Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, Minority Report, is
getting lots of press for its treatment of a theme, the tension
between security and liberty, that seems increasingly urgent in
light of September 11th. Spielberg’s last work, A.I.:
Artificial Intelligence (2001), was much less celebrated when
it came out. But something I just read suggests that futuristic
fable to be no less relevant to contemporary life.
A.I. tells the story of a couple whose son has dropped
into an apparently irreversible coma. Unable to have or adopt
another child (since a global environmental crisis has led to the
strict regulation of reproduction), they settle for a child-like
robot programmed to love. All goes well until their real son
unexpectedly recovers. His jealousy of the artificial substitute
eventually drives his mother to take the robot out into the woods
and tearfully abandon him.
The horror and pathos of that scene make it hard to watch, yet a
more horrible and pathetic version is played out every day in
clinics around the world. I refer to the side-effects of certain
assisted reproductive technologies, as described by Michael Ryan in
the July 1 New Yorker.
Ryan’s article, “Countdown to a Baby,” is a week-by-week account
of his and his wife’s efforts to get her pregnant by in-vitro
fertilization. The level of detail is sometimes embarrassing.
Unable to “produce a specimen” in the clinic’s bathroom, even with
the aid of an X-rated video, Ryan (a poet and critic by profession)
goes home to his own bed and thinks of Keats. Finally successful,
he returns with his sample just in time for the scheduled
insemination.
More than we needed to know, perhaps, but we should thank Ryan
for telling his story in such clear and unsparing terms. Though
obviously an advocate of in-vitro, he does nothing to prettify the
process. He describes his wife’s physical ordeal: weeks of painful
injections, induced hormonal shifts and virtual immobility in bed.
After learning that she’s pregnant with not one but four children,
the petite woman must force herself to consume “the diet of a sumo
wrestler.”
Ryan also considers the ethical quandaries posed by therapy that
risks “the chance of a multiple pregnancy in order to maximize the
chance of a single pregnancy.” Quadruplets, he learns, are strong
candidates for premature birth and thus for grave birth defects. If
the mother carries them to term, she risks death or permanent
damage to vital organs.
The couple and their doctor discuss the possibility of a
“reduction,” but Ryan scorns that euphemism and the cold
calculation it implies. He notes that “the embryos are all alive,
and it makes me shiver to think of choosing which is to be killed.
The smallest and the weakest? Would the twins have a better chance,
or the ones in their own sacs? What if you kill some and the
remaining ones die later?”
Ryan is honest enough to write “kill” instead of “terminate” or
“abort,” and that’s refreshing, yet one of the most disturbing
aspects of his article is the very absence of euphemism.
Just four weeks after fertilization, a doctor refers to an
implanted embryo as a “baby”; and as other embryos appear, they
receive the labels Baby B, Baby C and Baby D. Describing the first
sonogram of Baby A’s heartbeat, Ryan observes that “the rapidly
pulsing pin-point means life.” None of which in any way limits the
mother’s power to order a potassium-chloride-induced cardiac arrest
for one or more of these babies: “it’s her body and, in the end,
her decision.”
The likelihood of such a decision grows when Ryan and his wife
learn that two of their unborn children are conjoined (or
“Siamese”) twins. “Medically, I would recommend a reduction,” a
doctor tells them. “This is not Chang and Eng. They will most
likely die. They share a liver.” The physician acknowledges
possible religious objections, but it’s hard to imagine that any
religion forbidding abortion could approve of the actions that
brought about this monstrous situation in the first place.
Ryan’s wife is spared the awful choice when three of the four
embryos die on their own, leaving Baby B to pass through an
effectively normal pregnancy. The story ends with a scene of
formerly infertile couples, including Ryan and his wife,
celebrating Halloween with their children (who include an “unusual
number of triplets and twins”).
Any parent ought to appreciate the joy that the Ryans have
achieved, and no one lucky enough to have conceived without medical
help should blame them for taking extraordinary measures to achieve
it. But not even so basic a yearning can justify any cost.
The author holds out the hope that in-vitro could soon get less
messy, both physically and ethically: “twenty-five years from now
the cutting-edge technology that Dr. [Lawrence] Werlin uses may
seem like treating colic with doses of black lead.”
Can anyone believe that scientific progress will solve our moral
problems for us? Another 25 years of playing hit and miss with
unborn babies will only further dull our already enfeebled ethical
judgment, and make us all the less capable of resisting the
temptations that new technology will offer.
