Category Archives: Fertility and Infertility

January 27, 2013 · 11:58 pm

Abortion Stories: A Priceless Cup of Coffee

“It’s freezing out. Why don’t you c’mon in for a cup of coffee while you wait?”

The tall woman waiting alone outside the Germantown abortion clinic shivered. She’d taken a taxi to the clinic, and arrived early, a good half-hour before it opened. Standing, pacing, stomping her feet to stay warm, the tall woman stole a glance across the parking lot, towards the voice. It was a “sidewalk counselor” from the pro-life pregnancy center across the way, and she was gesturing to a warmly lit, friendly office. The tall woman’s fingers were already stiff with cold, and she wrapped her coat tighter around her belly.

The cold won. “All right. Thanks.”

Moments later, she was inside the pro-life pregnancy center, warming her frozen fingers as she gripped a steaming cup of coffee.  Little by little her story came out.

She was three months pregnant and suddenly homeless. Her father was in jail and the baby’s father was unreliable. She was twenty-something, had one child already, and no job. Her own mother would tell her to get an abortion, if she knew, but her mother was knee-deep in troubles of her own.

Abortion seemed like her only option. The tall woman knew nothing about the clinic’s abortionist, Dr. LeRoy Carhart, nothing about his chilling defense of partial-birth abortion, and nothing about the women who had suffered serious complications, even death, from his abortion ‘care.’ Those issues meant little compared to her own overwhelming troubles.

But over coffee, and warmed by the volunteer’s compassion and energy, the tall woman changed her mind about the abortion. An hour and several phone calls later, she had a place to stay, a doctor’s appointment, and transportation.

In the following months, the volunteers became the tall woman’s support system, driving her to prenatal appointments and dropping everything to be there during childbirth. They helped her find a job and child-care and shared her worries and joys. These days, the tall woman stops by for coffee and conversation when she can, and even spent a morning doing sidewalk counseling outside the clinic. She empathized with the women who found themselves at the clinic’s door. Cradling her one-month old son, she became the voice across the parking lot, urging vulnerable women to choose life.

 “Choose Life.”  It’s been the pro-life movement’s cry for decades. And yet Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, has left a gruesome legacy after 40 years: 55 million tiny lives extinguished—poisoned, dismembered, stabbed, and suctioned into pieces.

But “life” will prevail.

In fact, the abortion landscape has changed markedly.

  • Courageous state legislators passed record numbers of new abortion restrictions in 2012.
  • Few doctors do abortions anymore, with only four U.S. doctors hard-hearted enough to perform barbaric third-trimester abortions.
  • Americans cannot deny the humanity of the unborn child as new ultrasound technology captures their breathtaking images in the womb.
  • Better pro-life media and investigative journalism have shaped public opinion favorably: Eighty percent of Americans believe third trimester abortions should be illegal, and 64% say the same about second trimester abortions.
  • Young people are driving the pro-life bus, confounding pro-choice elites. It’s hard to demonize a generation that’s passionate enough to travel hours by bus, sleep on church basement floors, and brave chilly weather to raise their voices against abortion at the March for Life. And this pro-life generation understands “the pain that abortion causes women,” and cares as much about women as their unborn babies.

But as important as those factors are, the pro-life position will prevail for a deeper reason.

At heart, the pro-life movement is about people, its message intensely personal: “You are loved. You have infinite dignity and value. And we will care for you.”

Resonating deeply in the human heart, this is the truth that vulnerable women need to hear, for themselves and their babies.

It’s a message best delivered person-to-person—and young people know this. Their generation, halved by abortion, shares its stories, feelings, and experiences of abortion in intensely personal language and images, in social forums from Twitter to Snap Chat to YouTube and Facebook. It’s powerful and effective.

So too is the work of pro-life pregnancy centers. Years ago, as a law student, I was part of the first team of counselors at the Women’s Care Center, a crisis pregnancy center in South Bend, Indiana. The Center opened in a tiny, donated house right next to the city’s only abortion clinic. Our small group of volunteers worked in a spirit of prayer, with a clear mission: to welcome each woman who walked through our doorway, offering care and support even if she chose an abortion next door.

From one tiny house, offering simple pregnancy tests, practical resources, and loving attention, the vision took wing. The Women’s Care Center now has 19 different locations in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin and serves nearly 22,000 women annually. Abortion rates in those communities have dropped and Women’s Care Center clients deliver healthier babies than their peers.

