Every once in a while, I sit back and wonder if what I'm doing as a parent is really right. What kind of impressions am I making on my daughters? What good is coming of my parenting? Are my anxieties, fears and mistakes that are permanently blemishing their newly forming minds that will screw them up as adults? Things like that. There is so much information available at our fingertips, so much to teach and know when those questions come from their tiny mouths, that sometimes I wonder if being left in the dark is better for our family... and yet, this is how prejudices are formed, when one refuses to accept learning as a lifelong journey. And that is something I am very sure that I do not want my children to learn, especially if it's the last thing they DO learn.
I bring this up because parenting a family must be something like how a modern day clergy for any particular religion must feel. Here they have a congregation, whether it's just a tiny community of a few families and friends, or a stately church within their own land with millions of followers around the world, contemplating how to guide their faithful in the ways of those in the holy texts that began it all. In this modern age, I don't doubt that some of the moral decisions being made are not only challenging those beliefs, but also trying to make sense of when that information, that freedom of choice, that free will becomes more burden than benefit.
Take the matter of procreation. This day and age, nearly any couple could be given the gift of a child even if their bodies are not supplied to do so - whether it's hormones or sexual orientation, the boundaries that used to restrict childbearing to those blessed by evolution are being broken with amazing speed. While I do not want to comment on the moral, religious implications of IVF and surrogacy, you can't help but wonder if the religious authorities really, truly know what to do with this.
Now, coming from a Roman Catholic household, I know exactly what the Church has established with regards to procreation, and I can sum it up very succinctly for you: Anything that is not completely, 100% natural is not permitted. No hormones, no condoms, no surrogates. Excluding adoption, the marriage of a man and a woman and their fruits of their physical love is the only right way to procreate. It also seems to me that most Abrahamic religions (among them Christianity, Judaism and Islam) hold similar beliefs. So it is interesting to me that this couple, who were implanted with someone else's embryo during IVF, consulted a priest about what to do with the child and how to handle the situation with the other couple (the genetic parents). They say that it was not really a decision, that they knew that they must carry and give this child back to the genetic parents, but all the same consulted a religious authority about the decision.
To which I reply: How the heck do you answer a question like that? You've got to wonder if Abraham knew this kind of moral dilemma would plague future generations. Granted, in this day and age, you usually don't get the finger shaken at you - "This wouldn't have happened if you didn't use IVF in the first place!" - but you wonder if they think that before trying to advise them on what to do now.
Some days, I wonder if religious authorities simply are trying to keep up with these kinds of moral dilemmas, which are popping up right and left. Often I wonder how clergy are dealing with such things being shared, whether it's in the confessional or just among friendly chats, and whether they are actually providing more guidance than the heads of churches simply because they can't keep up. It's kind of like the process of how the U.S. government passes legislation: So bogged down by trying to do what is right, that by the time they get the legislation signed by the President, someone's already found the loophole. But when it comes to religious law, the stakes are much higher - not dealing with earthly judgments but those of whatever afterlife they believe in, trying to do right in this life in order to be rewarded in the next.
I really can't say if this couple was right or wrong in pursuing IVF, because it's a decision I've never had to entertain. Even though a third party helped them to pregnant bliss, would one believe that God still blessed that embryo with life? Even though we're told that unnatural ways of childbearing is not right, is not God still involved in the process? Doing right by the people who are the most defenseless - the poor, the unborn, the elderly, the sick, the unwanted, the wrongfully accused - still is the bottom line, no matter what kind of technology we can dream up. So I do believe that they made the correct decision in light of the clinic's mistake by carrying the child to term and agreeing to give the child back to the genetic parents.
Still, it's a cautionary tale. As we find more ways to use technology and medicine to resolve today's problems, the debate as to what is "right" and "wrong" becomes more arbitrary than based on rules. When you see someone die from Alzheimer's, lose a breast to cancer, or experience the indignity of muscular dystrophy, it's easy to understand what drives us. But we do have to be prepared for the debate of when such things go wrong, and especially when they involve an innocent, new, unblemished life.
No comments:
Post a Comment