Editor,
Craig Butler's Feb. 20 column, "Ectogenesis solution to abortion," is off the mark.
Butler ignores conceptual problems that his solution creates that are inconsistent with the conservative view he weekly defends. Conservatives often appeal to the primacy of rights of noninterference, such as the right to private property, to justify their positions. They oppose abortion because it seems to ignore the rights of the fetus, namely its right to life.
Yet, in the win-win scenario Butler poses, he would forcibly remove a fetus from the place that it has made its home, namely the mother's womb, and place it somewhere not of the fetus' own choosing, thereby infringing on its rights of noninterference. One could, though surely need not, compare this with the treatment of native people in this country to show this is not the greatest idea.
More important, Butler's assertions that pregnancy is a "miserable and dangerous process" and that women are burdened by being pregnant point to a more pressing problem in the medical establishment than abortion. Underlying this common perception is the notion that pregnancy somehow is a disease that needs to be cured.
Pregnant women often are isolated, physically and emotionally, much as we tend to stay away from infectious people. We often refer to them in the third person instead of engaging them directly as we do other autonomous individuals: we ask, "How is the mommy?" rather than "How are you?"
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When we see pregnant women in movies or on television, they often have dramatic and problem-ridden deliveries, reinforcing the idea that birth requires intervention.
Further, birth most often takes place in hospitals - where our society cures disease - where doctors or midwives make decisions for women, most notably when to go into labor and when to remove the baby. Cesarean sections are on the rise - without a correlated increase in fetal survival - and a common reason is "failure to progress." In other words, if the woman is not moving along quickly enough, doctors will surgically remove the baby from her body, a procedure that increases risk to the mother and the baby. See "The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth," by Sheila Kitzinger, or the more mainstream "What to Expect When You're Expecting" for more information.
Finally, ectogenesis, like in vitro fertilization, will not make women more free, which ought to be the driving force behind tampering with the birthing process. First, it is a choice mediated by the medical establishment, which often controls who has access to particular procedures by way of health insurance and subtle discrimination. Second, that women would view pregnancy as a burden yet simultaneously feel compelled to reproduce is a symptom of a flawed worldview that tells women they must want and be able to have children if they are to be considered normal. This places women into a category that they did not create, a further hindrance to their autonomy.
If ectogenesis is the solution to the abortion debate, it's not a good one.
Zachary T. Shank
Adjunct instructor