Today, U.S. pro-life pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics nearly three to one (twenty-two hundred pro-life centers compared to 724 abortion clinics). And because successful pro-life pregnancy centers threaten the abortion industry’s profits, abortion advocates have sued (unsuccessfully) to muzzle or close pro-life centers.

Remember the tall woman, and the cup of coffee that changed her life?

Abortion will end, because pro-life volunteers really care whether a pregnant woman stands cold and alone in front of a gritty abortion clinic. And they care enough to offer not only an easy-pour cup of coffee, but also hours of dedicated time and resources throughout her pregnancy and beyond.

Will you help pro-life centers reach women like “the tall woman”?

Please consider a donation, large or small.  Because somewhere, standing in the cold, is another young woman who needs a good cup of coffee…and your support to do the right thing.

 

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February 8, 2012 · 11:34 am

Abortion: A Private Matter Between a Woman and Her…Vending Machine?

At Shippensburg University, female students who hook-up for drunken sex on Saturday will find it easy to dispose of just-conceived babies on Monday or Tuesday. A quick trip to the vending machine is all it takes.

Easy. Kind of like buying a bag of Doritos.

Women who wake up in unfamiliar beds or sober up and wonder,  “What were you thinking, girl?” needn’t worry much. Stride across campus, past the dining hall (grab a doughnut for later), and into the University Health Center. Flash a student ID and head to the vending machine in the “self-help” area. There, next to the cough drops and Mucinex, in discreet, feminine packaging, is Plan B One Step. No questions asked. Feed the bills into the slot, grab and go. Empowered with “choices,” these women pop the package blister, swallow the pill, and breathe easy.

Problem solved. Glad that’s over.

Only it’s really not.

Billed as “emergency contraception,” according to the package insert, Plan B inhibits ovulation and thus prevents conception.  But it also alters the lining of the uterus, preventing a newly conceived child from implanting in its mother’s womb.  Without implantation, that tiny human being cannot draw nourishment and will die. (Occasionally, Plan B fails and the pregnancy continues.)

In most cases, however, Plan B ‘succeeds.’

But ‘success’ is not pretty. Our Shippensburg student will have a one-in-three chance of heavy bleeding. And 13% of women who take Plan B One Step end up curled up in bed with nausea, abdominal pain, and fatigue. Worse, nearly one in ten women who use emergency contraception (compared to 2% of pregnancies in the general population) develop severe abdominal pain and require emergency treatment for an ectopic pregnancy.

But no worries, this is a private decision between a woman and her vending machine.

(Maybe the Supreme Court should update that hallowed language about abortion being a private medical decision between a woman and her doctor, eh?)

Back in Shippensburg, it’s been a bad few days for the University’s PR team–one negative link on Drudge would keep anybody hopping—and they’re feeling a bit defensive. “We’re not the first” to make Plan B available on a college campus, they say.

But from a vending machine?

Has our culture so trivialized sex and baby-making that the ‘solution’ to an unintended pregnancy comes out of a vending machine? And the grown-ups in the room don’t even blink?

Shippensburg’s decision seems destined to create a campus norm of casual sex. But in its February 7th statement, the University asserted that it’s “not encouraging anyone to be sexually active. That is a decision each student makes on his or her own.”

But why offer students abortion-inducing drugs, right on campus? (Ironically, the University vending machines don’t carry condoms, the typical must-have accessory for promiscuous sex).

In a phone interview February 7th, Dr. Peter M. Gigliotti, Executive Director for University Communications & Marketing, said the university installed the vending machine “several years” ago after a student survey showed that 85% of students favored on-campus access to emergency contraception. He defended the decision, expressed surprise at the media coverage, and insisted that no one under the age of 17 has access to the vending machine. (By law, Plan B cannot be dispensed to anyone under 17 without a prescription.)

In Shippensburg’s public statement, Dr. Robert Serr, Vice-President for Student Affairs, also downplayed the disclosure and framed the issue as support for reproductive choice: “Reproductive services are a personal decision to be made by every man and woman. As such, the university is providing students with a medication that they can obtain legally elsewhere as part of their ability to make their own choices.”

Put differently, Shippensburg wonders, “What’s the big deal?”

That attitude is precisely the problem.

“Emergency contraception” dispensed from a vending machine is the perfect icon of our culture’s impersonal–and utilitarian–view of sex and reproduction.

