Yesterday, I had a conversation with my 16 year old daughter about college. I told her in no uncertain terms, that she should not apply for colleges in states with abortion bans and that the minute she thinks about sex with a boy, we should get her on birth control. She agreed, without any argument. My daughter should not have to limit herself because of fear, or because of laws that might harm or kill her, yet here we are.
The latest story out of Georgia, about Adriana Smith, who has been brain dead and kept on life support to be used as an incubator for a baby that may not be compatible with life, since the pregnancy was 9 weeks along, has shaken American women, myself and my daughter included, to the core. Ms. Smith had provided no consent for her body to be kept alive like this. Her family, her legal decision makers, do not consent to having her body used like this. Nor do they consent to burying a baby that didn’t need to suffer or consent to the astronomical medical bills. Informed consent and bodily autonomy are central to medical ethics. What the state of Georgia is doing is not only unethical, it is amoral, and cruel.
Ms. Smith’s story is straight out of Brave New World‘s hatchery, and it’s author, Aldous Huxley, was a lifelong eugenicist. Viewing or using women as “breeders” is pronatalism. Pronatalism, or natalism, is the belief that making more babies, typically of a specific kind, to increase the population is not only good, but a necessity. The online dictionaries and encyclopedias vary in their definitions. Some of them include anti-immigrant references, others touch on legal, or political references. Some places attempt to spin the definition into something positive including supports for families, daycare, financial incentives, etc. We can have additional social supports without pronatalism or pronatalist laws or policies.
What these definitions lack is historical context. That context includes the eugenics inherent in the term itself. The most directly relevant historical period is the interwar period in both Europe and the US. Which, as it happens, is when Brave New World was published. Before we get to that, we need to roll the clock back a bit further. The roots of eugenics, or proto-eugenics, began during the Enlightenment period, the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when there was little differentiation between science and philosophy. I’ll leave this as a teaser for the next post. Suffice it to say, what is happening now, to Adriana Smith, is part of a long thread anchored in history, but which runs through our modern laws, policies, and beliefs about women, pregnancy, and ethics.
