Take your "Godliness" and shove it 6 feet under with your dead babies

[trinityvixen]

Wow, two uses of that "I hate people" tag in one day!

Before I get into this rant which will pretty much cement my reputation for being an evil librul bebbie killah, a note: I totally support fertility treatments. I am not opposed to them at all. I think anyone who wants to have a kid, who can support one and love one but who has trouble conceiving one should be able to do a course of fertility treatments if that is their wish. (I would prefer more people adopt, but I would never say they had to.)

THAT SAID...

Via Dan Savage, I got to this story about a Mormon Couple who used artificial means to conceive...and then remembered that they're supposed to let God sort out those messy fertility decisions. You know, like how he doesn't make it possible for most women to be able to have six babies at once and have all of them survive? That's totally cool. But removing two or so of them prior to God making that decision so that four, rather than two could have made it? That's MURDER.

I love this one commenter on Savage's post:

"Nature (procreation, not your strong subject) is a miraculous process that we as humans are never going to fully understand we can just admire it and let the process invented by the one who created us take its course. It has worked for millennia, its why you're here, you just have refused to take part of it and that's why you cannot understand it. "

Yep, birthing has worked for many thousands of years. If you weren't a creationist cretin, you'd realize that actually birthing has worked for reproductive method for, oh, millions of years, a, and that actually its killed a shit-ton of mothers and fetuses over those millions, b. It's not a process we can't know unless we take your airy indifferent attitude toward it. It's funny, but if we actually try to understand it, we DO understand it! I mean, the doctor told this couple that if they had all six fetuses develop they'd pretty much all die or be horribly crippled for life. And what do you know? He was right! Isn't that funny how the guy who knows a lot about having babies and keeps studying the effects on people having babies of, well, having babies, he knows stuff? This is nuts!

I would feel bad for these people who watched four of these babies who were clearly not meant to be die, if they hadn't brought this upon themselves. Next time you promise to live by God's will, perhaps you should just hope and pray for that fertility, huh? Losing a few cells in week three is a hell of a lot less traumatic than watching 70% formed babies die from complications you could have avoided.

Comments

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

That is a really disturbing article. That is far crueler to everyone than selective reduction. And it's so convenient that they forgot to leave it in god's hands while getting the fertility treatment.

I have twin cousins who were conceived in this way--twins. The daughter was under 1 lb when she was born 10 weeks premature. She has asthma that requires her to travel with equipment everywhere she goes and will never be taller than 4' 6". I wouldn't wish her undone, but I do wish that doctors communicated very clearly about the extremely high risks that these pregnancies have.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

And it's so convenient that they forgot to leave it in god's hands while getting the fertility treatment.

This to me is the central issue here. The religious freaks (as opposed to the people who are rational who happen to have a religion) like to draw convenient lines in the sand about everything--it's only "God's will" when that coincides with what they want. It's selfish, disgustingly so when you consider the burden they place on medical professionals (who they harass to get pregnant and then ignore) and medical resources. Call me evil, I can take it, but I'd rather the precious (and expensive) medical resources used to keep these kids alive for as long as they have been be directed to those special needs cases that weren't foretold. I think when you play bloody havoc with biology and ignore doctors only to turn around and demand that those things now do as you say, I say you should fuck off and lie in that bed you made.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Stuff like this is why I have been avoiding the internet. I cannot take people's idiocy any more.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You should see the picture of this couple next to the tiny coffins holding their never-going-to-make-it babies. It's horrifying.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

That's what always gets me. If you truly believe that reproduction should be in god's hands, WTF is up with using man-made fertility treatments? Obbbbbbviously, if your sky-lord wanted you to make babies, you could do it without IVF.

[avram]

WTF is up with even having sex? If it's all in God's hands, then hey, he can get you knocked up regardless of whether you've knocked boots with someone.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

This is the problem with letting anyone--God, the government, other people--determine your rights to reproduction for you. Once you sign over your interest to someone else, you're no longer responsible for it. You don't get conditional womb surrender with God. He demands life, and apparently he's willing to kill women who would give it to him, but them's just the breaks.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Admittedly if there is a God, it's hard not to give him a say in the reproductive process. The problem is, in this Mormon vision of God, He is a bit of a douche.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

God gets his chance to control reproduction. He gave away the choice of having the final word on these things when he gave people free will. If it's our will to go investigate ways to control reproduction--all along the spectrum from contraception to assisted birth--then that's what the fuck we're gonna do. Hit us with lightening if you don't like it, God.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

See, it's only God's will that life be preserved. He doesn't actually make any relevant decisions about whether or not to create life in general. Except for that Genesis thing. Oh, and all those millions of pregnancies that don't happen, like the few dozens this couple didn't have before they decided to go the IVF route...

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

The most disturbing thing was that picture of the two of them next to that tiny coffin...(yes, I saw the Savage post too)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Their rank hypocrisy is outrageous, but you don't get the full ghoulish effect without that picture.

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

"you just have refused to take part of it and that's why you cannot understand it"

It's funny cuz Savage actually has a (biologically related) kid!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

This person is as ignorant as sin, and as such they can't imagine that someone who doesn't fit their specific definition of family could have one. By this understanding, people who adopt aren't really parents either. Thank their God that this is not legally binding idiocy.

[lizzatherussian.livejournal.com]

Savage has a biologically related kid? Didn't know that.

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

Just found out I was wrong. The kid's adopted. Sorry!

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

I just started Dan Savage's book The Kid on the train last night, and one of the first things that he talks about is the long discussion about fertility issues at the adoption agency. He disgresses and muses about it for a while, but is much less overly impacted than the straight couples there because, well, he's been functionally infertile since puberty. But it makes for an interesting musing about how much people tie their identity, their sense of self-worth, and their magical godly goodness into being able to have biological children. Which explains why they'll go to such lengths to do so.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

There's a very real loss that comes with a known miscarriage of any kind, whether it is natural or induced. It's just, as my mom's friend told her, a shit situation. End of story.

However, I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone weighs the loss of a few cells against watching tiny, unformed babies die in an incubator, and decides the former is more unbearable. It has almost nothing to do with that insanity of needing your own biological babies. You'd have those regardless of the decision to reduce with this group. It has everything to do with a blatant disregard for trauma--to the woman carrying the babies (multiple births are dangerous and to the babies that will never be.

The issue of biological identity is an issue that could be worked on with better acceptance of non-straight, non-nuclear families. More acknowledgment of atypical families could really stress the idea that family is where you find love and care, end of story. Once we get away from the idea that genetic love is destiny and anything else is a poor approximation, I would hope this nonsense would die off.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say it's all just about disregard for trauma. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the impact of future events. Emotions and whatnot. If you feel that a few cells is life, despite being only a few cells, then you are weighing the [real, tangible] death of a few cells versus the [future, imaginary] death of babies. You are completely correct that the rational objective view says that even in that case the first one is easier to deal with, but most people get bogged down in the now-feeling rather than the then-feeling.

[lithoglyphic.livejournal.com]

It's probably the fact that one negative outcome (induced miscarriage) requires an action, while the other is passive (eventual death of babies / risk to mother). They *feel* more responsibility for the action than the inaction. If they'd done a selective reduction, they'd probably feel more guilt having committed the horrible sin of murdering the unborn. If the babies die through their inaction, on the other hand, it's so easy for them to say "out of our hands - after all, they *could* have lived!"