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Gynecology and textuality: The conception of a body of discourse
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Gynecology and textuality: The conception of a body of discourse
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INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type o f computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back o f the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Gynecology and Textuality: The Conception of a Body of Discourse by Clotilde Mary Diepenbrock A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English Literature) May 1995 Copyright 1995 Clotilde Mary Diepenbrock Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9705199 Copyright 1995 by Diepenbrock, Clotilde Mary All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9705199 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90007 This dissertation, written by CLOTILDE MARY DIPENBROCK under the direction of h.$T... Dissertation Committee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re quirements for the degree of D O C TO R OF PH ILO S O P H Y Dean of Graduate Studies D ate rSF.U.. 25, .. . 1 9 2 . 5 DISSERTATION COMMITTEE $£*"V-7 Chairperson Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Clotilde Mary Diepenbrock Dr. W. Ross Winterowd, Chair Abstract Gynecology and Textuality: The Conception of a Body of Discourse This discussion traces the "gynecological case history" from its genesis in nineteenth-century obstetrical texts to its adoption by the twentieth-century popular media. Kenneth Burke's pentad provides a useful heuristic for exploring relationships among the case history's dramatistic elements. Each change of scene creates corresponding changes in act, agent, agency, and purpose. The case history is a highly adaptable rhetorical tool which can be appropriated for a variety of purposes. "Gynecology Undercover(s)" investigates the case history in the nineteenth-century American obstetrical textbook. Cases served as linguistic stand-ins for the practical experience doctors were denied in their training. Modest nineteenth-century society found intimate contact between male practitioners and female patients morally offensive. Cases reduced this anxiety, providing a linguistically acceptable forum for the discussion of gynecological experiences. With the birth of Louise Joy Brown in 1978, the gynecological case history became widespread in American media. "Gynecology at the Check-out Stand" explores the case history in the women's magazine. Widespread use of the miracle metaphor promotes reproductive technology as a scientific manifestation of the hand of God. These gynecological stories mix elements of fairy tale, myth,'and miracle. This highly emotive combination Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. precludes critical debate, promoting unqualified acceptance of reproductive services. A contrast to the women's magazine's fantastic case history is the commentary journal's appropriation of the case as a springboard for debating diverse moral and ethical concerns. "Gynecology on the Coffee Table" examines how this critical commentary debunks the myths created in the women's magazine. The news media provide a rich source for the raw material out of which both the women's magazine myth and the commentary journal critique are formed. "Gynecology at the Breakfast Table" looks for these raw ingredients in the news media. Finally, three novels supply a highly stylized combination of fiction and commentary that serves as a coda to the discussion of the gynecological case history. "Gynecology in Dystopia" analyzes the portrayal of technological motherhood in Huxley's Brave New World. Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Bird's The Mommv Club. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my son, Donald Jerome, who, despite the fact that he was created the "old-fashioned” way, is truly a miracle baby. Don, your birth gave me the inspiration I needed to complete this project. The joy with which you regard life is a constant reminder of everything that is good about making babies. You made me a gynecological case history with a very happy ending. I will always love you with all of the passion that only a mother can know. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CONTENTS Dedication ii List of Figures iv 1. Gynecology in Context 1 2. Gynecology Undercover(s) 40 3. Gynecology at the Check-out Stand 85 4. Gynecology on the Coffee Table 141 5. Gynecology at the Breakfast Table 184 6. Gynecology in Dystopia 232 7. Gynecology in the Future 269 8. Works Cited 276 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1. Reproductive Technology Articles: All Categories 12 Fig. 2. Number of Articles by Periodical Category 13 Fig. 3. Percent of 621 Articles: Published 1977-1994 14 Fig. 4. Lifestyles Articles by Year 17 Fig. 5. Articles in Lifestyles Journals 18 Fig. 6. Articles in Lifestyles Journals 19 Fig. 7. News Articles by Year 21 Fig. 8. Articles in News Journals 22 Fig. 9. Science/Technology Articles by Year 23 Fig. 10. Commentary Articles by Year 24 Fig. 11. Articles in Commentary Journals 25 Fig. 12. Articles in Commentary Journals 26 Fig. 13. Academic Articles by Year 27 Fig. 14. Business Articles by Year 28 Fig. 15. Health Articles by Year 29 Fig. 16. Socio/Environmental Articles by Year 30 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 Chapter One Gynecology in Context Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative) separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order) and rotten with perfection. (Burke Language 16) Kenneth Burke's "Definition of Man" is based on the distinctly human ability to use a symbolic code to compose and transmit meaning.1 This ability has also facilitated the development of technology, a relationship Burke draws in the third clause of the definition: the symbolic instrument of language, together with the physical implements it allows us to conceptualize, distances human motivation from the basic needs of food, shelter, and sex. The refined technologies of the twentieth century depend upon the use of the symbolic code not only for their existence, but also for their dissemination. Of the many areas in which one could explore this relationship between the ability to symbolize and our twentieth-century technologies, I wish to look at a sub-genre that has become extremely popular and influential in the latter half of the century: the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gynecological case history. This type of case history plays an important role in advancing the technologies that have been created to assist scientific reproduction and genetic manipulation. The case histories appear in many of our popular media. In the lifestyles publication in particular, where they reach the widest audience, they are easily adapted to serve as highly persuasive tools for the practices they announce and promote.2 Many exposes of reproductive technology have been written by feminist critics. Gena Corea, Renate Duelli Klein, Helen B. Holmes, Betty B. Hoskins, Christine Overall, and Robyn Rowland are only a few of the many prolific writers who have explored this topic. They have backgrounds in psychology, sociology, medicine, biology, philosophy, women's studies, political science, journalism, literature, and the law. From this multiplicity of perspectives, they have done an excellent job of exploring the ethical, legal, social, physical, and psychological repercussions of applying medical technology to birth, and specifically to women's bodies. They are for the most part, however, preaching to the already converted— or at least to a very narrow audience of well-educated and critical readers. Few of these feminist critics use case Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. histories themselves when they explore new approaches to birth. Instead, their essays are very academic, very analytical.3 Where they are put to use, case histories can be extremely powerful rhetorical tools. Because they are mini biographies, part fiction, part reality, they allow us to peer into the personal and private lives of those whose stories they reenact. Case histories are very emotional texts; arousing our passions and stirring our sympathies, they appeal to the voyeur in all of us. We identify with the women whose stories we become privy to, thinking "There but for the grace of God go I" or "Maybe I can do what she has done." Because the gynecological case history has such a strong appeal to the popular audience, an exploration of its conception in nineteenth-century medical texts and its subsequent appropriation by the popular media should help that audience to see just how powerful it can be. Most of us are consumers of some form of popular media: lifestyles publications, commentary journals, news magazines and papers, literature. Because the gynecological case history is becoming more and more influential in the popularization of the latest "advances" in reproductive technologies, it will be wise to analyze its rhetoric to determine how it Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 operates on our unconscious belief systems to bring us messages about these technologies. In his 1985 essay, "The Bounds of Thinkable Thought," Noam Chomsky says "there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination" (31). He explains that in a democracy the boundaries are carefully— and subtly— drawn around the acceptable positions and opinions on certain topics, so as to rule out the possibility of challenging an idea or practice wholesale. In Chomsky's words, these mechanisms are "overwhelmingly effective in establishing a framework of thinkable thought" (31). Chomsky's definition of indoctrination suggests that rhetorical analysis must look beyond this framework of thinkable thought to discover that which has been excluded by the boundaries. Kenneth Burke adds a moral imperative to this sort of analysis: "the rhetorician and the moralist become one at that point where the attempt is made to reveal the undetected presence of ... an identification" (Rhetoric 26). Burke is speaking of the identification between science and imperialist-militaristic concerns; in the