The Implications of Human Reproductive Cloning and Germ Line Alteration for Women and Women's Health: Ten Mis-Conceptions

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6. HUMAN GENETIC MANIPULATION WILL NOT LEAD TO THE COMMODIFICATION OF AND GENETICIZATION OF CHILDREN

We have already witnessed ways in which children have become commodities in the 21st century; for example, this past week twin babies were sold on the Internet to the infertile couple who bid the highest. Genetic manipulation is likely to result in the further commodification of children because people will begin having, what Marcy Darnovsky^xxxi and others refer to as, "designer babies". The distinction between germ line therapy and germ line enhancement is a very slippery slope. Advocates of germ line alteration tell us that women will be able to design a "superior"child through the selection of personality traits, physical attributes, sex, and intellectual and moral qualities. The consequences of selecting specific characteristics in a child may lead to a devastating consequences including psychological backlash of anger, stigma, and discrimination against any child, and especially one who cannot or does not live up to expectations. Women making the decisions will also face incredible pressures, moral decisions, and potential backlash if babies do not work out as planned. Additionally, some in the disability community argue against any form of pre-implantation diagnosis and worry about what that means for the further stigmatization of disabled people in our society.^xxxii The movie, Gattaca, vividly illustrates societal impacts when one attempts to control a baby's destiny from birth. There is an erroneous assumption that diseases, personalities, and characteristics are all genetically pre-disposed. Last year, A New York Times magazine article predicted a future scenario called "The Genetic Report Card" in which a baby's first official check-up would be in the petri dish while s/he is an eight-cell embryo.^xxxiii

7. GERMLINE ALTERATION AND HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE CLONING CURES THE 'INCURABLY' INFERTILE AND OFFERS A LAST CHANCE FOR A GENETIC CONNECTION. Professionals, such as lawyers and IVF doctors, professing to speak on behalf of infertile couples make this argument. Ironically, one of the rationalizations for human reproductive cloning is the low success rate of IVF. While testifying at the California Advisory Committee on Human Cloning, one well-known IVF doctor relied on the same statistics used to convince infertile couples of IVF's success, to make his argument that IVF's low success rates justified the need for human reproductive cloning.

This week the media reported that of the couples who have volunteered to be the first to try human reproductive cloning 90 percent are infertile couples and 1 percent are gay or lesbians. ^xxxiv Among some women, especially infertile women and lesbians, human reproductive cloning may be a potentially divisive issue. In the case of infertile couples, even within RESOLVE, a national organization for infertile couples, women are divided about whether or not to support human reproductive cloning. In the rare case of an infertile couple in which neither person produces gametes, human reproductive cloning would allow for a genetic connection that no other reproductive technology could offer. Nevertheless, many feel this is dangerous threshold to cross to help a few. ^xxxv Generally speaking, lesbians have relied on alternative technologies and embraced many new reproductive technologies as a form of resistance to heterosexual nuclear families and as an opportunity for motherhood. Human reproductive cloning offers lesbian couples, in a society that is obsessed with biological connections and often uses this as a marker in legal custody battles, the rare opportunity to be genetically linked to both women -something even egg donation cannot accomplish (With egg donation, a lesbian couple may choose one woman to supply the egg and the other woman to carry the pregnancy to term and/or breast feed). To date, sperm banks, especially those serving mainly lesbians, have not taken a formal position for or against these newest technologies.

Professionals who support reproductive cloning would like people to believe that if anyone is against human reproductive cloning then we are against infertile couples. An anti-reproductive cloning position is not unsympathetic to the pain of infertility or to women and men experiencing infertility in their lives. Infertility is a painful life experience and even within the infertility community, members are divided about their support or lack of support of human reproductive cloning. In considering infertility, there are several important points to be made. First, new reproductive technologies never "cure" infertility but rather, they only offer temporary solutions to infertility or treatment, which may or may not result in a live birth. Anyone who has faced infertility problems and later had a child, through birth or adoption, will tell you that the infertility experience is still a part of her/his identity. Second, there is no indication to believe that new technologies such as human reproductive cloning will have any better "success" rates ("success" being measured by the live birth of a healthy child) than IVF, GIFT or ZIFT. Third, while I whole-heartedly support low risk research efforts to help infertile women, men and couples, I endorse preventive efforts. The majority of causes of infertility are preventable including occupational health hazards, environmental toxins, drug-induced infertility like DES, sexually transmitted diseases, accidents, and complications following childbirth or abortion.

8. HUMAN GENETIC MANIPULATION INCLUDING REPRODUCTIVE CLONING WILL RID SOCIETY OF ALL UNWANTED PREGNANCIES

Martine Rothblatt has written a book proposing "inocuseed", a technique for banking all men's semen as a way to end teenage pregnancies.^xxxvi Each male will undergo a vasectomy at puberty and their sperm will be stored in a bank and reproduction will be controlled with no unwanted pregnancies. Certainly, this suggestion is an extreme measure to prevent unwanted pregnancies. What has happened to the promotion of condoms or other contraceptive methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies?

