by Dorothy Roberts
Liberating Technology or Patriarchal Tool
New means of procreating are often heralded by legal scholars and social commentators as inherently progressive and liberating. In this view, reproduction-assisting technologies expand the procreative options open to individuals and therefore enhance human freedom. These innovations give new hope to infertile couples previously resigned to the painful fate of childlessness. In addition, the new reproduction creates novel family arrangements that break the mold of the traditional nuclear family. A child may now have five parents: a genetic mother and father who contribute egg and sperm, a gestational mother who carries the implanted embryo, and a contracting mother and father who intend to raise the child. One of the new reproduction's most influential proponents, John Roberston, opens his book Children of Choice by proclaiming that these "powerful new technologies" free us from the ancient subjugation to " the luck of the natural lottery" and "are challenging basic notions about procreation, parenthood, family and children."
New reproductive technologies promise to fulfill couples' yearning to have genetically related children. They also make it possible to use new genetic knowledge to create children with superior traits. Pregnant women may choose to abort a fetus detemined, through anmiocentesis, ultrasonography,or other diagnostic techniques, to have genetic defect. Sperm and egg donation allows parents to select gametes from donors who possess favored qualities. With IVF (fertilization of the egg in a petri dish followed by transfer to the uterus), parents can screen test-tube embryos for defects before implantation- "nipping it in the embryo," as a newspaper headline proclaimed. In the future, doctors will be able to tinker with genes contained in the embryo to enhance their encoded messages or remedy genetic disorders. .................
How Race Shapes the New Reproduction
Of the most striking features of the new reproduction is that it is used almost exclusively by white people. Of course, the busiest fertility clinics can point to some Black middle-class patients; but they stand out as rare exceptions. Only about one-third of all couples experiencing infertility seek medical treatment at all; and only 10 to 15 percent of infertile couples seeking treatment use advanced techniques like IVF. Blacks make up a disproportionate number of infertility services such as fertility drugs, artificial insemination, tubal surgery, or IVF, compared with 27.2 percent of white women.
As my story that opened this chapter reflects, media images of the new reproduction mirror this racial disparity. Most of the news stories proclaiming the benefits of the technology involve infertile white couples. When the 1986 Baby M trial propelled the issue of surrogacy to national attention, major magazines and newspapers were plastered with photos of the parties (all white) battling for custody of Melissa.
Ten years later, in January 1996, The New York Times launched a prominent four-article series called "The Fertility Market." The front page displayed a photograph of the director of a fertility clinic surrounded by seven white children conceived there. The continuing page contained a picture of a set of beaming IVF triplets, also white.
The following June, Newsweek ran a cover story entitled "The biology of Beauty" reporting scientific confirmation of human beings' inherent obsession with beauty. The article featured a striking fulll page color spread of a woman with blond hair and blue eyes. The caption asked rhetorically: "Reproductive fitness: would you want your children to carry this person's genes?" The answer, presumably, was supposed to be a resounding, universal "Yes!"
When we do read news accounts involving Black children created by these technologies, they are usually sensational stories intended to evoke revulsion precisely because of the children's race. Several years ago a white woman brought a highly publicized lawsuit against a fertility clinic she claimed had mistakenly inseminated her with a Black man's sperm, instead of her husband's, resulting in the birth of a Black child. The woman, who was the child's biological mother, demanded monetary damages for her injury, which she explained was due to the unbearable racial taunting her daughter suffered. Two reporters covering the story speculated that "if the suit goes to trial, a jury could be faced with the difficult task of deciding damages involved in raising an interracial child".
The stories exhibiting blond-haired blue-eyed babies born to white parents portray the positive potential of the new reproduction. The stories involving the mixed-race children reveal its potential horror.
This material has been adapted and excerpted from Killing the Black Body by Dorothy E. Roberts, Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law, 357 E. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611. For additional information and publications by this author visit http://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/fulltime/Roberts/Roberts.html