The icon’s meaning:

  • Sex is no big deal. It’s entertainment. Condom malfunction? Fix the problem in less time than it takes to rent a Redbox movie.
  • Making—or destroying–a baby is no big deal either. Using ‘emergency contraception’ has the moral significance of taking a cough drop. (One button on the vending machine gets you Plan B, another gets you lemon-flavored cough drops.)
  • Convenience rules. Why bother with nine months of pregnancy—and 21 years of child-rearing–when freedom is just a vending machine away?
  • Like casual sex, abortion (even disguised as “emergency contraception”) turns a union of two into a solo event. No strings. Just another individual experience that requires “appropriate decisions.”
  • Repeat business is a given—the abortion industry depends on it. No one visits a vending machine just once.

To the women of Shippensburg University: wake up! What could be more lonely than heading across a cold Pennsylvania campus “the morning after,” alone, to rendezvous with a vending machine? It’s an automated ‘problem-solver,’ stoically dispensing drugs that not only kill your baby but also numb your heart.  All so you can go back and do it again.

That’s not ‘choice.’ It’s exploitation. And people who really care about you won’t exploit you.

Please, reach out.  Because you deserve better.

 

 

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January 15, 2012 · 1:22 pm

Down Syndrome? Meet Maddox…and stop fearing “the worst”

Have you seen this?

If only those parents facing a pre-natal diagnosis of Down Syndrome could look ahead and see the joy and love that awaits–from cuties like Maddox. In her video below, Maddox will let you in on her “gambling problem,” and how she’s winning every bet against her.

Maddox doesn’t say a word here, but her message is unforgettable.

Don’t stand by and do nothing while the world aborts 90% of girls and boys like Maddox, just because they are  different!

Pass this on and bring hope to parents who fear  “the worst.”

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February 6, 2011 · 3:47 am

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, Abortion, and the Ravenous Nature of Evil

“Snip.”

That’s what I do to loose threads.  Or to a strand of hair that gets in my way.

It’s also what Dr. Kermit Gosnell did to babies, according to news reports.

Snip, dead.

I don’t know about you, but “snip” seems to me like a pretty mild word to describe actions that warrant murder charges…and that doesn’t sit well with me.

But euphemisms aren’t the only thing that troubles me about the spin on this case–and it’s a horrible case, for sure. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist for over 30 years, was charged in January 2011 with eight counts of first degree murder: one count for the reckless death of an immigrant woman, 19 weeks pregnant, who was unmonitored and over-sedated during an abortion; and seven counts for the brutal killings of second trimester babies who were born alive during abortions. The grand jury report also details Gosnell’s routinely callous and dangerous treatment of his clients; it found evidence too that hundreds of babies older than the 24 week statutory limit were born alive, only to be killed by Gosnell and his employees.

In the weeks since Gosnell’s arraignment, pro-choice voices have argued around the case, grasping for a narrative that fits their worldview. Some pro-choice blogs paint Gosnell as a greedy, solo opportunist, a criminal “outlier” running a substandard clinic. Making wads of money by “chopping up poor women” who sought late-term abortions, Gosnell deserved prosecution, they say, but solely because he harmed women, “not the fact that he did abortions.”

One bad guy. One bad clinic.  That’s all.

But the “lone ranger” narrative is a hard sell to a public recoiling from the horror of murderous late-term abortions.

So one pro-choice columnist, William Saletan (Slate.com), has challenged pro-choice advocates with this question: “Is it OK to abort a viable fetus?”

Their answers reveal an extremism the abortion lobby has long sought to hide.

Four out of six pro-choice leaders answered with an unqualified “yes.” Viability doesn’t matter. Only unrestricted legal abortion would prevent women from feeling desperate–and desperation created Gosnell’s market niche. Their mantra: “trust women” to make the right decision. The ultimate moral value: autonomy.

One abortion provider, Ann Furedi, the head of Britain’s leading abortion service, admits up front that the baby is human from the moment of conception. She argues cogently that arbitrary age or viability restrictions make no sense.

“[A]re we really so shallow, so fickle, as to let our view on moral worth be determined by appearance? …Even if at five weeks we can only see an embryonic pole, we know that it is human. The heart that can be seen beating on an ultrasound scan at six weeks is as much a human heart as the one that beats five months later….from the time of conception, as soon as embryonic cells begin to divide, an entity with the potential to become a person is created…unless its development is interrupted or fails, it will be born as a child….is there anything qualitatively different about a fetus at, say, 28 weeks that gives it a morally different status to a fetus at 18 weeks or even eight weeks?”

