April 17, 2002
POSTREL'S PREPOSTEROUS POSTULATES :
TEST TUBE CONSTITUENTS (Virginia Postrel, Dynamist.com)It is possible to be simple, accurate, and emotionally persuasive at the same time. Coming up with the right phrasing may take more work, but neither freedom nor science is served by deliberate falsehood. That said, there's an obvious connection between yesterday's apocalyptic fears of test tube babies and today's apocalyptic fears of human cloning (whether for cell research or childbirth). [...]But Chris Huttman makes a stunningly obvious point and important that I knew intellectually but had never processed: The test tube babies who were supposed to deliver us to Brave New World are old enough to be voters, and there are going to be more of them every day. If they pay any attention to today's rhetoric, these former test tube babies will start to notice that the Bush administration and its anti-cloning allies on the right and left don't really approve of their existence. (People like Leon Kass grudgingly say they've changed their minds and now accept in vitro fertilization, mostly because it's a done deal.) There is nothing like an attack on one's identity to mobilize a constituency, even against its economc interest. And there's no greater attack on identity than saying the world would be better if this group of voters had never been conceived.
We have lots of test tube babies. But we don't have Brave New World. We don't have Brave New World because we have no one in charge of allocating genetic rights, no central controller telling us who can have children and how. Instead, we have perfectly normal people who grew up within the robust, adaptable institution of the family—an institution now under attack, oddly enough, from conservatives who fear "designer babies" more than they fear government control over family life.
It would be futile and more than a little boring to try to only read columnists with whom you agree all the time. So it seems to me that the most you can ask is that a pundit be trenchant, observant, perceptive, interesting to read, and, hopefully, every once in awhile, profound. Unfortunately, this post by Ms Postrel fails on several counts.
First, despite her obtuseness, the Brave New World of gentic engineering is here. Since we've gained greater control over our reproductive processes, the effects on demographics and politics have been truly startling, and they've started to impact our economics in serious ways. Abortion and birth control have led to declining birth rates among the wealthiest, healthiest, and best-educated humans. We need not enter here into a discussion of the genetic and evolutionary impact this might have, instead just consider the fact that the children of such people tend to be wealthier, healthier, and better educated too. A demographic trend that sees the most advantaged shrinking in number seems somewhat troubling.
Further, we know of no nation in world history that has been able to grow its economy over the long term while shrinking its working age population. To see the catastrophic effects of such declining birthrates, we need look no farther than Japan. A former economic power, now in a state of perhaps permanent decline.
Even more disturbing, because its implications are more nefarious and its effects possibly quite dangerous, this reproductive control is being used to weed out female babies. One would think that this sex selection aspect of abortion would bother more people, but it is little discussed because it mitigates against the desire of feminists (and libertarians) to have abortion available on demand. Meanwhile, women face a future in which they will be in the minority of the voting age population for the first time (even when they were an "oppressed minority" they were a numerical majority) and most industrialized nations face the prospect of a future shortage of women, that is, not enough females to go around for the men of mating age.
That these are not the precise effects predicted by Aldous Huxley matters little. These trends represent the results of artificial breeding practices, of a Brave New World of using science to genetically engineer the population.
When it comes to analyzing the politics of test tube babies though she really falls apart. She apparently believes that children who are created for reproductive purposes, in much the same manner as others are created for purposes of organ farming, will identify with the party of the farmers. She posits that they will share common political views with people who believe that had one neurological switch been thrown while they were being born (to prevent them from becoming conscious), their organs would have been fair game for the rest of us, and that they will join in the struggle against the party that thinks that all of the test tube babies (regardless of the purpose for which they are created) have a divine spark, human dignity, and inalienable rights. This seems patently absurd. It's akin to believing that the freed slaves would naturally collaborate with the Southern slaveholders rather than with the abolitionists.