Margaret Atwood wrote a gripping novel back in 1985 called The Handmaid’s Tale.
The main character, Offred, is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the United States of America.
Handmaids are walking wombs, child bearers for elite couples. Offred services the Commander and his wife Serena Joy, who is a former gospel singer and advocate for “traditional values.”
Every month in her fertile period, Offred is required to have impersonal, wordless sex with the Commander while Serena sits by, holding her hands. The Republic of Gilead is what America has become after the takeover of our nation by the theocrats. Offred, as a former adulteress and the daughter of a feminist, is consigned to the role of Handmaid in this ugly new world.
The Handmaid’s tale was an obvious allegorical critique of the rising influence of the newly-politicized Christian conservatives of that era. It was aimed, in particular, at the pro life/pro family movement. It was also a powerful work of fiction by a talented writer.
Flash forward 30 years, and it appears that the Handmaid’s tale was not so much allegory as it was prophecy, once removed. Women today are being reduced to their bodily functions and used as breeders and most of our society seems to be in support of it. Babies are created to be sold and then they actually are marketed and sold, on-line and through international outlets.
America, which has been termed the “Wild West” of commercialized reproduction, has become a magnet for baby-buyers the world over.
In addition, women are kept in what amounts to baby farms in certain third world countries and used for breeders. The babies are then sold overseas in what, in India alone, is a $2.3 billion dollar industry.
That’s the prophecy part of The Handmaid’s Tale. Women have indeed been reduced to breeders, their human rights held forfeit to rapacious industrialized medicine that operates without conscience. In addition, babies, as well as women, are reduced to chattel in this market as they are created and then sold and bought like any other manufactured product.
The once-removed part of The Handmaid Tale’s prophetic prescience lies in who is committing and promoting this crime against humanity. It is not, as Margaret Atwood wrote, the evil “traditional values” people and Gospel singers who are designing babies for sale by harvesting women’s ovaries, and then using women as wombs to carry these babies which are then sold for astronomical amounts on the open market.
The culprits here are corporatist medicine, wealthy elites and homosexuals who are willing to destroy the basic human rights of women and children to feed the fantasy that they are not what they happen, in fact, to be. Homosexual couples are two men or two women, or for that matter, several men or several women, whose sexual activity takes place between other people of their own sex. Their sexual activity can not create life.
Anyone who condemns this wholesale degradation of half the human race alongside the bartering and selling of human beings, is immediately labeled a religious fanatic, a homophobe, uncaring, cruel and indifferent to the longing for a family that same sex couples experience. There is a phrase to describe this intellectually dishonest bullying: The phrase is emotional blackmail.
Let’s take the debate about those accusations — at least as far as I’m concerned — off the table right now.
If standing for the human rights of women and children,
if opposing the buying and selling of people,
if the speaking against the creation of human beings for commerce,
if opposing the crass reduction of half the human race to their body parts in a manner that not only degrades them as human beings but endangers their health and lives,
means that I’m a homophobe or a religious fanatic, then so be it. If that’s what religious fanaticism and homophobia stands for, every person with a conscience should be a homophobe and a religious fanatic.
Misogyny is so rife in our society that people who dare to speak out against this violation of the human rights of women and children are subjected to death threats, as well as labeled bigots.
Meanwhile, the media churns out puffy little pieces extolling the virtues of buying and selling women and babies. Consider, as a for-instance, a recent article from The Daily Mail. This article informs us that “For two first-time fathers, the fact that their son, Milo, was born during World Pride was just the icing on the cake.”
The article goes on to tell us that the woman who birthed this baby is “an unnamed gestational carrier.” It concludes with the soppy statement that “love has no color nor gender nor sexual preference. Love is unconditional.”
Uh-huh. According to one article I read, it costs around $160,000 to purchase a baby created by using women as breeders. The article is a couple of years old, so it’s probably higher now. I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade, but that is soooo conditional. It also has nothing to do with love. It is about exploitation and reducing human beings to chattel. It is The Handmaid’s Tale, come to life.
The Handmaid’s Tale as allegory.
The Handmaid’s Tale in real life.
America has become the go-to place for people wanting to buy designer babies. As a recent New York Times article put it, “the market for children crosses national borders.”
In the Wild West of using reproductive technologies to create, sell and buy people, it appears that the market is totally laissez faire. In this case, it’s the seller who should beware.
Consider, for instance, the case of The View co-host Sheri Shepherd. According to a recent LifeNews article, Ms Shepherd and her soon-to-be-former husband joined the growing group of high-profile celebrities who have purchased their babies rather than give birth to them themselves. Now that her marriage is on the fritz, Ms Shepherd has decided that she wants nothing to do with the baby whose creation she purchased.
I would assume that Ms Shepherd and her husband paid in advance, so the important considerations are covered.
Right?
I mean, it’s not like we’re creating, selling and buying people.
I can attest from personal experience as a legislator that the practice of commercialized harvesting of young women’s bodies for eggs is protected with the full force of the Oklahoma State Medical Association, as well as the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. I can also attest that some pro life groups avoid the issue for fear of putting Republican legislators on the hot seat by forcing them to chose between their pro life commitments and these special interest groups.
The American Civil Liberties Union has also come out in support of commercial egg harvesting, on the laughable grounds that laws that forbid doctors to use large payments as inducements to young girls to undergo egg harvesting are somehow a violation of “women’s rights.” I imagine the ACLU would carry a lot of clout in some states, but in Oklahoma, their opposition was of no importance to the outcome of the legislation.
