Artificial Fertility

Unethical Medicine

Human women have birthed children for around 80 million years without medical assistance. The human race had grown to more than 1.8 billion by 1920, the dawn of modern medicine. Today billions are spent on hospital child birth, infant care, premature rescue, fertility treatment, implantation, and artificial insemination. The world population is 6.4 billion and estimated to double to 12.8 billion in about 40 years. Recently, deliberate high-count multiple births have made the news with as many as 8 births from implanted eggs from one birth event.

This idiocy must stop! We are wasting medical resources that ailing, sick and infirm people need. More than enough women are capable of having children without any hospital care or medical assistance. Not every female needs to give birth to a child, not every male needs to father a child. Those who cannot produce children naturally should move on to other meaningful contributions. There are currently millions, perhaps a billion surplus children worldwide, in need of adoption. If someone wishes to be responsible for a child’s growth and development into a constructive, productive, useful adult, then many potential human adults are available.

Many who can have natural children should not. Just because you can reproduce, doesn’t mean you should. Many couples capable of producing children are not fit to educate children, provide for them financially, or serve as good examples. There is plenty of willing biological baby factories and sperm donors; more unwitting participants are completely unnecessary.

Quality is another matter. Survival of the fittest and natural selection don’t necessarily eliminate undesirable characteristics quickly enough; often they successfully reproduce before fate eliminates one or both of their characteristics from the gene pool.

I’m not proposing a license to reproduce. I’m proposing that artificial fertility, medically assisted conception, fetal rescue (except to save the mother) be eliminated as medical procedures and prohibited from any kind of insurance coverage.

I’m also proposing that hospitalization for child birth be eliminated except to save the mothers life. For most of human existence women have given birth to healthy offspring without any assistance. For thousands of years women have given birth with a little assistance from an experienced mother, often her own, or mid-wives, paid and volunteer. It worked well. Today many still come into the world in this way.

Some would say extraordinary efforts should be made to save every fetus and every newborn. I say that’s not the natural way. A potential person and existing persons are not the same, and should not be treated the same medically. Not all conceptions should survive, not all born should survive. Some are ghastly genetic errors, some are horribly flawed, some, if they survive, will need extreme medical support for basic life-like functions.

Some say the world may miss out on some great contribution by the loss of one of these potential humans. I guess the argument is that we should save every flawed fetus or newborn, because one of them may become a brilliant, useful, loving contributor to all mankind.

I doubt it. Those things happen very rarely; Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Jesus Christ, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Benjamin Franklin, Ronald Reagan, Bill Gates etc. Most non-viable fetuses and newborns will never become an independent human life. And some of those who may survive are at least as likely to become terrible humans; Hitler, Charles Manson, Clyde Barrow, John Wayne Gacy Jr., Bernie Madoff, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi or some child molester, mass murdering terrorist, or other subhuman creature.

As sad as it maybe to lose a fetus, newborn, or a child, it is more terrible to waste medical resources on artificial fertility enhancements, when humans already proven viable, self sufficient and productive are awaiting medical resources to continue their productive, thoughtful, loving lives.

Stop the foolish waste of medical resources on fertility enhancements, hospitalization only to rescue fetuses, and extreme care for newborn survival. Sadly, some must be allowed to perish.

There are millions of recently born viable humans making their own way toward wondrous adult human beings, many with very little help from anyone.