Here's the article on NPR's website. It was today's Fresh Air broadcast. You can listen to it through this link.
She said that in light of this new, unwed, single, octuplet mother, with 6 other kids, we have to reconsider the question of "choice" in pregnancy. She said that the question of choice goes beyond abortion and into the question of the right to choose to impregnate a woman, artificially, with multiple embryos. Is this just as bad? Often the Pro-Life argument says that God created life and it is up to Him and only Him to terminate it or not. We are not to play God. I agree that God creates life and we are to honor that gift of life by not ending it. BUT, I wonder, are we playing God just as much so by artificially impregnating people. I have mixed feelings about this, I know the great success and need of this technology for people who want to conceive and can't. And because of deeply personal experience with it (no, I have not been artificially inseminated) believe that impact and importance of it sometimes being OK. But how much so...
The people I know who have had this practice done never sought to have more than one child this way. But they still have frozen embryos, many years later, must ask themselves each year what to do with those embryos, keep paying for them to be frozen, destroy them or give them to someone else. Its a big question for them. If they choose to let them go, does destroying them equal abortion? They don't believe in abortion, so they have to ask themselves, how can they do that, if it equals this. Do they have parental rights to the child if it is implanted in someone else, its their DNA, so shouldn't they have rights? At least that is how we make decisions in courts nowadays, if its your DNA you can be the parent, no matter how much you suck at it.
How does this work? How does this reflect God's gift and plan for life? And why do we call an artificial pregnancy a miracle? And why in the world are we so FASCINATED by all these multiple births?! If it was something that happened through true natural means I would understand, an egg splitting 8 times?! Amazing! But, why are we fascinated by something that happens because we have put eight fully fertilized eggs in a obviously fertile woman and are surprised they all survived?
Now, once the life has begun, why would we consider ending it. Those 8 new children are in need of love, care and compassion. They each have a personality, a purpose and a reason for existence. But my question is, if she never choose to have all these kids this way, would they have still existed? Was this God's plan or is He just working things to His good? WHY DID WE THINK WE COULD CONTROL THEIR CREATION? They are going to have a hard time. They will experience struggles because of the financial situation and family situation of the mother. This wasn't something that just happened, it was something planned and very intentional. She was allowed to have 8 new births with 6 children at home. She allowed these kids to be born into this. This is not alright... in my opinion....
I have a lot of other thoughts on this dealing with the question of adoption and our luxury of the question of abortion in our wealthy western world when 13 year olds, HIV positive girls in the AIDS camps in S. Africa, who are raising their siblings because their parents died of AIDS are being raped, giving birth to these rape children and asking for the morning after pill because they have no idea if they will be raped again or not and can't afford to take care of another kid. How appalling is it that we are having to deal with the question of multiple births and artifical insemination when half way around the world a 13 year old is longing for her childhood but is having to raise her kids. What kind of people are we....
The interview really made me think... what about you?
5 comments:
I found I agree with most of your points, and I think most people do. Ironically, it's a situation as extreme as this for people to stop and think twice about a lot of things.
Another thing that you didn't mention (probably since it wasn't really the point of the NPR broadcast) was public assistance. The country is outraged at the Octuplet's mom for planning these pregnancies knowing she'd be relying upon taxpayers to fund their upbringings. Yet millions of girls and women have done this over the past many decades, just one birth at a time.
One correction: I believe she had six, not 8, fertilized eggs put in and two of those split. So there are two sets of identical twins within the octuplets. Really not any better but factually speaking that is what happened.
For the record, I have twins born through IVF. I do consider it a miracle thorugh medicine, so to speak. I had three embryos put in with no intention of "embryo reduction" if triplets had conceived--the odds were less than 3% but the doctors did say it was possible. We had none to freeze so that was the approach we took.
you know you make a good point with your comment on the women relying on government help for years...
and i think that makes an even greater point that while these people are relying on the government and not practicing restraint, the question becomes, where do we draw the line? who do we allow to use IVF? how are we crossing a line that we need to keep drawn?
like I said, sometimes there are very crucial reasons its OK, and important for people to experience. I think few would disagree that whenever there is a child born it is a miracle. which is why I truly can't disagree with the practice.
but i do think that the woman's situation creates a series of questions we must ask:
1) where does the question of pro-life/choice start and begin with IVF?
