Jimmy Fallon has a new daughter. For the second time, the host of the “Tonight Show” and his wife turned to artificial conception and a surrogate mother for a baby. I grieve for any couple having fertility problems, but this method of realizing their dream troubles me.
Any woman who’s ever been pregnant will tell you it’s an emotional roller coaster ride. Once you get on, you have little control over the experience. Hormones do their thing, and you just hang on tight. You quickly learn that an independent being is alive in you. You may be thrilled or horrified by this pregnancy, but it’s clear that someone else is in there, choosing his or her own time to sleep, exercise and arrive.
Having taken that ride, how do you give this baby to someone else? I honor every mother who lovingly decides that adoption gives her baby the best possible chance in life. I’m certain those mothers never forget that child. On the other hand, I’m not sure if agreeing to carry someone else’s child for nine months is incredibly kind or incredibly callous. At least, though, it’s a decision in favor of life.
I can also understand a panicky teenager thinking abortion is the only answer to her crisis. What I cannot understand is how a woman who has conceived, carried and delivered a child can end a subsequent pregnancy with abortion (or assist another woman to do so). How do you forget that feeling of independent life growing within you? How do you forget your fierce desire to nurture and protect that life? How do you decide that one pregnancy was about having a baby but another was about disposing of unwanted fetal tissue?
I don’t get our schizophrenic society. Humans have never had as complete an understanding of the physical aspects of reproduction as we do today. We can look at sonogram pictures and track a baby’s development from just a few weeks old to full term. We’ve even learned how to “make” a baby outside the womb. We’ve added new terms to our vocabulary like oocyte, spermatozoon, and in vitro fertilization.
Yet we’ve moved further and further away from understanding what mother-father-child is all about. We’ve completely separated the pleasures of sex from the possibility of conception. We’ve decided that the joy of parenthood doesn’t require a man and a woman in a lifelong committed relationship. Today four out of 10 babies in America are born to a single mother. Many families now include a sperm donor, frozen embryos or “my baby’s daddy.”
However, our hearts war with our minds over this modern view of reproduction. We don’t proudly announce that we’ve got an implanted zygote. Dad doesn’t lean over Mom’s tummy to talk to their embryo. We don’t celebrate the arrival of a fully formed fetus.
We have babies, and we instinctively love babies. Three million years of human evolution have programmed us to give special attention and care to tiny, weak new beings. We spend billions of dollars promoting and protecting the health of everyone’s babies. We extend our concern to pregnant mothers. We give them the last seat on the bus and first place on the lifeboat. We assure their job security and grant them special leave when their babies are born.
Then we turn right around and tell women that an unplanned pregnancy is a disaster. We say that the child whose conception has already begun to change their whole body isn’t really a baby. It’s fetal tissue that we’re entitled — almost required — to dispose of it quickly.
Honestly, I just don’t get it.
Kathleen welcomes comments. Send them to Kathleen Choi, 1706 Waianuenue Ave., Hilo 96720, or email: kathchoi@hawaii.rr.com.