case history, the work of the rhetorician/moralist is to look for the hidden connections between science and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 capitalistic concerns. Selling women and their partners on reproductive technology means that hundreds of thousands of dollars will be infused into the medical economy. In addition, this technology allows doctors to perform a type of quality control over the end product. Fertility clinics of the future will probably compete not only over high birth rates but for the perfection of the child, just as some sperm banks already lay claim to having sperm encoded with superior genetic characteristics.4 Why look at the case history to find this connection between science and capitalistic concerns? As a sub-genre the case history has become daily fare in our popular media. Burke tells us: "[W]e must think of rhetoric not in terms of some one particular address, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetition and dull daily reenforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill" (26). Our popular media are engaged in drafting just such a "body of identifications," a body that is already hard at work indoctrinating the readership of these publications. The relative strength or weakness of the rhetorical skills being exercised is less a factor than the sheer repetition of the thing. The case history, thanks to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. its sheer ubiquitousness, is one of the most influential tools of the reproductive industry. Social psychologist Robyn Rowland writes that "[p]art of the strategy of social control which powerful groups use is the construction of a language which creates a 'softening up phase', [sic] language which prepares people for technologies which would otherwise be unacceptable" (230). "Reprospeak" (231), her term for the way in which language is applied to reproductive technology, includes seemingly innocuous expressions like "surrogate mother." This term is used to describe a woman who agrees to gestate a child for a couple willing to pay certain fees for the service. The embryo will either be created by artificially inseminating the woman with the man's sperm, or it will be created in-vitro with the egg and sperm of the contracting couple and then implanted into the uterus of the gestating woman. The word surrogate implies that the woman who gestates the fetus is the substitute mother of the child she carries even though she often "supplies" her own egg and is as much a mother as she possibly can be. The term "surrogate mother" now has its own entry in the dictionary. Webster's defines it as "a woman who helps a couple to have a child by carrying to term an embryo conceived by the couple and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 transferred to her uterus; gestational carrier" (1345). The fact that the editors of the dictionary have adopted a definition implying the most remote relationship between mother and fetus possible shows how powerfully the term euphemizes this relationship. Rowland explains that the end result of the linguistic promotion of technology is that while one woman (the infertile wife) is depicted as defective and inefficient, the other (the contract mother) is portrayed as capable of detaching herself from her baby. These characterizations pave the way for the objectification and control of women's bodies and the commodification and sale of their children. In his discussion of the representative anecdote, Burke explains how the selection of terminology operates; "Men seek for vocabularies that will be faithful reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality" (Grammar 59). Thus, we can see how the term "surrogate" emphasizes only a portion of the gestating woman's role in the creation of new life— her legal arrangement with the people who have contracted for her services. The result is that the term deflects reality Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. by fixing its scope too narrowly. Because of the problematic nature of the expression "surrogate mother," I will wherever possible use "contractual motherhood" to describe this practice and "contract mother" or some variation of "the woman who acts as surrogate" to identify women playing this role.5 On a scale larger than the word, an analysis of gynecological cases histories will demonstrate how a too-narrowly selected representative anecdote can restrict our view of a specific technology. Burke warns that "'[i]f you don't select one [anecdote] that is representative in a good sense, it will function as representative in a bad sense'" (324) . Exploring the less-than-representative-anecdote from a Burkean perspective will mean looking into its constituent parts. His dramatistic terms— act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose— will serve as a framework for the ensuing discussion of motives as it applies to the gynecological case history that appears in the popular media (xv). The gynecological case history has been present for some time. Chapter Two, "Gynecology Undercover(s)," will follow the genesis of the case history in nineteenth-century gynecology textbooks. This progenitor of the modern gynecological case Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. history was used to introduce young medical students to the scientific tenets of gynecology, and to convince the mostly-male practitioners that the practice of studying living women's intimate organs was appropriate. These early American case histories were very literary; by spinning "yarns" doctors helped to break taboos against the public discussion of subjects considered to be immodest. Gynecological case histories changed social attitudes about medicine and propriety in both the newly trained physician and his patients and their families. Thus for Chapter Two, the medical text of modest nineteenth-century society forms the scene for the act of discussing gynecological conditions and situations through the agency of the case history. The medical doctor is the agent performing this act for the purpose of instructing his colleagues and persuading potential patients to seek out his services. As a scientific text, the case history has evolved into the highly objective account of patients' illnesses we find in modern medical journals, but where it has been appropriated by popular texts, it has maintained its personal appeal, its folksy quality, and its ability to affect the sensibilities of the public reader. The print media, combined with the new Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reproductive technologies made possible by medical science, create a far different scene for the twentieth-century case history. This new setting has produced significant changes in the elements of act, agency, agent, and purpose. A whole new menu of gynecological experiences is now being discussed by a more diverse group of authors. These agents— no longer likely to be medical authorities— have differing purposes for their representations of reproductive technologies. These purposes will be determined by the specific scenes in which the modern case histories appear: the lifestyles publication; the commentary journal; the daily and weekly news media; and the literary text. On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown was born by cesarean section in Oldham, England. With her birth, the era of modern reproductive technology was also born, and the modern gynecological case history as well. Little Louise was the world's first "test-tube" baby, created by mixing her mother's egg with her father's sperm in a laboratory petri-dish (not a test- tube as many assume). This first successful in-vitro fertilization experiment was conducted by Dr. Patrick Steptoe and physiologist Robert Edwards. The team Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 later came to be known as the "fathers" of in-vitro fertilization. The story of Louise Brown and her parents is an appealing one. The couple longed for a child and Louise fulfilled that desire. Her middle name is a testimony to her parents' reaction to her birth. The print media reacted to the birth as well, giving birth itself to a new type of article discussing or profiling the results of reproductive technologies. A study of general interest magazines published in North America between 1977 and 1994 maps the evolution of this new sub-genre. The study, done on publications categorized as academic, business, commentary, health, lifestyles, news, science/technology, and sociology, shows a dramatic leap in coverage of medically-assisted births from 1977 to 1978. Figure One shows that in 1977 one article on the topic appeared in Good Housekeeping, a lifestyles publication. (See Figures Two and Three for a breakdown of the categories.) In 1978, forty-two articles were published by magazines in all of the above categories. Of these articles, only three are not directly related to the birth of Louise Joy Brown. Further study of the coverage of reproductive technology in general interest magazines shows that this coverage is driven by the case history, and for Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. N- 0 0 o > o y — C M C * > lO C O r- 00 0 5 o Y - CM C * 5 I N r- 0 0 0 0 C O CO 0 0 00 0 0 c o 00 0 0 0 ) 0 5 0 5 05 0 5 o > o > 0 5 O ) 0 5 0 5 05 0 5 05 0 5 0 5 05 05 0 5 0 5 0 5 05 0 5 Y » Y — y — Y “ T — y- y“ y~ y — T * Y — Y“ Y — Y “ Y * Y * Y — Fig. 1. Reproductive Technology Articles: All Catgories Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13 140 Fig. 2. Number of Articles by Periodical Category Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14 Fig. 3. Percent of 621 Articles: Published 1977-1994 I Academic □ Business f i Commentary B Health I I Lifestyles ED News § Sci/Tech ID Socio/Enviro Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the most part, specifically by the controversial and sensational case history. Figure One, which records a total of 621 publications in all eight categories, shows the 1978 leap mentioned above, then a decline to twenty articles in 1979. In 1980, Elizabeth Kane, the first "legal" contract mother gave birth and cooperated in a publicity campaign to make the practice more socially acceptable. Robert Graham also set up