When restrictions against abortion began to fall about twenty-five years ago, few people took seriously the doomsayers who warned against the slippery slope. If we are to criticize them today, however, it is only to say that their imaginations were not wild enough.
While musing on two recent stories of modern Doctor Frankensteins, I envisioned a scenario where a young woman became pregnant and decided to abort. The ova harvested from her female fetus were then fertilized and implanted in the woman’s 60-year-old grandmother. Granny, pumped up on female steroids, was then pregnant with her great-great grandchild.
The feminist response to the recent media flap over post-menopausal mothers has been the usual sexism idiocy. Consider the following headlines:
“Dads can be old, so why can’t mothers?” (Chicago Tribune); “Menopausal Moms: Double Standard?” (Washington Post); “If men can do it, why can’t women?” (Montreal Gazette).
Move towards sameness
The knee-jerk reactions of a few columnists might be comical if they weren’t so representative. Instead of recognizing and celebrating the differences between the sexes, feminists and other humanists prefer a move toward sameness.
Never mind that men might benefit from earlier commitments to marriage and family, the male model of prolonged bachelorhood and delayed parenthood is preferred by the self-proclaimed advocates of women.
The so-called advancement of women comes with a price: the female sex. Already we have noticed that the word “sex,” which has layers of meaning, is often replaced by “gender,” which is primarily a grammatical term. (And what could be less sexy than grammar?” This change is not brought about by puritanical hang-ups, but by those who would take meaningfulness out of one’s sex.
Reproductive technology is an important tool in the dismantling of the existing order and the creation of an androgynous humanist utopia. Barbara Katz Rothman, professor of sociology at the City University of New York, comments:
“…[M]aking the inseparable separate is what the technology of reproduction is all about. And it is this issue that we are now facing; women, for the first time, have the potential for genetic parenthood without physiological motherhood. At all. No pregnancy. No birth. No suckling. Women are about to become fathers.”
Debra Evans, in her book Without Moral Limits: Women, Reproduction and the New Medical Technology writes:
“In the same way that bottle feeding made breast feeding optional, widespread cultural acceptance of contraception, abortion, sterilization, and other counter-reproductive technologies render the womb optional as well. Unless a woman chooses to be pregnant, it is now fashionable to view fertility as merely a peripheral aspect of female sexuality, an accessory feature to be turned on and off at will, an oft-times irritating component of gender identity. In other words, it is no longer considered a central fact of a woman’s existence.”
Destroying society
It is nothing short of astounding that so many women have capitulated to this view. The assault on womanhood and the dignity of motherhood concerns us all. It diminishes the value of mothering, and ultimately threatens the rights of parents to raise their children.
For equality of the sexes to be meaningful, it must allow for both women and men to flourish. There is some hope that the so-called Third Wave feminists may be more receptive to acknowledge our differences. However, the wholesale commitment to “reproductive choice” leaves little room for effective resistance to any of these scientific experiments.
Feminism, as it is practiced today, is destroying society. Women must reclaim their right to be women. As the French say, “Vive la difference!”
For an intelligent look at reproductive technology and the assault on women’s dignity, I recommend Without Moral Limits: Women. Reproduction and the New Medical Technology by Debra Evans (Crossway Books, 1989; 288 pages). It is both informative and readable, and provides excellent background to many issues dealt with by the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies.