It’s a startling admission—but ice-cold in its conclusion: though human, the baby is not a “person” and not entitled to any protections. In Furedi’s absolutist view, any solution a woman chooses—even death for a near-full-term baby—is a “moral” solution.

For now, pro-choice have rallied around the cause of ‘easy access’ to early abortion and emergency contraception as the way to avoid more cases in the Gosnell mold of late-term brutality.

It’s an untenable solution, given the humanity of the unborn child.

But it’s also a solution doomed to fail on its own terms: evil, given a foothold, only advances, never retreats.

And perhaps that’s one good that might emerge from Gosnell’s killings: a renewed sense, in our own hearts and souls, of the ravenous power of evil.

If we dismiss Gosnell as an aberration, one bad apple in a barrel of good abortionists, how do we explain the cascade of ordinary people tumbling out of this story who looked away when they saw his atrocities? Who stood next to him, helping, as he “snipped” babies’ spines? Or worse, followed his lead and committed the same despicable acts themselves?

But if we understand the mayhem in Kermit Gosnell’s clinic as a case study in the power of evil unleashed, we can make sense out of his own moral degeneration—the progressive cruelty towards women seeking abortions, the abortions on bigger, older babies, and the uninhibited killing of live-born infants as “standard procedure.”

In Philadelphia, evil arrived when Gosnell’s abortion clinic first opened for business, years before the second trimester killings began. As each baby arrived, nestled in its mother’s womb, and left—dead—bagged as medical waste, Gosnell’s heart hardened. Under legal cover, his conscience died a slow death too.  In fact, at his arraignment, he professed bewilderment that he was being charged in the babies’ deaths.

It’s not surprising, in one sense. A heart that embraces killing innocent human beings up to 24 weeks won’t flinch at killing at 25 weeks. And the flimsy legislative partition of viability has little hope of containing the evil unloosed by the doctor’s lethal, but legal, first trimester work.

Like poison gas, evil seeps under arbitrary barriers, gradually sickening those who remain in its presence, numbing their hearts and sedating their consciences. It corrupts the souls of those who tarry long in its presence—even ordinary people who perhaps mean well initially.

And that’s exactly what happened in this case. Gosnell’s employees watched, accepted, and embraced the evil–a marriage finally consummated as scissors pierced soft newborn skin. The grand jury report noted that, “Over the years, there were hundreds of ‘snippings’…all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all.”

And what about us? We read numbers (24, 28 weeks), scientific terms (viable fetus), and euphemisms for killing (“snipping”).  We get used to them. They lessen our urgency and blunt our response to evil.  A few days pass, the story fades, and unemployment and tight budgets move to the fore.

I’m not one who favors gruesome pictures of aborted babies as a tool for public debate or evangelism—their indiscriminate use often causes more harm than good and lacks compassion towards women who’ve had abortions. But those of us who pray, work, and sacrifice for the sake of the unborn and their mothers sometimes need a visual reminder of what’s at stake.

Consider taking a look at the grand jury report in Dr. Gosnell’s case, downloadable here. It’s over 200 pages—but words can’t express what happened there.  Spend two minutes with the photos, however, and you’ll forget numbers and remember faces. And you’ll know why we’re fighting this battle.

And “snipping” will forever have a whole new meaning.

© 2011 Mary Rice Hasson

 

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January 12, 2011 · 12:48 am

Egg Donors and The Human Cost of IVF

“Melissa” is a college student, blonde, bright, and beautiful. A high achiever with a soft spot for other people’s troubles, she heads back to her Ivy League campus this week. First stop: the financial aid office to sign loan documents to secure this pricey education and coveted degree.

She’s exactly the type of young woman targeted by egg donor agencies, desperate couples, and fertility clinics. They want her eggs. Badly. And they know how to find her.

Using Craigslist.com, flyers posted in coffee shops and fitness centers, and ads in university newspapers, egg “recruiters” find young women to meet the exploding demand for human eggs. Roughly one in seven couples now suffers from infertility. Delayed childbearing and rampant sexually transmitted infections mean that many would-be moms have eggs too old or organs too damaged to support conception. So donor eggs are a hot commodity. (Indeed, many fertility clinics report more success with donor-egg IVF than IVF using a woman’s own eggs.)

