Ethics and Human Reproduction (RLE Feminist Theory)

A Feminist Analysis

Christine Overall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136204708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

In Ethics and Human Reproduction, Christine Overall blends feminist theory and philosophical expertise to provide a coherent analysis of a range of moral questions and social policy issues pertaining to human reproduction and the new reproductive technologies. Topics covered include: sex preselection, artificial insemination, prenatal diagnosis, abortion, in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, surrogate motherhood, and childbirth. Throughout the book, the author examines the values and assumptions underlying common perceptions of sexuality and fertility, the status of the foetus, the value of children, the nature of parenting, and the roles of women. In so doing, she develops a feminist approach to answering questions about reproductive rights and freedoms, the value of a genetic link between mother and their offspring, the commodification of reproduction, and the effects of reproductive technologies on women and children. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the new reproductive technologies, biomedical ethics, and women's health.

1 Introduction

Is the use of prenatal diagnosis a unique form of insurance for parents that their offspring will be healthy? Or is it a covert but potentially dangerous manifestion of eugenics?

Is the practice of surrogate motherhood a valuable service for men whose wives are infertile? Or is it a type of reproductive prostitution of women?

Is fetal sex preselection a benign process that enables people to have the precious son or daughter for whom they long? Or is it a form of gynecide—that is, wholesale slaughter of females?

Is the recovery of eggs from surgically removed ovarian tissue a good source of experimental material for use in reproductive research? Or is it an insidious type of egg snatching and egg farming?

These questions are examples of just a few of the ethical issues now being raised about reproduction and reproductive technology. They are part of a rapidly growing philosophical subdiscipline—reproductive ethics—that is concerned with the wide range of moral questions arising in connection with human reproduction. Although some reproductive issues, such as those pertaining to contraception, abortion, and birth, have always been of deep significance throughout human existence, the past ten years have witnessed the development of new reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, and sex preselection, which have almost as great a capacity for affecting human lives.

They will affect human lives—but, in particular, they will affect women's lives, and that potential does not always receive the emphasis it deserves. In the current debates about issues in reproductive ethics there is a striking contrast in approach between, on the one hand, those which highlight women's experience, needs, and behavior in connection with reproduction and those which minimize, ignore, or deny the central relation between women and reproduction and instead profess concern for entities such as “society” or “the family.” The latter approach is antifeminist or nonfeminist in nature; the former is feminist. This book develops a critique of antifeminist and nonfeminist approaches to reproductive ethics and offers in their place a feminist analysis of issues in reproduction.

Feminism: A Definition

Both historical and contemporary discussions show clearly that the term “feminism” encompasses a variety of meanings,¹ and not all of them are entirely consistent with one another. Nevertheless it is possible to outline the minimal but essential components of a feminist perspective.

First, a feminist perspective involves a commitment to understanding women's experience, beliefs, ideas, relationships, behavior, creations, and history. It stresses women's own perceptions; that is, how events, institutions, social groups, and individuals are apprehended and interpreted by women. It highlights those elements of women's personal and social exerience which are common and shared as well as those which are distinct and diverse. This focus is justified by the fact that women's experience and history have for the most part been suppressed, ignored, manipulated, and exploited, both in the past and in the present. It is therefore necessary to recover what has been lost, to give recognition to what has been ignored, to revalue what has been depreciated in women's experience. This recovery process involves a variety of methods—from the informal and revelatory process of consciousness-raising to the more formal and scholarly research in women's studies. What they have in common is a determination to avoid duplicating those methods used in the past which, by treating women as, at most, objects to be studied, have misrepresented and misunderstood women's experience.

Second, a feminist perspective is founded upon and fully informed by an awareness that women as women have been and are the victims of oppression under patriarchy, the system of male dominance.² Such a claim does not necessarily imply that “men are the enemy” or that all men rule all women. But it does imply that although women are oppressed as women, men are not usually oppressed as men.³ This awareness includes a conception of what oppression—unjust limitations and barriers—is and of its physical, psychological, social, and legal manifestations. And it is not complete without attention to the ways in which women's oppression can vary depending upon other variables such as age, race, class, religion, nationality, and sexual orientation.

Third, a feminist perspective includes some sort of theory about the origins of the oppression of women. Such a theory entails not necessarily a belief in one general “cause” of sexual oppression but, rather, attention to the ways in which that oppression is maintained and perpetuated, as well as attention to the agents—both individual and institutional—of oppression. It is on this aspect of feminism perhaps more than any other that feminists have disagreed; disputes about the sources of women's oppression have led to the development, particularly within the last two decades, of feminist political theories ranging from liberal feminism to socialist and Marxist feminism to radical feminism.⁴

Fourth, a feminist perspective is guided by a determination to avoid perpetuating or acquiescing in the oppression of women and to contribute, whenever possible, to the further understanding and dissolution of sexual inequality. In this respect feminism moves beyond the awareness of women's victimization to a vision of women's present and potential empowerment. Such a vision includes a concept of what the end of oppression would mean and would be like and of what the goal of feminist revolutionary change should be. Feminists have favored a variety of means to end oppression, including gradual reform, the production of alternate institutions and systems, and separatism of various sorts.⁵

Finally, a feminist perspective is characterized by the deliberate and self-conscious (in a positive sense) nature of its world view. In its most developed form it fosters the creation of new or alternate epistemic, ontological, ethical, and cultural systems.⁶ This is the most original aspect of feminism, and also its least developed.