shop in Escondito, California. His "Repository for Germinal Choice" advertised itself as a sperm bank specializing in the sperm of Nobel Prize winners. These two events provoked quite a textual reaction. Magazine coverage increased to twenty-nine articles in 1980. From 1981 to 1986, the coverage evened out to an average of eighteen articles per year. In 1987 total articles rose to fifty, then shot to an all-time high of eighty-eight in 1988, followed by seventy-four in 1989. What happened? In 1986 Mary Beth Whitehead began the most publicized custody battle of the decade (perhaps the century) when she sued William Stern for custody of the baby girl she had contracted to carry for him and his wife. "Baby M" stories flooded the media until well after the New Jersey Supreme Court settled the case in 1988. In 1987, twenty-six articles were printed about the Baby M case; fifteen were Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 printed in 1988, and nine appeared in 1989. The case also provoked intense discussion of the practice of what had come to be known as "surrogacy," with fourteen articles published on the general topic in 1987, twenty-nine articles appearing in 1988, and eighteen printed in 1989. By 1990, medical innovations had stimulated new controversies. Anna Johnson made the nation aware of "gestational surrogacy" by suing for custody of the baby boy she claimed to have bonded with. The judge ruled her a "genetic stranger" and awarded custody to the couple who had provided the egg and sperm. By 1992, overall magazine coverage had evened out again, this time to twenty articles. Then in October of 1993, Dr. Jerry Hall successfully cloned an embryo in his laboratory; the media reacted with thirty-six articles that year and fifty-five the following. Of the general interest magazines covering reproductive technology in the seventeen-year period from 1977 to 1994, those considered to address "lifestyles" issues had the greatest share: 135 articles, or 22% of the total 621 articles published. See Figures Four, Five, and Six for the breakdown of the lifestyles' coverage of reproductive technology. The second largest share of coverage goes to the news Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17 N- 00 o> o T “ * CM m U) (0 00 05 o T- CM CO h- r * . I " . 00 00 oo CO 00 00 oo 00 00 00 05 05 05 05 05 o> o> 05 O) 05 05 05 05 05 O) 05 05 05 05 05 05 05 05 r — T — T- T— T— T“ T“ ▼— T “ T* T— Fig. 4. Lifestyles Articles by Year Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fig. 5 . Articles i n Lifestyles Journals American Baby Better Homes and Gardens Chatelaine Child Today Cosmopolitan Ebony Esquire Family Circle Family Relations First For Women Glamour Good Housekeeping Jet Ladies' Home Journal Lear's Life Los Angeles Magazine Highest Total Total 135 Articles -* ro 01 o Total 1 3 5 Articles 19 35 30 25 20 5 0 5 0 © . < 0 < D 05 'o E © ■o OS ( 0 O o S © S E f f > © Z 2 < 0 05 * * c .c © w 3 C © © CL k . « CL © £ OL H U * a „ | 05 Q ™ a ■ii "w .2 -o £ © o. © © CC *8 >* i co © C O © o 11 *2 13 © 3 05 O > £ 0 5 C © E o 5 c © ’ c o O) c £ 05 © $ Pig. 6. Articles In Lifestyles Journals Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. periodicals with 112 or 18%, (Figures Seven and Eight) and the third goes to those journals in the science and technology category: 97 articles and 16 per cent (Figure Nine). Commentary journals come in fourth with 93 articles and 15% of the total. See Figures Ten, Eleven, and Twelve for the breakdown of these figures. (Figures Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen show the breakdown for Academic, Business, Health, and Socio/Environmental periodicals.) The lifestyles category, comprised mainly of women's service and fashion magazines, also includes parenting magazines and general interest selections such as People Weekly. The New Yorker. Reader's Digest, and TV Guide. This type of publication focuses on humor, fiction, entertainment, improving personal lifestyles, and profiles of both the famous and the ordinary. Because reproductive technologies are practiced on women, Chapter Three, "Gynecology at the Check-out Stand," will focus only on the women's magazines in this grouping. In this setting, the author of the case history is often the woman who is the recipient of reproductive technology. She tells her story for a variety of reasons: to announce and authenticate her attainment of motherhood; to inform other women about the services available to them; to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Total 1 1 2 Articles 21 1". CO o> o T- CM CO to co h- CO O) o CM co f- r*. CO co CO 00 CO CO CO co CO CO 05 O) 05 05 05 o> 05 05 05 05 o> 0) o> o> o> 05 05 05 05 05 05 05 T— y— T— .— T* T— T“ T— T— •r- T“ Fig. 7. News Articles by Year Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced w ith permission o f th e copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Total 112 Articles ro cn o cn o cn o o cn Economist Insight Macleans •P National Catholic Reporter Newsweek NY Times Magazine Off Our Backs Saturday Evening Post Time USA Today U.S. News World Press Review to to 23 12 Ncoo)Or«n^ifl®sooo)OT-cyin^ N N N O G O O Q O C O C O I B f l O O Q O I O I O I S ) 0)0)0)0)0)0)0)0)0>0)0)0)0)0)0)0)0)0) Fig. 9. Science/Technology Articles by Year Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 r- 00 05 o Y- CM CO M - (O CO N- 00 05 o T— CVJ CO I". 00 00 00 00 00 oo 00 OO 00 00 05 05 05 05 05 05 O) 05 05 O) 05 05 05 o> 05 05 05 05 05 05 05 05 05 T~ Y— y- y— Y- y— Y* T“ T— y“ Y— r- T— Fig. 10. Commentary Articles by Year Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. <o © n at S o Reproduced w ith permission o f th e copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. N> Total 93 Articles -U 01 00 ro n (Q > 3 o ® CO O 0 3 1 i •2 Cm o c 01 5* America APSR Beijing Review Canada & the World Canadian Dimension Canadian Forum Change Christian Century Christianity & Crisis Christianity Today Commentary Common Cause Commonweal Encore Futurist Human Life Review Humanist Insight CO U1 Reproduced w ith permission o f th e copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Total 93 Articles ro O) po Nation National Review New Media & the Law New Pers. Quarterly New Republic New States. & Society New York Z- N.Y. Times Book Review N.Y. Times Magazine OUT-LOOK Publisher's Weekly Saturday Review Spectator Tikkun Utne Reader Village Voice Highest Total Tl <5* m k to a > 3 o <0 M O o 3 3 CD 3 sr •2 o r < ( 0 a o f - 00 Oi o T — C N J C O T f m (0 h - 00 O) o r “ C V i C O h - 1^ 00 o o 00 o o 00 00 00 00 00 o o a> O) o> 05 O) o> O) o> O) a O) o> O) o> O) o> o> o> o> O) O) O) O) T * y ~ ~ t— r - *— V T“ T— T “ Fig. 13. Academic Articles by Year Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Total 2 5 Articles 28 8 7 1 0 I H h I I ■ I I II I I I I 4- scoaiOT-njn^inicNoooiOrwn'i- r ^ r ^ r ^ o o c D o o o o Q o a o o o o o a o c o c 3 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 3 0 ) 0 1 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) Fig. 14. Business Articles by Year Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29 « o o o> 8 o H* 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 -H 4 - -+J t I I I I ■ I I I I I ■ I n 1 1 1 1 r 11 NOOfllOrSin^lOBKOOOlOrWBV t^N.r^aoaoaoaoaocoaocoooooa>a>o>a>a> 0 ) 0 ) 0 1 0 ) 0 1 0 ) 1 3 0 ) 0 ) 0 1 0 1 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) 0 ) Fig. 15. Health Articles by Year Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Total 1 6 Articles 30 1 l l ----------I ---------1 --------- 1 --------- 1 ---------1 --------- 1 --------- 1 --------- 1 --------- 1 --------- 1 --------- 1 - H --------- 1--- sco90rpin^ifl(osooo)0<-«Bt N - r v r o o o a o o o a o a o a o c o o o c o c o o i a o i o a ) O)O)O>O>O>O>O)O>O>O)0)O)O)O)O)O>O>O) Fig. 16. Soclo/Envlronmental Articles by Year Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. validate her feelings about what she has done— or has had done to her? to persuade others that her actions are acceptable; and on rare occasions, to warn other women of the potential harm reproductive technologies may do. Because the women's magazine has an agenda of its own— promoting motherhood— both the purpose of the case history and its agency are altered when it is adopted for this medium. The case history is presented as a fairy-tale quest for motherhood with a happy ending. The women's magazines' adoption of miracle metaphors to characterize technologically-assisted birth allows the new technologies and their administrators to be aligned with God and his purposes. God's endorsement makes a critical discussion of these practices difficult, if not impossible. In contrast to the happy endings presented by the lifestyles publications, a scene change to the commentary journal shows coverage that seems to be based almost entirely on reacting to controversial cases. Chapter Four, "Gynecology on the Coffee Table," will look at how these publications represent the latest advances in reproductive technology. The commentary-style publications show a pattern of coverage on reproductive issues almost identical to the pattern created by the magazine industry in general. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure Eight illustrates the way in which the commentary magazines have reacted to the sensational events of the past seventeen years, most notably the birth of Louise Joy Brown and the Baby M custody fight. Figures Nine and Ten show by the breakdown of magazines within the commentary category that the Christian journals far outpace all of the others in their attention to the topic. Christian Century. Commonweal. Christianity Today, and America. together make up 35% of the total commentary coverage of 93 articles. The authors of these commentary pieces differ a great deal from the authors of the articles in the lifestyles magazines. Their primary focus is on moral and ethical issues and their purpose is to open debate by presenting a strongly felt and argued position. The commentator, like the nineteenth-century doctor, is usually discussing someone else's experience. He/she uses the case as a springboard for the discussion of issues and ideals close to his/her heart: religious beliefs for some and feminist ideals for others. Many of the discussions within the pages of these journals are critical of the new technologies; however, though they respond to the issues raised by the cases, and pose some very serious moral and ethical questions, their coverage tends to end when the controversy does. