PREGNANT MEN
Claire Foster © 2006
From
a talk given at the Dana Centre,
There have been no pregnant men yet, as far as we know. But it could be done in theory. The embryo would be created by in vitro fertilisation and then implanted in the man’s abdomen. It would attach to the nearest available tissue, probably his bowel. When the baby was ready to be born it would be delivered by a Caesarian section and part of his bowel would have to be cut out. He would take female hormones to assist the process as much as possible.
Discovering more and more about the world around us, and our own bodies and ways of interacting with the world around us, is what humans do. Repressing it is a waste of time. There’s a threefold approach you can take to working out whether something that can be done, should be done. This threefold approach, following Sophie Botros, looks at the goals of the proposed action, what specifically the action will require one to do, and the interests of those most affected by the action. These three approaches are called, respectively, goal-based, duty-based and right-based. Let’s apply them to our case study. Here is a man who is proposing to become pregnant. The goal-based approach will look at whether the consequences are desirable. In this case, the consequence (assuming the action is successful) will be to have a baby. Who could argue with the value of that? The duty-based approach looks at the content of the action itself. This is harder. We have here a highly sophisticated technological intervention to bring about something that would not happen naturally (whatever that means). But is it wrong? Will anyone be harmed by it? Are there any moral principles that would be violated were this action to take place? For example, how many embryos would be wasted in the attempt? What if the successful pregnancy was the 100th, the previous 99 having given rise to horribly disabled individuals? It took 247 failed pregnancies to achieve Dolly the cloned sheep. Would the desirability of having a baby override those duty-based concerns? The third approach, the right-based approach, considers what the rights are of the interested party. In this case, we ask whether the man has a right to have a baby. Rights language is, in my view, really quite problematical in this area. We are not talking about fundamental human rights such as the right to freedom, or not to be tortured. On the other hand, 50% of the population, ie women, mostly can and do have children. Why should the other 50% be denied that privilege, if we have the technology to make it possible? There are also the rights of the baby to be considered, and indeed the rights of any individuals disabled and dead in the attempt for the one healthy baby.
Let’s think about the environment for a moment. In
environmental ethics, the understanding has grown that the attitude that
accompanied the industrial revolution, and economic growth generally, is a
dangerous one for the health of the planet. Basically humanity thought
that by harnessing the forces of the universe for its comfort, wealth would be
created. Humanity was right, but the cost was very high. The
twentieth century saw unprecedented activity to reshape and reorder the natural
world for the benefit of humankind. For example, the hydrosphere was not
only polluted, but it was substantially replumbed by, eg, massive damming
projects. Western modes of agriculture, which worked perfectly well in
the clay soil of Northern Europe, were impressed upon the colonies and ruined
the pedosphere as hoofed animals kicked up the sandy topsoil of
Environmental ethics give a global perspective that changes one’s approach to medical ethics. You begin to feel appalled at spending outrageous sums of money on a project that no one absolutely needs, like children for the infertile, when more than half the world’s population isn’t receiving enough food, let alone the medicines to treat their curable illnesses. You feel that the lessons of environmental ethics about respecting the forces and patterns of nature should be applied to our own bodies, which are themselves part of the natural order and can’t be separated from their environment.
Natural law ethics has gained a bad name. This is because it has been used as a way of describing as immoral certain acts which someone or other deemed to be unnatural, such as homosexuality. It has also been used to suppress the urge to experiment and play with the universe, by saying things like: ‘if God had intended us to fly he would have given us wings’. But we don’t have to reduce consideration of the natural order to that kind of language. It makes perfect sense to learn about the way things seem to work and to use our ingenuity to adapt to that order for the sake of all, not just people but the whole planet. In other words, we should find ways of being happy that are in tune with the natural order rather than try to force it to obey our desires. In the world of the environment that kind of thinking has been shown to be arrogant beyond belief, and desperately harmful. The language of rights looks incredibly puny in the context of polluting the atmosphere, adding to the feverish heat of global warming, destroying the richness of the soil or robbing species of their existence that took billions of years to evolve. Our ingenuity can be used to turn all these trends round. In the context of medical developments a global perspective is needed: medicine for all should come before extra special so called enhancement and improvement on nature for the few; and any medical intervention should be considered not just for its usefulness to the patient but also for its effect on the environment. Hormones and antibiotics are a case in point.
The question, then, is not Why shouldn’t we do it? But Why should we do it when the world’s resources are limited and we’ve already got far more than our fair share of them?