I
have followed with keen interest the advent, some weeks
ago, of surrogacy in Nigeria performed at a popular
clinic in Lagos by one Dr. Richardson Ajayi et al. Let
me frankly state that, because something is technically
feasible does not mean it is morally admissible. Even
the obnoxious practice of assisted conception that is
the trade of this Clinic is an area that eventually
civilisation would be at a loss to have ventured into. A
lot of human beings as zygotes, embryos and foetuses are
being killed after being created rather than being
allowed to develop into adults! This, on the part of IVF
supporters, had made necessary the redefinition of when
is the spark of life. To affirm that a new human life
starts at fertilization is to restate that IVF, foetal
reduction, cyropreservation, contraceptive or surgical
abortion, embryo experimenta-tion, embryo farming are
crimes against humanity and the dignity of the human
being. We need not kill some babies in order to provide
babies for others, nor do we need to treat another's
ailment by rearing other human embryos for the sole
purpose of using them as spare parts. To do otherwise is
basically a trajectory of reverse civilization under the
pretext of medical progress and solving infertility
problems. It is criminal.
Morbidity and
mortality
In an advertorial
splashed on a newspaper, this same clinic was being
congratulated on the birth of its 200th baby through in
vitro fertilization. It should be noted that in
producing this 200th baby, at least 6000 other babies
have been or would still be destroyed because of the
very procedures of IVF and the later destruction of the
unused fertilized eggs! Even if it is homologous IVF,
that is, a case where the donors are a married couple,
the fact that many embryos were fertilized from several
ova in the test tube and transferred to the woman's
womb, afterwards reduced (read kill) to one because of
the women's morbidity and mortality rate that is high as
a result of multiple pregnancies from this obnoxious
conception therapy. In US, as much as six embryos are
transferred back to the womb for implantation then
reduced to one or two depending on the consensus reached
between the medical counsel and the patients’ desire.
I do not even want to
look at the ethics surrounding heterologous IVF in which
it is another man's sperm or another woman's oocytes
that will be used to get a baby for an infertile couple
because it is merely a distraction from the fundamental
ethical basis of IVF itself. Although the Clinic,
through its propaganda industry is switching public
attention to mere functional ethics of its practice,
calling for national regulations to manage public views
on infertility management (the odious political
correctness), to standardise procedures according to
best practices (their own), to prevent the practice from
being all cats, all dogs affair (market monopoly), to
prevent potential abuses and maintain credibility of
practitioners; but the question of the fundamental
ethics whether or not IVF or surrogacy is right, is left
undiscussed.
That human life or
pregnancy starts at fertilization and not at
implantation is not open to disputation nor ethical
correctness, that is the belief that nothing is right
should there be other perspectives and since people are
entitled to their opinions as a matter of human rights,
nothing is correct only our individual views on the
matter counts. This is condemnable. When the blastocyst
comprising trophoectoderm cells, which goes to form the
placenta, and the inner cell mass that continues to
develop into other human features, hatches and is
embedded on the wall of the uterus, it is called
implantation. Pre-embryo, zygote, blastocyst, morula,
foetus are just biological vocabularies referring to the
successive stages of human development in the womb. They
are not appellations of potential human beings instead
they are appellations of human beings with potentials.
Therefore they deserve the respect and treatment
corresponding to any other person. They must not be
subjected to any form of embryo transfer (ET), storing,
experimentation or stem cell research or cloning.
Furthermore, a process
that a woman, who is genetically a stranger to the
embryo to carry the pregnancy with the pledge to
surrender the baby once it is born to the party or
commission who made agreement for the pregnancy is
morally repugnant.
Genetic
motherhood
Genetic motherhood,
gestational motherhood, and metaphysical motherhood are
all elemental constituents in a mother. Research has
revealed that intimacy (or lack of it) between the
mother and child develops right from pregnancy when the
child learns to distinguish between its mother's voice
and strangers' voices, listens to the pulses of its
mother's heart and being conditioned by the rhythms of
her life style. In addition, the stem cells of babies
are said to have been found in their mothers even after
30 years of birth! These are why a woman's heart skips a
beat when danger befalls her kid even in a distant land.
Surrogacy has a commitment to shatter these bonds. As Dr
Ajayi himself acknowledges if you allow the surrogate
mother to start breast feeding the child, strong links
would be developed and that may defeat the whole essence
(o-oh!) So the surrogated baby will have to be handed
immediately to the commissioning couple and be
bottle-fed.
Womanhood has been
degraded so often with gender discrimination, wife
battery, sexual harassment, rape, pornography,
prostitution, contraceptives with their callous side
effects, genital mutilation, etc. Surrogacy is another
attempt in this direction. The womb of a woman, as
asserted Morenike Taire, Vanguard columnist, is
not like a cupboard or a refrigerator where you keep
something and come back to find it as you left it. The
unusually high rate of infertility among women nowadays
is an outcome of the rigorous sex they have been exposed
to from their teenage years, contraceptive consumption
with its unsung fallouts, and multiple abortions.
allowed to foreclose
other options open to combat infertility that would not
subject the human origin to subject of vulgar
determinism. Human life is still sacred. The basis of
IVF, surrogate motherhood and sundry practices is
allergic to morality. Further developments would only
inspire other immoralities. We have to make them a tough
procedure to follow. We need to construct an order
before crises impose one as a necessity. By then many
waters of life may have passed irrevocably under the
bridge.