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In Chapter Five, "Gynecology at the Breakfast Table," the scene switches to the daily and weekly news media. The journalist who reports on the gynecological case history to the public is primarily interested in stories that will inform and engage a wide general audience. The daily news cannot wait for the refinement that accompanies a revised text, so in the newspaper the case history may appear as a rather cursory presentation of an interesting or controversial event. Because the news attempts to achieve objectivity, the voices of authorities from a variety of disciplines will often populate the text, with the reporter playing the role of conductor rather than commentator. The news magazine's weekly schedule provides the opportunity for a more sustained discussion of controversial events, and a good opinion piece can rival its counterpart in the commentary j ournal. The focus on reporting the news means the coverage of reproductive technology in this category is more evenly distributed over the seventeen-year period than coverage in the other categories. The characteristic increases do occur in 1978 and 1987; however, the drop in attention we saw in the other publication categories Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 between 1981 and 1986 does not hold true for the news publications. Chapter Six, "Gynecology in Dystopia," will look at the literary case history as a sort of coda to the previous chapters. By focusing specifically on three works we will look at what happens when the elements of fantasy and critique are combined in a representation of reproductive technology that does not have to remain true to any facts. Instead, by virtue of their total authority over the text, the authors can send their readers powerfully crafted messages embedded within fictitious gynecological stories that may come closer to reality than the real-life stories reported on in our popular news media. All three authors take their roles as social critics very seriously. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Sarah Bird's The Mommy Club, all present fabricated case histories in which the repercussions of reproductive technology and the attitudes that make it possible are paramount. Tracing the genesis and evolution of the gynecological case history shows its remarkable adaptability. The case history is a powerful rhetorical tool and it derives some of that power from its ability to change its agency as new relationships Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. are formed between scene, purpose, act, and agent. Since it is likely that reproductive technologies will be refined as we move into the twenty-first century, it is also probable that the case history will be refined along with them, adjusting itself to accommodate new technological options and to present these options in new venues. One thing is certain, the complex technologies we have crafted will require significant revision to Burke's "Definition of Man" to make it appropriate for the next century. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 Notes 1. Burke uses the masculine gender throughout his discussion, so when quoting from or speaking about Burke's definition, I shall use his terms to define all of mankind. In my subsequent discussion, I shall use the term man to refer only to the masculine half of the species. I am sure that Burke intended his definition to include women; however, in the conclusion to this dissertation the reader will find my revision of Burke's definition in which I have attempted to accommodate woman's childbearing function. At this time, I also make my apologies to those feminists who reject an essentialist definition of woman, as mine is based entirely on our ability to reproduce. 2. The following list attempts to define for the reader some of the reproductive technologies that are currently in use. • AIH is artificial insemination using the husband's sperm. • AID is artificial insemination using a donor's sperm. • AIM combines the donor's sperm with the husband so the couple can hold on to the fantasy that the child is genetically related to the husband. • Egg donation combines the use of a donated egg with Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37 in-vitro to be placed in the womb of the woman who is planning to be the social mother. • Embryo flushing is a procedure that "washes" a fertilized egg out of one woman's uterus so it can be placed in another's. • Fetal reduction is the euphemism used for the practice of aborting selected fetuses when multiple pregnancies occur after superovulation or multiple implantation. • "Gestational" surrogacy is surrogacy ala Anna Johnson, in which the zygote, created from the egg and sperm of the contracting couple, is placed into the uterus of another woman who agrees to allow them the use of her body for gestation. • GIFT is gamete intra-fallopian tube transfer. The egg and sperm are placed into the Fallopian tube, allowing them to fertilize in the tube and giving them a better chance of implanting in the uterus. • IVF "traditional" is old-hat now. The woman's eggs are removed and inseminated, then replaced in her uterus. • Sperm, egg, and embryo banking make use of freezing techniques to preserve genetic materials in various stages of fertilization. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 • Sperm separation is a technique for separating "male" from "female" sperm. • Sperm washing is a technique for removing chemicals that may thwart the sperm's ability to penetrate the shell of the egg. • Superovulation occurs when a woman is given a regimen of hormones to induce greater quantities of eggs to ripen in a given cycle. • "Traditional" surrogacy is surrogacy ala Mary Beth Whitehead, in which the impregnated woman "donates" her egg to the procedure. • TUDOR is transvaginal ultrasound directed oocyte [egg] recovery. In this procedure eggs are removed through the vagina rather than through the abdomen with a laparoscope. Though less invasive, the procedure can also be quite painful because it can be done without anesthesia. • ZIFT is zygote intra-fallopian tube transfer. Similar to GIFT, this procedure places the fertilized egg into the Fallopian tube so it can travel into the uterus to implant. 3. Linda Williams, Ellen Messer and Kathryne May are notable exceptions. Williams collected and used the stories of women who have undergone in-vitro technologies to make her case that this "service" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. exacts much too high a price physically, emotionally, and psychologically from those it purports to help. Messer and May have collected accounts of abortions performed before Roe v. Wade made the procedure legal. Both texts make good use of the personal and emotional accounts of the women who helped to write them by sharing their stories. 4. The "Repository for Germinal Choice" in Escondito, California was established to house the sperm of Nobel Prize winners. It now also accepts sperm from men with extremely high I.Q.'s. Customers can leaf through profiles that include information about the donors' artistic and athletic ability, physical characteristics and religious affiliations. Robert Graham, the director, swears that sperm from his bank "breeds true" (Lowry 12). In other words, he believes that it is genetically stronger than the woman's egg and will dominate the child's characteristics (12) . 5. The term "contract mother" is not mine. I have borrowed it from feminist commentator Katha Pollitt who uses it in her discussion of the Baby M case printed in The Nation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter Two Gynecology Undercover(s) The nineteenth-century gynecologist was an "undercover" practitioner. The field was new, and patient and doctor alike were beset with moral qualms about its propriety. Much of the practice was done literally under the covers, with the doctor performing procedures by feel on his blushing patients. To legitimize the field of gynecology, a rhetoric had to grow up around it that would help the gynecologist to talk with his peers and patients about very intimate concerns. His patients also had to feel comfortable accepting his services. A study of the rhetoric that evolved to address these concerns will show how the case history emerged as a tool for accomplishing the dual goals of instructing the doctor in his practice, and selling the patient on his services. The modern gynecological case history has its beginnings here, in its nineteenth-century prototype. A distressing fear of the event of parturition, sometimes takes possession of pregnant women as the dreaded time approaches. Such should be taught reliance on the protection of Providence. If however this dread be attended with increased heat, a white scurf [incrustation] on the tongue, quick pulse, and especially if there be a fixed pain in the belly ... it requires blood-letting, and frequently Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 a repetition of it with gentle purges. (Jennings qtd. in Speert 37) The above quote from an 1808 "Ladies' Companion" gives some idea of the state of obstetrical practice in the early nineteenth century. During this century most of the major advances in assisting childbirth that characterize basic twentieth-century gynecological practice were made. The case history was an integral part of these advances, serving as a means of transmitting personal experience from doctor to doctor, and from doctor to student. The case history was especially valuable to the young student who, unlike the midwife, began his studies with no personal experience on which to build his knowledge. In addition to its pedagogical function, the case history contributed to changing attitudes about male doctors treating female patients for the most intimate of "complaints.1 1 Doctors who wrote case histories were breaking taboos against speaking of these intimate subjects; the case history provided a safe forum for observing the female body in childbirth, a sort of linguistic voyeurism that set the stage for the subsequent use of living patients to train medical students. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To understand the role the case history played in nineteenth-century gynecology, we must remind ourselves of the state of medical practice in the nineteenth century, and specifically, what was then often referred to as the science and art of obstetrics. Most of the medical procedures and tools we take for granted in the late twentieth century were not available to the medical profession in the early nineteenth. Anesthesia and antisepsis had not been discovered yet. Major surgery was dangerous and only performed when there were no other options. Most birthing women were attended by female midwives, and any type of "medical1 1 intervention was performed only in life or death situations. The forceps had been invented by a member of the Chamberlen family in the 17th century, but its secret had been carefully preserved by the family for at least one hundred years. The early forceps was also a very crude device that was not designed with a woman's anatomy in mind. Still, those who did have access to the tool, and some training in its use, managed to use it to advantage in some situations and save women's lives. Other tools, such as hooks and crotchets, were used only as a last resort to dismember the fetus' body when the birth process endangered the mother's life. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For these and other reasons, birth could be a dangerous and painful experience, and any tool or procedure that promised to make it safer was welcomed by those who were afraid of potential problems in delivery. Because students were trained in the use of instruments only with illustrations and manikins, the case history filled in some of the gaps by providing a discussion about how doctors responded to difficult cases and improvised new procedures. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the United States had just three hospitals for the general public and four medical schools. Though lectures in midwifery were offered in the schools, they were not required for a medical degree (Speert 37, 73-75). Those who could afford it went to England, Scotland, or France for their training (Cutter and Viets 145). When they returned, many of these men set up lecture series, often from their homes, for both midwives and new doctors. For those who could not afford to travel to Europe, or the tuition at an American school, lectures and apprenticeships were the only available methods of training. This training was often inadequate as anyone could announce lectures or declare himself an instructor and accept apprentices (72). As late as 1855, students were not provided with clinical Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. experience and it was only in the last two decades of the century that schools began to require students to attend cases and participate in internship programs (76) . Before these programs were instituted, the case history was often the only way in which medical students could gain an understanding of the practical problems they would encounter once they had finished their studies. Perhaps the most prominent medical lecturer of the late eighteenth century was Dr. William Shippen, Jr. of Philadelphia. His training shows the common pattern for those who could afford to be well-educated in their profession. He began his medical training at the College of New Jersey (Princeton), apprenticed for three years with his father, Dr. William Shippen, and then went to Europe to study in Edinburgh (Cutter and Viets 147) . In January of 1765, he announced a course of lectures on midwifery. The announcement reveals the growing distrust the medically trained doctor held toward the midwives who had attended births since the establishment of the American colonies: Dr. Shippen, Jr. having been lately called to the assistance of a number of women in the country, in difficult labors, most of which was made so by the unskillful old women about them, the poor women having suffered extremely, and their innocent little Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 ones being entirely destroyed, whose lives might have been easily saved by proper management, and being informed of several desperate cases in the different neighborhoods which had proved fatal to the mothers as to their infants, and were attended with the most painful circumstances too dismal to be related, he thought it his duty immediately to begin his intended courses in Midwifery, and has prepared a proper apparatus for that purpose, in order to instruct those women who have virtue enough to own their ignorance and apply for instructions, as well as those young gentlemen now engaged in the study of that useful and necessary branch of surgery, who are taking pains to qualify themselves to practice in different parts of the country with safety and advantage to their fellow citizens. (qtd. in Cutter and Viets 149) Considering the fact that many male practitioners were both as unqualified and as dangerous as the incompetent midwife, this very positive characterization of the young medical student indicates the early attempt by the medical profession to establish the primacy of the scientific approach to obstetrics, and to overcome the public's objections to male midwifery. Regulations covering medical practitioners were not routinely established until the end of the nineteenth century, when the American Medical Association, founded in the 1840s by Dr. Nathan Smith Davis, finally succeeded in establishing boards of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. medical examiners in all of the states (Speert 77-78). Before such regulations were enacted almost anyone could establish a medical practice and treat patients in any manner he/she chose. Many of these approaches were not scientific, ranging from homeopathy and hydropathy to downright charlatanism. The experience of the general public was very mixed; some were saved by the doctors, but some were killed by their methods. This uncertainty about the skills of anyone proclaiming to be a doctor meant that there was widespread distrust of the profession in general, and the admission of male practitioners into the modest woman's bedchamber was highly suspect. In the woman's handbook, the case history worked to convince women and their spouses that they were better off being treated by the scientifically trained male doctor than the "quack" practitioner (anyone not scientifically trained) or the often incompetent and superstitious female midwife. The public's opinion about the propriety of male midwifery can be seen in the following excerpt from Dr. Irving S. Cutter's 1933 history of obstetrics. His interpretation reflects the profession's position on the male/female question: As may be understood, Shippen's efforts to create enthusiasm for midwifery were fraught with much discouragement. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47 While medicine and surgery were dominant and under the immediate jurisdiction of trained men, midwifery was relegated for the most part to ignorant women who fostered the idea that it was improper and indelicate for a woman in labor to be attended by a male physician. (emphasis added 150) Cutter's interpretation is questionable here, however, because "ignorant women" certainly were not the only ones who held the opinion that male midwifery was indelicate and even immoral. In 1793, in London, John Blunt wrote: Every modest woman who wishes to preserve her husband's affections, and has no reason to expect a difficult labor, ought to engage a skillful midwife in preference to a man: for though a husband may pretend to approve of unnecessary male practice, he has not a better opinion of his wife for submitting to it; he knows there may be much improper intercourse between a man-midwife and his patient. . . . (qtd. in Speert 6) Blunt's belief that male-midwifery was "a practice too indecent for men to pursue" (6) was shared by Samuel Gregory, an American, whose 1848 pamphlet, "Man- Midwifery Exposed and Corrected," labeled man-midwifery as immoral. Gregory believed that its practice threatened the morality of both the male practitioner and his patient. "[T]he unlimited intimacy between a numerous profession and the female population silently Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48 and effectually wears away female delicacy and professional morality, and tends, probably more than any other cause in existence, to undermine the foundations of public virtue" (qtd. in Speert 18). Blunt and Gregory did not simply invent a concern for women's moral position. The nineteenth-century woman was expected to exhibit the four virtues of "True Womanhood": piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity (Welter 104). Of these four, the virtue most jeopardized by gynecological practices was purity. The loss of this virtue could mean the destruction of a woman's life, either symbolically or literally. Women were assigned the task of preserving their purity, while men— being men— spent their efforts attempting to rob them of it (106). It is easy to see how charges of impropriety could be brought against a practice that encouraged such intimate contact between men and women. Working against these arguments of impropriety were the all too common problems caused by the female midwife's lack of training and superstitious practices. Speert characterizes midwives as "untrained, ignorant, often illiterate, and superstitious" (11). He recounts some of their more colorful superstitious practices: Some granny-women in the Ozarks always carried with them coins stolen from the church in the belief that this money Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. placed in the parturient's mattress would ease the pains of labor. Others hung an empty hornet's nest in the patient's attic. Still others placed an ax under the bed to make a difficult birth easier, but only after the edge was brought to razor sharpness, for a dull ax was likely to do more harm than good. (11) This is the context in which the early case histories functioned. The main issues for the scientific