The practice of paying young women large sums of money to have their ovaries harvested,
the practice of paying women large sums of money to carry babies and then forfeit them,
the practice of creating designer babies for the purpose of selling them
should be illegal.
Any doctor who does this should lose their license to practice medicine and be subject to civil lawsuits without limit. Any medical facility that allows this on its premises should lose its license to continue as a licensed medical facility and also be subject to lawsuits without limit.
If people want to do this without pay, that should be treated differently. I do not approve of it, but it is not the obvious and egregious violation of the human rights of women and children that commercialized, industrialized egg harvesting and surrogacy are. It should be heavily regulated with stiff safeguards for the rights of women and the babies.
Among other things, women should have the right to change their minds about giving the baby away. Also, anyone who contracts for a baby — and remember, I am talking about private, unpaid arrangements, not wholesale industrialized baby manufacturing and selling — should be subject to the same requirements as adoption, including home inspections, parental fitness and a waiting period with site visits before the adoption is finalized. The process should be an adoption. Not buying a child.
Children should have the right to know who their biological parents are and a cause of action against the doctors, medical facilities and others involved in their creation.
The health and welfare of women who are involved in being surrogates or donating eggs, and also the health and welfare of the babies, should be the first consideration under the law. The law should require under severe penalty that the doctor consider the woman’s health first and not just use them to make as many eggs as possible.
I want to emphasize again that I am only talking about entirely voluntary, non-paid situations in which women are not compensated for undergoing egg harvesting and or surrogacy and the babies are not sold.
Commercial selling and buying of women’s bodies to harvest for eggs or for use as surrogates should be illegal. Creating babies to sell or buy should also be illegal.
Soppy claims about how happy it makes people to be able to buy and sell other human beings and violate their inherent human rights have no place in this discussion.
The doctors and medical facilities should receive no monies except for customary and normal remuneration for these activities as a medical procedure. There should never be advertising for the creation, buying and selling of human beings, or the exploitation of a whole class of human beings.
People who contract for the creation of a child should be obligated to provide life-long care for that child and for any injury resulting to the woman or women who provide eggs or wombs as a result of their donor or surrogacy status. By life long, I mean if the woman is infertile (a common complication of egg harvesting) or gets cancer as a result of the massive doses of hormones, even if it’s 20 years later, they have to pay.
The obligation to provide for the care of the child should be life-long, regardless of the any birth defects or other problems. It should include an irrevocable share in the contractee’s estate.
I want to emphasize that these ideas for regulation only apply to voluntary, non-paid situations. The buying and selling of human beings, as well as the use of women as farm animals and breeders for money should be absolutely and completely illegal. It is anathema that our society has fallen so low that we have to debate this.
We need to shut down the commercial baby creating/selling/buying industry that exploits and dehumanizes women and reduces babies to chattel.
The reason this has not happened is due to the political clout of organizations, such as various Chambers of Commerce who see this “industry” as a money maker and to the machinations of the Medical Associations who are entrusted with the power to “regulate” the members of their profession. The social bullying by gay rights organizations and faux feminists who work against women also helps to keep this practice going.
I believe that Medical Associations’ support of what is a massive human rights violation of half the human race, as well as the reduction of human beings to the level of chattel, makes a joke of the claim that they “regulate” the medical profession. If the medical associations will not regulate their own, and if they continue to use their political clout to support this practice, I, for one, think we should take a long hard look at eliminating their power to regulate the medical profession.
I would encourage business owners and physicians who are members of these organizations to get involved. Are your dues being used to support the Wild West of industrial reproductive technology? Are you writing checks that hire lobbyists who work in your name to continue this attack on the human rights of women and babies?
Demand that your professional organizations follow legislative goals that support human dignity, rather than exploit and degrade whole classes of people.
Margaret Atwood wrote a gripping allegorical novel describing the use of women as breeders in a world that was controlled by what she evidently saw as the great satan of her time: Supporters of “traditional values.”
In our time the real Handmaid’s Tale is being promoted by the media and lived out by elites who don’t want to go through having children the old way and homosexuals who want to pretend that their unions are not sterile. The promotion of this clear-cut violation of the human rights of women and babies by commercialized medicine on a mass and international scale is being carried out by a media that focuses on insipid nonsense about “love” and “the right to a child” when, in fact, neither of these things exist in this situation.
It is not love to exploit other human beings for your own selfish ends. A more accurate word for that might be narcissism, with perhaps a dose of sociopathy dropped on top of it. And, just for the record, children are people. No one has a “right” to a child.
I read articles talking about the “ethical questions” raised by the commercial exploitation of women’s bodies and the commercial creation of human beings to sell over the internet, and I wonder seriously if the people writing this have any brains at all.
“Ethical questions?”
Then I remember. These discussions are not about “ethical questions.” These articles are on the same level as people in the 1930s, debating Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. They are a parsing and an obfuscation designed to confuse and lead people to accept the unacceptable.
Margaret Atwood was a prophet and didn’t know it with her allegory of the reduction of women to breeders and children to chattel. She only got it wrong in her idea as to who would be doing it. People with traditional values are the only ones willing to suffer the abuse necessary to take a stand against this exploitation of women and babies.
The baby creating/selling international market of commercialized, bastardized medicine is a horror show of human rights violations. The irony (but not the surprise) is that the people who like to talk about “rights” the most are the ones who are committing this evil.
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