9. WOMEN WHO ARE ANTI-HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE CLONING ARE ANTI-PROCREATIVE LIBERTY AND ANTI-SCIENCE AND IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE.

In her new book, Genes, Women and Equality, Mary Briody Mahowald, a philosopher, has outlined two feminist positions.^xxxvii 1) The feminist libertarian position states that is women's right to pursue individual liberty and procreative freedom. A majority of feminist libertarians would argue that if such genetic technologies become available, women should have access, and be free to choose among them. ^xxxviii The problem with this approach is that it fails to consider social inequalities among and between women based on racism, classism, ableism, ethnocentrism, and sexual orientation. Not every woman will have equal access to these technologies or will there always be the autonomy to make a decision. For example, a libertarian feminist fails to consider what happens if a heterosexual couple disagree on these technologies, who makes final decision or has the power in the relationship? 2) The feminist egalitarian position operates from a social justice framework. It considers the fact that a woman's autonomy is contextually located and ones social location - class, disability, race, ethnicity, gender influences our ability to make decisions and have access to technologies. Thus, feminist egalitarians are not only interested in women's access to a new technology but also how women's social location impacts the use or misuse of that technology. If a new technology increases inequities, women need to pay attention to those inequalities. We, as a society, need to equalize benefits and burdens associated with genetics for both men and women. Genetics is neither gender neutral nor color-blind. Even if all women had access to these technologies, we still might not want them. A feminist egalitarian might support some gene technologies, and still reject others, if and only if they were both equally available and women had equality within the broader social context.

10. WOMEN WHO ARE ANTI-CLONING ARE ALSO ANTI-ABORTION.

This mis-conception has far-reaching implications for women and women's groups. The human genome project potentially makes for interesting political alliances or rather strange bedfellows. For example, both the religious right led by the Vatican and the democratic progressive movement are anti-germ line alteration and anti-human reproductive cloning. But the Vatican does not distinguish between reproductive cloning and non-reproductive cloning or stem cell research. They are opposed to stem cell research on the grounds that such research, although not necessarily, may involve embryos or aborted fetuses. Many women and women's organizations support stem cell research even while they are opposed to human reproductive cloning. Furthermore, they do not want to be aligned with the Vatican's anti-abortion position. Rather, we prefer to collaborate with like-minded people who support a women's right, whenever necessary, to have a safe and legal abortion. The challenge for women and women's groups is how to work with other groups, on a policy that is both anti-germ line alteration and anti-human reproductive cloning but which is clearly not anti-abortion rights. (I am deliberately refraining from using the word "choice" since pro-reproductive cloning professionals use this word to mean procreative liberty.)

There is another interesting twist. Scientists and doctors in support of human reproductive cloning, I believe, inadvertently feed into anti-abortion politics by further delineating the separation of a fetus from the woman. This is ironic because human reproductive cloning may actually further the need for safe and legal abortions at a historical juncture when this legal right is being threatened. If human reproductive cloning occurs, we may be performing more late term abortions, also inflammatorily referred to as "partial birth abortions", than we have had to do in the past. Brigitte Boisselier, a French chemist who is the "scientific director" of Clonaid, the Raelians cloning venture, has said, "We want a healthy baby." All of the 50 young females eagerly volunteering to serve as egg donors and surrogate mothers, were prepared to undergo abortions if defects were revealed by ultrasound or amniocentesis. If one pregnancy failed, another surrogate would automatically step into line; there would be no need to wait another month, as you would if you were dependent on the cycles of one woman.^xxxix While scientists claim that pre-implantation diagnosis can detect poor quality embryos and grade embryos while still in petri dishes, we know this is not always possible. Furthermore, not all "mutations/defects" are genetic and thus, identifiable at an early stage. In fact, evidence from sheep research suggests that high rates of fetal anomalies were discovered in late term pregnancy or soon after birth. Potentially, if human reproductive cloning is allowed this could have devastating consequences for women.

In conclusion, I ask you to seriously consider both the short and long-term consequences of these new human genetic manipulations, especially germ line alteration and human reproductive cloning, for diverse women. Some have argued that these new technologies offer potential for resistance and building new family forms. Others have argued these technologies can help infertile couples with no gametes. While this may be the case for a few, I am concerned that many more women will be harmed than helped. Overall, women --not men-- will bear the major physical, psychological, social, moral, legal, political, and economic burdens of these genetic manipulations. Finally and most importantly, human reproductive cloning and germ line alteration, whatever their risks, are unprecedented and irreversible.

Lisa Handwerker, a medical anthropologist, has a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from UC San Francisco and Berkeley. Her doctoral research, based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, examined female infertility and new reproductive technologies in China. Since 1979, when Lisa interned for the National Women's Health Network, she has worked on women's health issues as a community health worker, labor coach and translator, writer, researcher, professor, activist, policy maker, and consultant within the United States and abroad. Lisa was the chair of the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction for six years and chair of the Berkeley Community Health Commission for two years. Currently, as a health activist, Lisa serves on the board of the National Women's Health Network.

@2001 by Lisa Handwerker
Feedback welcomed and citation requested
For additional information contact: lisahand@juno.com

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