The scientific clamor for embryonic stem cell research also drives the demand for more eggs. New York, for example, allows payments for donor eggs intended for stem cell research. Ethicists worry that payments for research-bound eggs may induce women whose eggs won’t pass muster at fertility clinics to donate eggs without fully realizing the risks involved.

Egg donation carries serious risks, no matter whether the eggs end up in a research scientist’s lab or an infertility clinic’s freezer.

Eggsploitation, a powerful, disturbing documentary, tells the heart-wrenching stories of egg donors who suffered devastating consequences, including lost fertility, serious disability, and near death.  This award-winning film sends a critical warning to young women thinking about donating their eggs: Don’t.

The film triggered my own search of infertility-related websites to analyze the messages aimed at prospective donors–young women like Melissa. Rife with competing interests, this results-driven industry offers few protections for the person most vulnerable to exploitation—the young woman who sells her eggs.

“It’s Not About Money. Really.”

The fertility industry targets young women with an altruistic narrative: The “fulfillment from helping an infertile couple achieve the dream of having a baby is priceless.”  Recruiters flatter their donors, telling them they are indispensable (“women [can’t] realize their dreams of having a family…without you, the egg donor”) and validate their worth with an $8,000 check. Others “guilt” women into donating, telling them they represent an infertile couple’s last hope (“Without egg donors like you, couples… struggling to start a family would have little hope”).

Egg donation is portrayed as “one of the most powerful and rewarding decisions a woman can make.”

It’s a convenient myth. Coating the raw financial deal with the emotional gloss of altruism helps both would-be parents and egg donors feel better about the process—and themselves.

Lift the veil of altruism, however, and reality looks very different. If women weren’t paid, very few would donate eggs.  Countries that forbid or limit payment to egg donors can’t find enough donors to meet the demand. Women themselves admit that money matters: less than a third of donors claim their only motive was altruistic (e.g. to give infertile couples a baby). Nearly 60% say money motivated their decision, at least in part (18.8% say money was their only motive). Surely many egg donors are sincere and compassionate, but the industry would shrivel up without cash incentives to keep the pipeline flowing with donor eggs.

 

Exploitation

Paying healthy young women to undergo a medical procedure with significant risks and no personal benefit exploits them—especially when the sums paid are large and the risks poorly studied and ill communicated.  And that’s the case with egg donation.

Donors are typically students, like Melissa, or women with entry-level jobs. Dangle $8000-$10,000, per monthly cycle, in front of a cash-strapped college student or a barista struggling to live in an expensive city and you’ve got donors. It’s an effective incentive. (One agency even promises $50,000 to $100,000 to egg donors who meet stringent, personalized search criteria.) Students discover that they can easily cover tuition of $50,000 by becoming a repeat donor. The unofficial limit is six cycles, but money entices some women to exceed that limit.

The Risks

No one really knows how egg donation affects a young woman’s future health and fertility. Small studies and scattered donor reports suggest links between fertility drugs and cancer, infertility, and other health problems. In the U.S, no one tracks complications or long-term health risks for egg donors. Most egg donors are anonymous (no registry) and receive no follow-up care once the donation cycle ends.

Industry players also routinely minimize the known risks. One of the few studies of past donors found that 20% did not recall being informed of any risks. Although 12.5% of past donors reported experiencing ovarian hyper-stimulation (a serious, potentially fatal, complication), donor agencies and fertility centers downplay the risk as “rare,” or present in “1-2% of patients,” or as a “5% chance in any cycle.” And prospective donors who wonder whether egg donation might affect their future fertility are flatly misled: “Donating eggs will not harm your future fertility.”

The industry has a collective self-interest in not researching the long-term risks of egg donation, lest they scare women from donating just as demand skyrockets.

The Human Cost

The fertility industry exploits women by soft-pedaling the potential risks of egg donation while offering quick payoffs. But more appalling is the silence surrounding the human costs of IVF itself.

Donor agencies and fertility clinics erect deliberate smokescreens, obscuring what egg donors see of the baby-making process. They promote a mental image of the “results,” captured in happy photos of cherubic babies and ecstatic parents.