practice of midwifery, as outlined above, were establishing public approval of the male accoucheur, and eliminating non-scientific approaches. The case history was to contribute to both of these goals by giving the scientific practitioner a forum in which to discuss medical cases and procedures without being considered improper. Using case histories also created a genre in which medical knowledge could be transmitted to the student, and later, in women's handbooks, to the patient herself. The first case histories to appear in an American textbook can be found in Samuel Bard's Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery. Its publication in 1807 made it the first gynecology textbook to be written in America. Like Shippen, Bard studied first in America, apprenticed with his doctor father, and completed his studies in Edinburgh. His book was written after his retirement and included the wisdom he Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 had gained from his thirty-three years in medical practice (Speert 74). The first edition of the text is written for the midwife and reflects the same concern for overcoming her ignorance that Shippen's lecture announcement does. Bard, however, includes untrained practitioners in his concern: Having frequently, in the course of my practice, and particularly since my residence in the country, had occasion to observe how much our midwives, and too many practitioners, who take on themselves the care of women in labour, stand in need of instruction, and how incapable most of such are, from deficiency of education, as well as from pecuniary considerations, to derive it from books of science and systems of midwifery, I have thought that a concise, cheap book, containing plain, but correct rules for their practice in natural labours, and for the relief of such complaints as frequently accompany pregnancy and labour, or which follow delivery, would, in the present state of this country, prove a useful work. (iii) Because the first edition of the book was written mainly for midwives, Bard does not include case histories in any substantial number. He discusses problems in generalities, relying on the experience the midwife would bring to her reading of the book to fill in the gaps. When editing the fourth edition, however, Bard decided to redefine the audience and write to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 medical students. This revision necessitated the addition of more scientific language and medical plates. Most important, Bard "illustrated the doctrines by a great number of cases, drawn from the best authorities, and particularly from the latest and most valuable periodical works" (B). Bard explains the utility of the case histories at the end of his 1819 introduction: This plan ... I am persuaded, will be found particularly useful to the student, not only in explaining the doctrines and enforcing the best practice, . . . but as they [the cases] will be found to contain the soundest principles of general practice, and a variety of incidental occurrences, which (although they require particular management) cannot easily be interpreted into a systematic work. It is something like adding experience to theory, is a miniature representation of real practice; and if the cases are carefully studied, as I earnestly recommend them to be, will be found to imprint the principles of the art, and the rules of the practice, upon the mind of the student more permanently than any plan, simply didactic, can possibly do. (B) The first edition of the book contains four case histories, two drawn from Bard's personal experience and two from accounts related to him by colleagues. All four concern the same problem— inverted uterus— one which was unusual and therefore seemed to him to require illustration. The fourth edition of the book Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 contains 152 case histories; of these only four are drawn from Bard's personal experience. The rest are cited from thirty-eight other doctors and four medical journals. The addition of 148 case histories and Bard's introductory comments make it clear that he believed the medical student would not have the same experiences to bring to his education as the midwife. The utility of the case history as a pedagogical tool seems clear; serving as a "miniature representation of real practice," reading these accounts was a substitute for attending living patients at a time when allowing medical students to do so would have caused a huge outcry in the populace. If we compare the four case histories offered in Bard's first edition to those of the fourth edition, we can also see the influence of science at work. First, by simply quoting so many experts, Bard has endeavored to increase his credibility. Of more interest is the difference in the way the case histories are reported. The following is Bard's personal account of a case of inverted uterus, printed in the first edition: A lady, very tall, after a labour rather tedious and severe, was at last, by one long and severe pain, delivered of her second child. On tying the navel-string, I observed it to be remarkably thick and very short, and on taking hold of it between by thumb and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53 finger, (for I could not twist it around my finger) I perceived, as I thought, the placenta to be descending; not however, by successive pains, but by one continued uninterrupted descent, until it was thrown out of the vagina; and, to my very great astonishment, with it came the whole volume of the womb. It is not easy to express my feelings at that moment; still, however, I commanded so much presence of mind, as neither to lose my time nor alarm my patient. The placenta, which was already in part separated, was immediately detached, and my fingers being applied to the fundus of the womb, it was immediately and completely reverted, the hand and arm being introduced as high as the elbow, then slowly withdrawn. No flooding or other ill consequence ensued, and the patient speedily recovered. It was seven years before this lady became again pregnant; her labour was then natural and happy; she has since had a fourth child, and now enjoys good health. (175-176) Bard's account is very personal and gives his reaction to the incident the same importance as the medical situation and the treatment. In fact, his purpose seems to be to explain how calmly he reacted to a situation he had never experienced before. This case is not one illustrating "the soundest principles of general practice," which is how Bard describes those included in the fourth edition. Instead it is, by comparison, an unscientific account of the doctor's personal experience. In contrast, the case histories cited in the fourth edition sound much more scientific. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54 The doctor is distanced from the experience through the use of an objective tone. We can compare a case taken from a Mr. Brandon Fry, who purports to have developed a cure for puerperal fever. Bard begins his account by explaining Fry's general method of treatment: bleeding, blistering, emetics (medicines that cause vomiting), antimonials (medicines incorporating a metallic element that have an emetic and diuretic effect), mercurials (medicines containing mercury, often used as an ointment), and deobstruents (diuretics). The case is presented chronologically, with entries for significant days or events in the illness, and includes medical terms: 21st day. She has not been quite so well as usual for the last two or three days, and her pulse has been quick. ... I find a circumscribed swelling and hardness, as of a large gland, in the right iliac region [the lower abdominal area], a little above Poupart's ligament. ... I applied leeches to the pained part and gave her an emetic; and a blister was laid on as soon as the bleeding from the leeches had ceased. 22nd day. Patient much easier. 23d day. Leeches were again applied a little above the seat of the last blister, and were followed by another blister, laid upon the part to which they had been applied. An increase of relief was immediately perceived by the patient, and in a few days the soreness, swelling, and every other complaint were entirely gone. (362) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The focus here is on the etiology of the disease and the doctor's treatment of its symptoms, rather than the doctor's personal reaction to the patient and her suffering. In fact, when reading this case, one wonders about the doctor's emotions. Placed in the context of today's medical practices, the treatment sounds quite brutal. Presumably, the doctor acted to help the patient, but how did he react to the suffering he was causing? Did the patient claim to feel instant relief on the twenty-third day so the doctor would stop torturing her? Compared to the superstitious midwife who placed a sharpened ax under the bed to ease labor, the doctor sounds much more dangerous. Bard's intention to write a plain book (one that would be understood by those untrained in science) also highlights early nineteenth-century attitudes towards writing about the subject of birth. Using purely scientific language would be far more acceptable, but Bard wants the book to be understandable to the uneducated reader. He has to strike a balance between what will be understood and what will be considered proper by using 1 1 as few technical terms as was consistent with perspicuity and decency . . ." (iv). Clearly, there were moral standards in operation that Bard had to consider when writing his book. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. After Bard's use of the case history, it becomes common fare in the gynecology text. Its format and tone, however, is far from standardized, and for some authors, the case seems to have more in common with literature than with scientific discourse. This is perhaps partially due to the personalities and interests of the authors of these texts, but, because the scientific approach to medicine had not yet been institutionalized, for most of the nineteenth century, the gynecology textbook remained a curious hybrid of scientific reasoning and anecdotal evidence. An example of a rather literary author is Charles D. Meigs, a Philadelphia physician who published several texts from the 1830s to the 1850s. Meigs' work was popular during his lifetime, but has been criticized as "marred by vanity and verbosity" by the early twentieth century's most popular textbook author, J. Whitridge Williams (qtd. in Speert 128). The profession had changed enough in fifty years that Meigs' style was considered outdated by William's scientific standards. Meigs' case histories are characterized by personal accounts, a narrative quality, and the same attention to personal reactions that we saw in Bard's early cases. Meigs does not hesitate to include his Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reactions to the cases he attends, nor does he exclude what seems to be unnecessary information about the patient. The following excerpt describes his reaction to a patient's suffering: I think one of the most fearful instances of human agony that my eyes have ever witnessed, was that of a lady in North Sixth Street, Mrs. Th. S y, who, being in labor of her first child, . . . began suddenly to scream, with the greatest violence, often uttering the words. "Oh, the cramp! the cramp! the cramp! " She was indescribably agitated, her countenance assumed the wildest expression. . . . I had, for many years, been accustomed to the cries of puerperal women, to which I had become habitually indifferent, but this case deserved to be called terrible. (48) Clearly, Meigs had a strong reaction to his patient's suffering. In his depiction of the birth, he makes no attempt to separate his personal reactions from his scientific account. His description is highly subjective: "agony," "indescribably agitated," and "wildest expression" are all interpretations of his patient's pain. He also includes information about his personal handling of the case that may have been better left out. He tells us that because he had not brought his forceps with him he had to wait for the husband to bring them before he could relieve the woman's Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58 suffering. For her next confinement, he tells us that she begged him to bring his forceps, fearing she would suffer from the cramp again. He refused and it was necessary to awaken a servant and send him on the fastest horse in the house to travel the five miles to retrieve them. One has to wonder why Meigs would tell his reader about his seemingly callous refusal to bring his forceps with him. He does not explain this. If this case is full of information about Meigs, the following has a narrative quality that belies its placement in a medical text. The case is not his, but one told him by a colleague, Dr. James. Meigs retells it with relish, and the drama, coupled with the obvious didactic purpose, must have had a great effect on his reader: While the persons at breakfast were conversing cheerfully, and exchanging felicitations upon the fortunate issue of affairs in the lying-in room, the nurse was heard screaming from the top of the stairs, "Doctor, doctor, for God's sake come up!" He hastened to the apartment, and the lady was lying across the bed quite dead. It was found that, soon after the doctor went below, the lady said to the nurse, "I want to get up." "But you must not get up, madam; the doctor gave a very strict charge against it," replied the nurse. "I do not care what the doctor says," rejoined the patient; and thereupon arose, and throwing her feet out of the bed, she sat on the side a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 few moments, reeled, and fell back in a fatal fainting fit. (346) In the complete account of this case, we are given several of the elements of a fictional narrative. The scene is described: the doctor is enjoying breakfast downstairs while mother and child recuperate upstairs. The new mother is characterized as stubborn and willful through her "actual" recorded speech, and her subsequent disobedience. The nurse, a minor character, though significant to the doctor's interpretation, is at the least ineffectual. The doctor is depicted as knowledgeable, correct, and totally blameless in the woman's death. The plot is fairly complex: the doctor has successfully delivered a healthy baby, issued orders to both the new mother and the nurse about getting up, and retired to the dining room to share breakfast with the family. The disobedient patient refuses to listen to his orders, and by getting up causes her death. Once the story has been told, the reader is treated to Meigs' interpretation of the incident in the form of a "medical" conclusion that reads more like a moral than science: The remarks of Dr. James, as he related the occurrence to me, made upon my mind a deep impression of the vast consequence of careful and well-timed Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 instruction of the nurses; who, if they could have the dangers of mismanagement fully exposed to them, would surely avoid some accidents that every now and then are attended with shocking results. (Meigs 346) Other case histories cited in Meigs do show the adoption of scientific discourse. In the following excerpt, we can see the doctor using scientific terminology to objectify the subject of his investigation. She is presented as a case of what Meigs calls "procrastination of the term" and though the doctor comments on her pain, unlike Meigs, he doesn't appear to be affected by it. In contrast to Meigs' characterization of his patient's suffering as "agony" in the earlier case history, this doctor's use of the term "acute" reflects an attempt to achieve a scientific description of the woman's condition; She was laboring under a decided hectical fever [wasting or consumptive] and irritation, that had already very much reduced her flesh and strength. She obtained but little sleep, and had a poor appetite. She daily suffered acute pains in the abdomen. . . . The os uteri was found to be not dilated, though the cervix was fully developed, having lost entirely its tubular or cylindrical form. The form of the abdominal tumor was conical, the umbilicus being at the apex of the cone• • • i She remained in the ward, suffering daily and nightly with abdominal pains, until she fell into labor. ... I sat Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. up with her all night, being deeply interested to observe all the phenomena of the case. (233) Though this case history shows the emergence of the objectification that scientific terms made possible, the subjective influence remains. The account is of a supposed fourteen-month pregnancy, but after listing all of the symptoms the woman displayed during labor and delivery, the doctor does not interpret this evidence, nor use it to explain the length of the term. Had his account achieved complete objectivity, he would have relied upon the medical evidence to prove or disprove the purported length of the pregnancy. Instead, he adds a disclaimer at the end of the history attesting to the fact that he is relying solely on the patient's statement about when she became pregnant. He offers the following as support to her testimony: "She had the appearance of perfect candor and sincerity in all that she said about it . . ." (234). Rather than relying on the scientific evidence, he gives the reader a highly subjective judgement of the woman's veracity. We are never told why the rest of the medical information is given, or of its connection to the length of her pregnancy. In his attitudes about science and propriety, Meigs was very representative of his profession at the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 time. In the introduction to his Obstetrics: The Science and Art. first published in 1849, Meigs expresses the same value placed on the scientific approach to obstetrics as seen in earlier works, and the same concern for the propriety of male-midwifery: It is the Science of the practitioner that raises him immeasurably above the most dextrous [sic] midwives of the land, dexterity which indeed does not prevent their ignorance from rendering them unsafe depositories of such important interests as those that concern the conservation of our wives and daughters, and their little children. An accoucheur who is merely dextrous, and who is not acquainted with the scientific parts of his profession, may be in a manner superior to the midwife, but in some regards he is inferior; since to his employment, his sex is an objection, which ought to be waived only in consideration of his Scholarship. (viii) It is obvious where Meigs' loyalties lie; he is definitely aligned on the side of science. His views on morality, however, make him uncomfortable with the untrained male midwife. His views on propriety also do not allow him to approve of the use of living women to aid the instruction of medical students. To do so would be to violate the female modesty and chastity that are the "very corner-stone of civilization and order . . ." (qtd. in Speert 78). Thus, in the middle of the century, attitudes about female modesty persist, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63 and doctors still have to strike a careful balance in their work in order to avoid public criticism. In relating a case about injury to the female genitalia, Meigs clearly illustrates this dilemma. First, in regards to some plates he has included and discussed, he says: The question might be asked, why I should have placed these illustrations in my book, since such drawings, to say the least, seem fit to make the cheek tingle with shame. I am quite conscious that a book of medical practice ought to be written with a decent regard to decency. . . . (104) Meigs rationalizes his text by invoking the need to instruct the student properly. His desire to teach wins out and he recounts the following case: Mrs. --, the mother of four children, returned to her home from a ride on horseback. The servant brought a common country chair for her to dismount. The chair terminated in two sharp turned tops. When the lady was ready, she threw herself from the saddle, and as her food lighted on the edge of the chair, carelessly held by the groom, it turned forwards, and she fell. The sharp turned top of the chair was driven against her riding skirt, and forced her clothing just against the