution made procreation an optional, unnecessary and avoidable proletarian act. But, since the production of children can be avoided, the process can also be controlled; human reproduction is now just another kind of production. When the marital act becomes sterile by default, children become commodities, mere things to be made.
The technological advances of the 1960s separated fertility from intimacy; now, the technological advances of “assisted reproduction” have separated intimacy from fertility. For years, critics of the sexual revolution have decried the corrosive effects contraception has on the moral attitudes of teenagers and young adults, because it separates physical love from its biological end. Now, the generation that separated sex and love is creating children without love and without spouses.
Society is rightly disturbed by this degradation of human dignity and it shrinks from the terrifying consequences of contraception. However, until society is willing to accept the consequences of sexual love, it will be unable to prevent the dehumanizing attitudes towards new human life that “assisted reproduction” has wrought.
For, even without man’s mechanical meddling, human reproduction is always “assisted reproduction.” This, indeed, is why we call it “pro-creation.” While the physical act of love and the biological material of human propagation can both be manipulated, it is always God who creates the soul. Man’s immortal soul is always God’s own creation, even in the counterfeit process of modern science.
Indeed, the human person is the very image of God in the world. Believers are often accused of worshipping an anthropomorphic God. However, instead of God being made in the image of man, Christians insist that the opposite is true: that man is made in the image of God.
When God created mankind, “male and female He created them,” (Gen 1:27) and He exhorted them “to be fruitful and multiply.” But the Creator’s supreme gifts to the family – the miracle of love and the mystery of procreation – have been desecrated by the Promethean methods of modern science. Although we applaud Suleman’s enthusiasm for offspring and her refusal to abort any of her children, we deeply regret the example she has set. Society must reject the commodification of children and see them for what they really are: the manifest mingling of divine and human loves.
