7 - The new birth technologies and public moral argument

Summary

I have argued that modern Westerners prize the intersubjective meanings of sexual and parental relations, while their socioeconomic conditions play a shadow role. Social critics, Marxist and feminist, have attributed family and gender to economic origins; but such criticism generally has enhanced, rather than undermined, our perception that intentionality and choice should govern these institutions, shaping them toward greater personal equality and emotional reward. Reproduction, in turn, has become a personal option gauged to the relational needs of sexual partners. The bodily aspects of parenthood disappear to the moral backstage, while the affective and intentional ones part the curtains to a standing ovation.

This dynamic is being played out in full dress in the social and legal installation of reproductive technologies in Europe and North America, especially in the widespread acceptance of donor arrangements. The function of reproductive embodiment in establishing enduring human relationships is much reduced: conception, birth, and social parenthood may be undertaken without sex between the biological parents of a child; neither gamete donors nor recipients deem an adult's genetic tie to offspring to require social recognition; the connection among genetic, gestational, and social motherhood has been weakened; and neither a genetic co-parenting relation shared with one's mate and social co-parent, nor an affective relation to one's genetic co-parent, are any longer considered determinative for reproductive decisions.

These social realities and the ideology of choice and consent which supports them make a “statement” about the cultural primacy of the voluntary and intersubjective meanings of sex, marriage, and parenthood.