While reading the Newsweek article, I found the subject of whether or not to keep embryos in cryostorage quite interesting. The story of Sue and John DiSilvestro mentioned that their remaining embryos were their children. I personally do not feel that that is the case. I take the more scientific approach and believe that they are just embryos and not necessarily a living human as social standards would put it. The DiSilvestro's reminded me of Nadya Suleman (Octo Mom). She had six children which were conceived via In Vitro Fertilization, and had eight embryos left over from that procedure. In order to avoid having her eight left over embryos destroyed, she decided to have them all implanted simultaneously. She did not believe in abortion and felt that it would be murder if she chose to discard those embryos. I feel that either way she put her children in danger by going through such risky pregnancy, and also by placing her already six children in financial peril. How would she have felt if one of her fetuses died? Wouldn't that be her fault? She knowingly put their life in danger, so wouldn't that be murder too? I feel that it is just as selfish and immoral to bring children into the world when you cannot support them as it is to just discard the embryos. Therefore, it would make more sense to donate the embryos to research or to a couple that could properly care for them. With stories like Nadya's, that is where moral reasoning is just not logical.
That's a question hovering over the "fetus rights" article: why are some folks so bent on protecting fetuses BEFORE they are born but so indifferent to, say, child abuse/poverty/suffering AFTER they are born? What does that say about the "real" desires behind this claim for "protecting life"?
ReplyDeleteI agree that she should have just donated the embryos to another couple or to research, because she doesn't have the means to give them the quality of life they deserve. The pregnancy was dangerous enough, and now it leaves us wondering whether she is financially capable of providing everything that her children need. Caring for one child is a big job in itself. Fourteen is definitely more than a full-time commitment. Her justification that discarding those embryos would be like murder would not have even applied if she chose to donate the embryos to another couple. I understand that she may have felt that those embryos were her children and she may have already felt connected to them, but if she truly cared for them as a mother, she would have seen that they could have had a better life and more one-on-one parent-child attention and love in a family with less children.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason people are so bent on protecting fetuses before they are born rather than after is that they are so stuck on advocating the idea against abortion and the rights of a fetus, that after the fetus is born, they just aren't as ardently focused on fighting for it. It implies that the real goal is just to fight for an idea rather than the actual life of the child after it is born.
@Sridevi, "It implies that the real goal is just to fight for an idea rather than the actual life" that is a line to remember and it applies to so much more than just the fetus rights debates.
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