But this rosy picture of smiling babies and happy endings is one of the cruelest deceptions in egg donor recruitment. Agencies and fertility centers never give prospective donors a realistic picture of the human costs accompanying egg retrieval, fertilization, cultivation, storage, and implantation; at best they describe the processes in euphemisms, downplaying the loss of life.

What’s at stake is not whether the donor’s pain and effort are worth it, given the human cost; the real question is whether egg donors even see the moral implications of the process they set in motion.

Consider:

  • Some of the lives created from donor eggs are deliberately thrown away after fertilization–graded and disposed of as subpar.
  • Implanted safely, an embryo may be “selectively reduced” (aborted) to avoid multiple births;
  • Implanted, an embryo may die in utero (up to 20% of successful clinical pregnancies eventually miscarry);
  • Frozen, extra embryos may languish for years in steel receptacles, labeled by number and expiration date;
  • Frozen, then finally invited to join the family, embryos may perish in the thawing process;
  • Frozen, forgotten, or rejected by the intended recipients, remaining embryos are destroyed;
  • Finally, years later, the resulting children may long desperately but hopelessly to know their biological mom, the egg donor;
  • And, the CDC warns, IVF children are two to four times more likely to suffer birth defects.

At each stage in this ‘manufacturing’ process, the human embryo is no less a person than the egg donor herself. The Church insists that embryos be treated with the same dignity and respect owed to the doctor wielding the pipette, the egg donor herself, or the would-be-mother anxiously hoping the embryo transfer “takes.”

But each stage of the in vitro fertilization process–which claims to give the gift of life–is potentially murderous; each juncture requires decisions likely to end in the deliberate destruction of human embryos, made in God’s image. The egg donor’s “gift” sets in motion a death-dealing process, masquerading as “the gift of life.”

The fertility industry doesn’t want young women like Melissa to see the reality behind the feel-good image. Donors are primed, eager to believe that their eggs likely gave another woman “the happiness of … a baby.”

I have to wonder…would Melissa’s peers donate their eggs so willingly if they realized the cherished baby is but the lone survivor atop a tragic pyramid of dead siblings?

© 2011 Mary Rice Hasson

For more on IVF see this post:  Selfish Parents: Embryos on Ice

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July 15, 2010 · 11:23 pm

The Abortionist-Mother: Cognitive Dissonance on Abortion

When an abortion provider who is, herself, 18 weeks pregnant, performs an abortion on a patient’s 18-week old child (or fetus), The New York Times calls it “moral complexity.”

I call it cognitive dissonance.

You know, that “uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously…when a person perceives a logical inconsistency in their beliefs, when one idea implies the opposite of another. “

You decide.

From “The New Abortion Providers,” by Emily Bazelon, in the July 18, 2010 New York Times Sunday Magazine:

“Lisa Harris wrote an academic article about performing an 18-week abortion while she was 18 weeks pregnant. Harris described grasping the fetus’s leg with her forceps, feeling a kick in her own uterus and starting to cry. ‘It was an overwhelming feeling — a brutally visceral response — heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics,’ she wrote. ‘It was one of the more raw moments in my life.’”

Two babies the same age.

They might have played together.

But she spared her own and killed the other.

Mother.  Abortionist.

(c) 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

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July 8, 2010 · 10:07 pm

Selfish Parents: Embryos on Ice and Utilitarian IVF

Meet Gillian St. Lawrence, a new breed of IVF mother: fertile utilitarian.

She’s blonde, 30, married for nine years to a nice guy named Paul, and she heads a real estate investment firm in tony Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Unlike other women who pursue in vitro fertilization, Gillian is blessed with fertility, inconveniently so.  Writing in The Washington Post, Gillian recounts how she and Paul want to be parents. Maybe.  Someday.

But definitely not now, at 30 and 32.

A child might disrupt their carefully laid plans, which include career, money, and planning to be perfect parents: “My husband wants to be able to coach little league, and we both want very reduced work hours so we never have to look at day care or a nanny…[We] just want to give a future child every bit of our time that we can without dealing with financial stress…” (Um, you forgot to mention winning the lottery, and sailing the globe without a care in the world. Wake up, Gillian, and shake the dreamy visions from your eyes.)

Sadly, unrealistic expectations are the least of her problems.

Gillian anticipates another 10 or 15 years before they will have enough time and money to make room in their lives for a child. That perfect timing, however, has one flaw: infertility increases with age and, as Gillian explains, they risk “higher miscarriage and genetic disorder rates… in babies conceived from parents older than 35.” (Translation: We’ve got exacting standards: an imperfect baby won’t pass muster.)

