Everything Conceivable: The Impact of Reproductive Technology on Society

Touchy subject here. Everything Concievable by Liza Mundy explores the technological lengths to which people will go to concieve a child, and the societal implications of these technologies. The book discusses increasing infertility rates and the reasons for them (career-oriented women, STD's, and non-committal men among other things) and the science of new conception technology, from your basic artificial insemination procedures to surrogacy, IVF, and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

Most of the book is put together using stories and interviews from real families Liza Mundy interviewed. She has chapters on sperm banks and egg donation, gay and lesbian familys, twin and triplet conception and birth, and the complex relationships resulting from people's attempts to achieve a biological child. She explores how these methods impact marriage and how difficult carrying and raising twins or higher order multiples can be, as well as the consequences of these procedures on women's health and possibly on the health of the resulting children.

And then there are the ethics of "selective reduction" and how the new reproductive technologies mesh (or don't) with feminism (and the book was definately written from a feminist perspective). Some of you may have already read the chapter on selective reduction, as it was making it's way around the pro-life blog world--that's the story where the mom sees her babies hearts beating and hands waving and then covers her face so she won't see when the doctor kills one of them as part of a selective reduction of triplets.

The book brought up many questions for me about the ethics of reproductive technology. The basics I'm firm on, and I disapprove of IVF. But I wasn't aware until reading the book just how much death is involved from conception on--death of embryos who are discarded, death of embryos who are implanted but don't "take", later miscarriages of one or all the babies, high death rates among high-order multiples, high rates of birth defects and health problems in high-order multiples, and occasionally even death of the mother or serious injury due to the number of babies implanted. That's all an extremely high amount of risk to take for the sake of getting a biological child.

Another thing I wondered is if these technologies are lulling women into a false sense of security--"I can freeze my eggs or get a donor and have a baby when it's convenient/when I want to/when I find a guy/when my career has peaked/when I'm 40". Then that got me started thinking about the reasons for infertility, because I know quite a few moms who've had babies after 40 without difficulty, but all of them had a bunch of children before they got that "old", which made me wonder if inhibiting fertility during our highly fertile years might be doing more damage than we think, especially if done with hormones.

Finally, the whole idea of "selection" either of the germ cells, or picking the "better" and "best" embroys, or killing one or a couple in the womb to reduce the pregnancy after IVF smacks to me of eugenics, and sometimes even of animal breeding. What are we coming to?

Anyway, interesting book and a very good read no matter where you stand on the issues addressed!