2) can this/does this create a double standard?
I don't know how this would all play out. these are just my thoughts and considerations today. I don't have an answer - i just want to work out some of my thoughts and feelings on this.
You make some awesome points and this is a topic I have thought about quite a bit among others equally as complex in moral decision.
The conclusion I have reached thus far goes back to Genesis when we were in the garden, walking and talking with God. God was able to give us the best advice for every situation because he knows the impact and outcome of every situation on the whole entire world and it's future. When we made a choice outside of God's we were separated from God, and that's when things got tough. Undoubtedly innumerable truly good
decisions have been made by innumerable people since then, but how many of those truly good decisions would have been God's?
I make some good decisions every day, sometimes choosing one good thing over another equally good thing, but do I consciously know which one was best considering it's ultimate effect on all humanity? Absolutely not.
Many people may believe in today's world that God is a God of absolutes and sometimes that is true, like when he says to do something, it's absolute, like the 10 commandments are absolutes for every one of us everywhere among some other commands He makes obviously to ALL people. Then there are the situational commands that God gave certain people in certain situations like Moses' ordinance's for the Israelites which were eliminated upon the death and resurrection of Christ.
In today's world, saturated with sin, we can't know if even going to work for a certain company could be against God's will because most undoubtedly ANY company one would work for would have practices that are not in line with God's will. This is why, as Christians, we pray for direction and most importantly try to stay as close to God as possible so that as many of our decisions as possible will be directly influence by God's still, small voice that we may or may not hear at the time we make a decision in our everyday lives.
God, in the Bible, even commanded that people be killed, murdered even and I know that this subject trips up the Atheists every time and they like to call us on it so that we may waiver in our faith. The important thing I learned in researching this is that God provided the best possible solution for an overall outcome for mankind through these actions, in consideration of our existence in a sinful world. It was important that political events, especially involving the Israelites, be planned in such a way that Christ would come and at the right place and time. Death most definitely would NOT be God's first choice but it can be the best one if you are the all-knowing creator who knows exactly what outcome any given decision will have on humanity and it's salvation which is ultimately God's #1 goal.
I find that we often base our moral decisions, especially tricky ones, on individual intention. For example, "Jane had an abortion because there was a 90% chance both her and the baby would die if she didn't." In my opinion, the truth is, we can only justify any decision we make from the smallest to the biggest if we are in a perfect relationship with God and are led by His direction in said decisions. That's of course nearly impossible all the time, but that's why God had to provide the salvation and not ourselves. That's why I believe that when Jesus died, he said "It is finished.", because it was ultimately the only decision or action that really mattered until the end of the earth as we know it.
Bottom line is that we can try to legalize things...make a law to ban abortion, ban embryo implants, ban single parent implantation, etc., but in consideration of our world today, our laws can't possibly encompass every single situation and the best outcome for humanity in the end. God has already determined through the death and resurrection of Christ the final outcome. He is just giving us time to get to know Him and helping others make their choice to know Him.
Please don't mistake my former statement to mean that it is not important for Christians to be involved in law-making. I am merely saying we are all called to different purposes.
So, in my mind, with consideration for the state of mankind today, the question might rather be, "Would me purposely impacting such-and-such moral argument help people to find God? Is this the purpose God has called me to or is it distracting from the purpose God called me to?" And of course, try to consider your true intention through it all and how your decision may effect YOUR walk with Christ and other's walk around you. Ultimately, the closer one walks with God, the more confident one can be that such decisions are the correct ones throughout our lives. As for the people who are not saved, any decision they make is a complete shot in the dark, good intention or not when it comes to God's plan.
Just my take on such things.
I don't know why, but the verse that comes to mind after posting this is "Let the dead bury their own dead."
Sorry...I looked up the passage and it reads:
(Luke 9:57-62)
18When Jesus saw the large crowds around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.[u] 19Now a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
20Jesus told him,
“Foxes have holes and birds[v] have nests,
but the Son of Man has no place to rest.”[w]
21Then another of his disciples said to him, “Lord,[x] first let me go and bury my father.”
22But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
I suppose this came to my mind because personally I feel as though pursuing a relationship with Christ is the foremost priority above all with secondary focus on worldly events and situations. But that goes without saying really and may not even apply here. It may be a personal message with some afterthought.
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