Posted on 05/07/2003 12:31:05 AM PDT by nickcarraway
THE natural course of the human mind may indeed range from credulity to scepticism, as Thomas Jefferson wryly observed, but these days the natural course of the average newspaper reader’s mind veers from boggle-eyed amazement to slack-jawed horror.
Belief didn’t have to be suspended so much as expelled indefinitely yesterday. No sooner had we swallowed the story: "Scotland’s cricketers enjoy winning debut" than we were reading about the current vogue for Blue Nun wine and marvelling over the ingenuity of the masked Japanese politician who is moonlighting as a wrestling porn star.
After that, the antics of William Wotherspoon, a former soldier with the Parachute Regiment, seemed almost pedestrian. Mr Wotherspoon, a father of four, underwent a full sex-change operation at the Nuffield Hospital in Sussex and changed his name to Lisa-Anne Docherty. So far, so conventional; just an everyday story of gender realignment in Lanarkshire.
Before the operation, however, he met Lisa-Marie Barraclough and decided to have another baby. When natural conception failed, Wotherspoon bought a plastic syringe, a fridge with an accurate temperature control and 18 little plastic phials in which to store his sperm samples. He then went ahead with the sex-change operation. After five attempts to impregnate herself with the contents of the fridge, Barraclough became pregnant and give birth to a daughter in Wishaw General Hospital seven weeks ago.
The baby, it has been decided, is to call Barraclough "mummy" and Wotherspoon "maddy", an amalgam of mummy and daddy. Confused? That is nothing to what the child is likely to feel when she poses the inevitable question: "Where do babies come from, maddy?"
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is expected to investigate the case, which throws up more ethical dilemmas than a delegation of bishops at an Anne Summers party. It is illegal to freeze sperm or human eggs without a licence. There is, however, no law against storing your genetic material alongside the Lurpak and the leftover chicken in the fridge.
There may, of course, be more to this story than meets the eye. Wotherspoon was spared a jail sentence to allow his sex-change operation to go ahead, and some medical experts have doubted his paternity. Even assuming it is true, and Wotherspoon says he is prepared to undergo a DNA test to prove it, it sounds like an outlandish story.
But this is not a unique case. One London fertility clinic is already routinely inviting transsexuals to store their sperm prior to surgery, a service 90 per cent of men undergoing the operation say they would use. Professor Gedis Grudzinskas, of the London Bridge Clinic, believes transsexuals should be given the opportunity to father children once they become women as a matter of course.
Professor Paul De Sutter, who runs the infertility clinic at Ghent University Hospital, Belgium, goes further: "It may even be our duty as healthcare professionals to help transsexual people fulfil their wish for children." If this means finding a surrogate mother to carry the baby, he says, so be it. "These men want to preserve their ability to procreate," he declares.
Assisted conception is rapidly becoming the modern equivalent of the freak show, with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Auth-ority expected to adjudicate in cases which make the family life of Oedipus look benign.
Last year, Glasgow Sheriff Court had to rule on a disturbing paternity battle involving two lesbians and a homosexual donor father. Man Not Included, the first internet sperm donor service for lesbians and single women, will deliver sperm to your door for £680. Demand is high; over 4,000 women have registered with the site.
In the quest for personal fulfilment, genetic material is traded over the internet, mixed in surgical dishes and available to anyone irrespective of age, sex or motive as long as they can pay. It is left to the courts to sort out the mess.
At the heart of the matter is the selfish determination of a generation to pursue any lifestyle it chooses irrespective of the cost to society as a whole. If you worship at the cult of the individual, however, the gods demand sacrifice and that sacrifice is increasingly being paid by children.
They are the main losers in the social and sexual revolution which has taken place in Britain since the war. Prior to the Fifties, when the concept of children’s rights was unknown, most children could expect to be raised by both biological parents, an upbringing which countless studies have shown gives them the best chances in life. Now, when, children’s rights are invoked against everything from the wearing of school uniform to the sitting of exams, children are increasingly at the mercy of a society intent on promoting adults’ interests at their expense. We are championing the wrong rights.
Children can be separated from a biological parent, split up from their siblings, removed from their school, denied access to grandparents, made to accept a complete stranger as a surrogate parent and moved to another part of the country without consultation or warning.
We choose to ignore these uncomfortable facts because we know life isn’t perfect, because we have made these agonising decisions ourselves or have sympathised with friends who have done so. We turn away quickly from the uncomfortable news that there has been a 50 per cent rise in referrals to the children’s panel of children suffering from parental neglect.
Now science has reduced babies to the status of commodities. Your partner may be gay, dead or non-existent, but that will not preclude your right to procreate.
There is no doubt that in-vitro fertilisation has been a huge force for good and has brought happiness to thousands. One in every 80 children born in Britain is believed to be an IVF baby. Most are raised in loving homes by parents who have their best interests at heart.
It is equally true that the intentions which have brought us to the point where children conceived in the laboratory can be raised by people who may not be their legal guardian, may not be a blood relative and may not have their welfare at heart, are noble. Equality and non-discrimination, the twin creeds of modern society, must be obeyed.
Heterosexual or homosexual, married or single, over 50 or under 50, in a stable relationship or a casual one, everybody has the right to parenthood. But of course there is discrimination. Those discriminated against are the children who have no guarantee of a stable childhood or of life with a biological parent and who end up reliant on the courts to sort out their basic identity.
The fact that some children conceived naturally face similar problems does not make this laissez-faire attitude a desirable model. It is 13 years since the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was passed and since then the technology has advanced so rapidly that the law has not been able to keep up, as one disturbing court case after another has demonstrated.
When we’ve reached a point where infertility professors claim to have a duty to help transsexual men become both mother and father to a child, it is clearly time to toughen the guidelines. The prospect of a regiment of sex-changed maddies is stretching our credulity a bit too far.
I swear, I don't understand this species at all...
Then they shouldn't cut their dicks off, sheesh...
Now science has reduced babies to the status of commodities. Your partner may be gay, dead or non-existent, but that will not preclude your right to procreate.
Just one more subject where, as usual, The Roman Catholic Church has been 100% correct from day one:
2375 Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed "at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God."166
2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other."167
2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that "entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children."168 "Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses' union . . . . Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person."169
Oops! This journalist may soon be out of a job once the PC crowd gets wind of this article. The Scotsman? What type of circulation do they .... er .... did they have prior to this?
Of course, the journalist is absolutely correct. We're going to hell in a handcart. The children are indeed the victims of a selfish, greedy, self-centered society.
I've been saying for years that it's plain old-fashioned human sacrifice. There's nothing new under the sun. The fate of the Carthaginians and the Mayans is particularly instructive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.