Antifeminist and Nonfeminist Perspectives

In the preceding definition of feminism the first and second characteristics are most crucial; the third, fourth, and fifth follow from them. Hence antifeminist and nonfeminist perspectives can most easily be understood in terms of their relationship to the first and second characteristics of feminism.

A type of conservatism, antifeminism rejects the feminist commitment to understanding women's experience and denies the claim that women have been and are the victims of oppression.⁷ The antifeminist believes that women are not oppressed, for such a term implies unjust treatment of women. Instead he (or she) maintains that differential treatment of women is justified, often on the grounds of innate differences between the sexes that lead to distinct social functions for women and for men. The antifeminist also tends to support the enforcement and elaboration of alleged sex differences through state-controlled mechanisms. In short, antifeminism champions a type of socially sanctioned biological determinism in which sexual and reproductive differences between the sexes are fundamental to their different roles.⁸

In speaking of a nonfeminist approach, on the other hand, I am grouping a variety of different views. They are not necessarily overtly and actively misogynistic. However, a nonfeminist perspective is one that, deliberately or not, tends to ignore rather than deny women's experience and to suspend belief about the claim that women are oppressed. In this perspective what is most noticeable is not a deliberately antifeminist or antiwomen stance but, rather, one that is simply unaware of the hard-won insights of feminist writings. A nonfeminist approach, then, is androcentric⁹: that is, it overlooks women's experience, taking male perceptions and interpretations as the norm. It lacks the deliberately self-conscious character of feminist discourse, which is aware that there is more than one possible framework for the discussion of social and moral issues. Such an approach shows little or no awareness or understanding of the past and present oppression of women, and as a result it fails to question—and even helps to reinforce—patriarchal control over women.

Antifeminist and Nonfeminist Approaches to Reproductive Ethics

Human beings are embodied beings, and an understanding of reproduction is essential to understanding human relationships and what it is to be human within the context of patriarchy. Broadly construed, reproduction includes not only the immediate biological processes of procreation and the social uses to which they are put but also sexual interactions and relationships, and childrearing. In this book the focus is primarily upon issues pertaining directly to procreation, but it is impossible to discuss them independently of a concern for questions about sexuality and child care.

To examine reproduction requires not just an understanding of nature, of what is biologically given; it requires also an understanding of the social construction and organization of sexual, procreative, and child care relationships. In fact, such an understanding calls into question the assumption that it is legitimate or even meaningful to speak of what is biologically given outside the context of the human interpretations put on it. As Zillah Eisenstein says,

Women can sexually reproduce and they lactate. These are biological facts. That women are defined as mothers is a political fact and reflects a political need of patriarchy, which is based partially in the biological truth that women bear children. The transformation of women from a biological being (childbearer) to a political being (childrearer) is part of the conflict expressed in the politics of patriarchy. Patriarchy seeks to maintain the myth that patriarchal motherhood is a biological reality rather than a politically constructed necessity.¹⁰

Both antifeminists and nonfeminists, on the one hand, and feminists, on the other, have strived to understand human reproduction and to respond to the variety of issues raised by the social shaping of reproduction. The results of their investigations, however, have been very different.

Antifeminist and nonfeminist approaches to reproductive ethics are characterized by the tendency to concentrate on a few issues to the exclusion of others—which may in fact be equally or more important. What is overlooked, that it is overlooked, and why it is overlooked—all of this is as significant as what is actually discussed in reproductive ethics, but it is, of course, somewhat harder to recognize.

For example, contemporary philosophical discussions of reproduction have focused almost exclusively on the topic of abortion, and the literature on that subject is voluminous and complex. Moreover recent texts serving as general introductions to biomedical ethics or to contemporary social issues¹¹ almost always include a section on abortion but seldom on any other topics in reproductive ethics. This thanatological concentration is consistent with the general concern that philosophers have historically evinced for questions about death; it appears virtually to exclude any consideration of, for example, questions about birth.¹² It also entails lengthy and detailed discussions of the moral and metaphysical status of the embryo/fetus: for example, is it a person? If so, when does it become a person? If not, why is it not a person?¹³ and so on. There is, however, relatively little discussion of the woman who is the co-creator and sole sustainer of the embryo/fetus, except insofar as she is treated as a container or “environment” for it. And on the rare occasions on which women are discussed within the context of abortion or birth, the fetus-woman relationship is most often seen as one of competition and antagonism rather than interaction and support.

Recent antifeminist and nonfeminist discussions of the uses of new reproductive technology have not done much to alter this myopic outlook. Once again, only a limited number of topics are considered to be worthy of discussion. In analyses of the implications of in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood, for example, we mainly find a concern for questions about so-called sexual ethics¹⁴ (for example, is a surrogate mother committing adultery?¹⁵), about the security and sustenance of what is ambiguously referred to as “the family” (as if there were just one form of the family),¹⁶ and about which woman is to be considered the “real mother” of the offspring produced through surrogacy.

Thus, in general an antifeminist or nonfeminist approach tends to avoid, overlook, or minimize what feminists would ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Sex Preselection
• 3 The Embryo/Fetus
• 4 Abortion
• 5 Childbirth
• 6 Surrogate Motherhood
• 7 Infertility, Children, and Artificial Reproduction
• 8 Reproductive Rights and Access to the Means of Reproduction
• 9 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index