So what’s a young, naturally fertile couple to do? Change their plans and embrace reality? Buy a minivan instead of a Lexus, eat burgers not shrimp, stay home, and hey, here’s an idea…go make passionate love and thrill each other with the awe and mystery of creating a new life together?

Nah, too pedestrian. Gillian crafted an innovative solution, now complete with explanatory website (is a consulting business far behind?) and carefully totaled expenses and records of 15-minute office visits. She and Paul spent a year and roughly $20,000 to “create embryos, freeze them and, essentially, donate them to our future selves“ through in vitro fertilization, as “insurance against future infertility.” Gillian calls it “Preservation IVF.” (Pardon my skepticism…but for a couple cramped for time and money, that’s a rather pricey solution, compared to a good bottle of wine and a romantic night together.)

Their IVF purchase, which their website bills as “Freedom From Our Fertility Clocks,” buys them the ability to “pursue our goals without giving up the chance to be parents.”

Having their babies and freezing them too.

Let’s be clear.  Gillian and Paul are parents already. They created five little embryos and put them on ice for the next 10-15 years, until Gillian is “ready.” (Imagine the convenience: Freeze-dried children, ready when you’re ready. Defrost, implant, and presto, instant children.)  It kind of reminds me of the compulsive shopper who buys five pairs of winter boots in summertime so she can put them on the shelf for later, “just in case” they fit her fashion whims later on.

Only we’re not talking about shoes here.  We’re talking about real people.  Children, however tiny.

I’ll let more knowledgeable voices address the morality of in vitro fertilization, whether to remedy infertility or preserve “all options,” as in Gillian’s case.

But as a parent, I find Gillian’s story appalling. In spite her meticulous plans and growing bank account, she’s running a catastrophic deficit in the three “must haves”  of good parenting.

First, love. In her pages of analytical discussion about wanting a child and the painstaking research to find the “best” way to make one, she never mentions the word “love.” Not even once. She betrays no awareness of the spousal love factor –that when a husband and wife love deeply, their love yearns to create, to expand and express itself in the creation of another person who becomes a unique reflection of their union.

In this, Gillian’s probably not alone. Scientists predict more couples will join her in severing love from baby-making as they pursue a highly desirable commodity–the perfect child.  A recent report on technological advances in IVF says that, within ten years, some couples will forego the natural context of lovemaking because the quality control features of IVF technology will eclipse the results of natural conception.

IVF, and selective embryo destruction, may eventually yield a better product, (i.e. child), than loving conception, but at what cost to our humanity? At what cost to love?

Fast forward to the future, and Gillian’s love void becomes even more tragic.  She seems tone deaf to a child’s deepest needs—for love, unconditional, unlimited love, regardless of parents’ naturally finite supply of time and money.  In addition, Gillian gives no hint that she anticipates the joy of love, which delights in another’s growth, fulfillment, and flourishing. I suspect she will be too busy measuring her personal return on their joint parenting investment.

Which brings me to the second essential of good parenting: sacrifice. Gillian, being a mom is not all about you.  Good parents, like good spouses, put the needs of others first. They want what is good for the other and will sacrifice their own desires—even their own needs (sleep comes to mind)—in order to provide that.

Parenthood teaches us that life does not revolve around our wants. Rich fulfillment grows when we sacrifice and give to our loved ones. It’s a hard lesson, learned reluctantly, and requiring daily practice.  For the next ten or fifteen years, however, Gillian will ingrain the habit of putting herself first as she elevates her personal goals—career ambition, wealth, fitness, fun–over the children she’s already created and who languish, frozen, waiting for their mother’s heart to thaw.

Her careful planning betrays a stingy disposition, measuring out servings of attention and money according to her own selfish inclinations rather than others’ needs. Pity the poor child who arrives needing more attention, sacrifice, and effort than Gillian and Paul plan to give. After decades spent hoarding the best of their time, energy, focus, and money for themselves, Gillian and Paul will be poorly positioned to learn generosity and true self-giving in the face of a child’s unpredictable and inconvenient needs.

The third vital factor that’s missing is this: a good parent welcomes each child as a gift, a person with an inherent value and dignity, regardless of usefulness, talents, eventual achievements, convenience, or lovability.

Utilitarianism lurks beneath the surface as Gillian discusses her expectations of parenthood. Embryos—children—are a means to an end, helping to secure an idealized vision of parenthood for the real stars of the show: the parents. They will enjoy plenty of time, money, and energy, and a perfect child who will eventually achieve great things and send reflected glory their way, with little or no parental sacrifice required.

But Gillian’s utilitiarian mindset really breaks out into the open when a reader asks her what she intends to do with any “leftover” embryos who are not implanted in her womb. Although they created five children, Gillian and Paul intend single embryo transfer sometime after age 40, meaning they’ll try one at a time. In typical IVF, remaining embryos are destroyed when their expiration date arrives. Not so for Gillian.

Those leftover children can still benefit her: “Statistically, with five embryos, we may only be able to achieve one or two successful pregnancies so it is likely we will use them all. If not, we plan to save them because with advanced technology, 20 or 30 years from now one of us could get a bad disease and those embryos could save one of our lives because of the DNA being from us.”

Using your own children for spare parts. Cold-hearted. Chilling.

But fitting, I suppose, for a utilitarian mama who puts her kids on ice.

(c) 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

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March 6, 2010 · 7:26 am

Tweeting Abortion

My heart is so sad.  I just watched the chilling YouTube video by Angie Jackson, a Florida mom undergoing an abortion at-home using RU-486. Angie wants the world to experience her abortion with her—so she’s “tweeting” about, in graphic detail and with appalling coldness. Her purpose? According to her video, she hopes to “demystify abortion” so that women will know, “It’s just not that bad.”  Her tweets themselves tell a different and tragic story.

For those who twitter, see hashtag #livetweetingabortion.  For those who don’t, Jill Stanek, a pro-life activist, reprints Angie’s tweets here.  Fox,  ABC, and others also covered the story but with few quotes from the tweets themselves. I think it’s important to read the Twitter posts, not to condemn Angie but to understand who she is and the misery wrought by her adult choices.  (Her wretched childhood, rife with religious exploitation and sexual abuse, scarred her soul. She calls herself an anti-theist.)

I am so sad, for Angie and women like her.  Her child is now with God.  Angie remains in her own internal pain.  She says she’s been astonished by the outcry over her tweets, in which she calls her baby a “parasite,” “tapeworm,” and a “squatter” and celebrates death (“Yay, I’m bleeding.”) How does a heart become so callous? And what kind of doublethink causes a mom–with a four-year-old son whom she loves—to depersonalize her unborn child in such appalling terms?

Angie’s reactions, chronicled by impulsive tweets, capture a dark reality that contradicts her scripted rhetoric. In one interview, she called her boyfriend “completely supportive,” citing his ready agreement to pay for the abortion.  Her real-life tweets curse him for leaving dishes in the sink while she’s in pain that even Vicodin can’t dim. She claims she’s “relieved to see how simple it’s been,”  while her posts bemoan the failure of the first round of meds, the drawn-out process (at least a week from start to finish), the cramping, and the pain. While her interview says an RU-486 abortion is like a “menstrual period,” she repeatedly talks about her need for support, to avoid feeling shame, to lessen the taboo of abortion.  Since when do most women feel a taboo, shame or in need of support to cope with their monthly period?

Most revealing, she says, in a Facebook Q & A , “I had imagined, naively, that people would accept it [the abortion] because I’m in a committed relationship. I was monogamous. I was using protection. I had a kid. I have health risks. We paid for this out of pocket and not out of any taxpayer means. If I can’t talk about my first trimester abortion, which was legal and in my case life-saving, then who the hell can talk about her abortion?”

This is a woman who desperately wants approval for what she’s done.  She, like others who become militantly pro-abortion, wants the whitewash of “normalcy” to camouflage her awful choice—and her even-worse decision to provide play-by-play coverage.

Angie desperately wants to silence the whisper of God in her own heart. But unlike the clamor of condemnation from some harsh pro-lifers, God’s whisper is a message of His love, steadfastness, and forgiveness.  And it’s a whisper so powerful that it can open even the hardest heart. Ironically, Angie’s inability to still the whisper gives us hope—hope that she’ll take the armor of hurt off her own heart and hear the God who loves her.

Angie, I hope you’ll tweet again when you’ve found the love that never fails. And in the meantime, even in sadness, I’ll be praying for you.

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