under edge of the arch of the pubis. In a moment she was streaming with blood, and being taken to her apartment, she bled until she fainted. . . . (104) After citing another, similar case, in which a woman is injured after her "night vase" breaks under her weight, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64 Meigs is compelled to stop his explanation of the potential causes of such injuries. Some are simply too embarrassing and improper to relate, even in a medical book. He apologizes once more: I shall not detain the Student to speak of other causes that might give rise to severe bleeding, in these tissues, it is enough to have called his attention to the general facts in which he will find not only the indications of his practice, but my apology for introducing in this work a topic so unacceptable. (105) Attitudes about these "unmentionable" topics that are similar to Meigs' can be seen in the reaction of the medical community in Buffalo when, on January 1850, Dr. John Platt White allowed twenty members of his graduating class to examine a young woman about to give birth (Speert 78). The woman was unmarried, and presumably White chose her because it was less of an assault on propriety for his students to examine a woman whose morals were already in question. He also provided her with a place to stay until she delivered, free medical care, and a ten dollar honorarium (78). These provisions probably enticed her to agree, whereas a married woman would have no need of the shelter or the honorarium, and would be sure to refuse to be examined for fear that the community would ostracize her. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The reaction to White's demonstration was swift and hostile. Seventeen of Buffalo's forty physicians signed a letter published in the Buffalo Medical Journal that said of the demonstration: "[W]e deem it unnecessary for the purpose of teaching, unprofessional in manner, and grossly offensive alike to morality and common decency" (qtd. in Speert 79). Another protest printed in the Louisville Medical Journal stated that "we do not like to see this excessive flirtation with modesty, [sic] introduced into medical teaching" (qtd. in Speert 79). The matter was referred to the AMA, which declared that a competent physician should be prepared to deliver from touch alone, having learned all he needed from textbook discussions, medical plates and manikins (Speert 79). Though it created this fierce outcry, White's demonstration also broke the last taboo, and by the end of the century, clinical experience had begun to be incorporated into medical training. The acceptance of clinical experience could not have been achieved without the influence of the case history. When doctors like Meigs overcame their scruples and wrote about "unmentionable" cases, they taught their students that such discussions were necessary to the profession. Such discussions went Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. masa 66 from being tolerated to accepted to expected. The students would look upon the next step, examining live patients, as an expected evolution in their training, taking them beyond the text of the case history and into the real world of its application. Before doctors could examine women on a routine basis, the women had to be willing to submit to such examinations. Here the case history was also instrumental because it helped to change women's attitudes about medical treatment. The reproduction of case histories in women's handbooks facilitated this change in attitude. The title page of C. Morrill, M.D.'s 1856 Physiology of Woman and Her Diseases states that the topic has been "adapted to the instruction of females, and professional reading." In the dedication to the book entitled "False Delicacy and Notions on Anatomy and Physiology" the author has taken care to defend his discussion of such a delicate topic. In this paragraph we are told by the author that those who believe it is improper to show plates of the female anatomy to the youth of America are wrong. He believes that ”[t]he more we attempt to conceal from children or others, the greater is their curiosity, and the stronger their desire to gratify it unobserved. Such is the law of perverted nature." Morrill bemoans the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67 fact that "[a] medical man is rarely consulted till the health is gone; ..." (11). His solution is to educate women, not so they can treat themselves, but so that they will call scientifically trained doctors in early and follow their advice when consulted. Before he can convince women of this need, however, Morrill has to convince her that his book is an acceptable instrument of knowledge. After explaining that the primary end of a woman's existence is to propagate the species, and that her good influence over her family rests upon her charms, themselves dependent on good health, Morrill asks how a woman will know how to discharge this important duty without proper education. He asks his reader whether "he whose heart and head are better adapted to his high and responsible calling, from an absurd subjection to blind conventionalism, [will] oppose a sincere and honest effort for her instruction?" (10). Once he calls upon those "better adapted" to make such decisions (his medical colleagues, husbands and fathers?), he concludes: It must be conceded, then, that woman ought to be educated in the physiology and nature of her organization, and the diseases to which she is incident. Her own welfare requires this; and not her own merely but the good of her offspring; and in fine, the proper Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68 development of the physical and moral powers of our whole race depends upon the conduct of the female before marriage, during pregnancy, suckling, and afterwards. (11) By making the moral development of the human race dependent on the proper education of women, Morrill has managed to stand the propriety argument on its head. Anyone concerned with true morality will see that the only way to accomplish it is to put "within her [woman's] reach those truths concerning her organization which have been elicited by the patient investigations of the accomplished medical men, who have in every age of the world devoted their lives to these subjects ..." (11). Here Morrill is addressing the commonly-held nineteenth-century belief that the wrong sort of book could destroy a young girl morally (Welter 110). Potential readers of his handbook, and mothers and fathers contemplating giving it to their daughters to read would want to be sure that it would not excite prurient interests and, by doing so, ruin its reader's virtue. To assure his audience that he has not left propriety completely behind, Morrill explains that he has "also labored, as far as consistent with truthful exposition, to avoid shocking the prejudices or delicacy of the reader" (12). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69 Perhaps because his book will be more controversial than a medical text by virtue of its expanded audience, Morrill must always balance his concern with delicacy and his mission to educate women in "proper management." Proper management wins out, and he explains that he must discuss one topic that has been ignored by others: masturbation. Rather than apologizing for his subject matter as Meigs does, Morrill tells his reader that "[w]e should consider ourselves highly culpable, notwithstanding we may shock the prejudices of the reader, did we neglect, in this place, to point out a most prominent cause of precocious puberty in young females" (63). He explains that, while other authors have ignored the subject, he cannot, since he sees the health of thousands of youth "sacrificed to its shrine" (63). Later in the text, to reinforce his condemnation of this practice, he cites the case history of a young girl whose nymphomania he attributes to enlarged genital organs, a condition he speculates may have been caused by her practice of what he has earlier referred to as "artificial indulgence" (63) : The genital organs of some women, acquire such a preponderance, as to make it always impossible for them to control the intensity of the erotic flame which devours them; such was the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 70 young girl of whom Buffon speaks: "I have seen, and I have regarded her as a singular phenomenon, a girl of twelve years of age, a dark brunette, of a bright and highly colored complexion, of small stature, but already fully formed, with a rounded neck and embonpoint [a euphemism for plumpness, perhaps referring to her breasts], perform the most indecent action at the simple appearance of a man; nothing could control her in this, neither the presence of her mother, nor remonstrances, nor punishments. Yet she did not lose her reason, and the attack, which was carried to such a point as to be frightful, ceased the moment that she remained alone with women." (177-178) Morrill's treatment for the enlarged clitoris is "cooling and astringent applications with saline purging ... at the same time avoiding exciting food, indolence, improper associations, sentimental reading, etc." (276) When these treatments fail: amputation of the salient organ should always be recommended, which is performed without subsequent inconvenience to the female, and with producing very little pain. Thus, it is consoling to reflect, that the female may be rid of a disgusting depravity, with perfect safety. Instances are not wanting, in which, girls have been entirely cured of masturbation by this operation, which had resisted all other means. In such cases a competent surgeon should always be consulted. (276) Most of Morrill's case histories are selected for a similar didactic function. The following case Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71 teaches women to avoid the bad judgment demonstrated by the mother in the story, and not incidentally, to be sure to choose a scientifically trained doctor: Dr. Dewees mentions the . . . sad fate of a "most amiable and interesting young creature," for whom he was requested to prescribe for the expected menses. She was in perfect health, and had not a mark of womanhood— though she was fifteen years of age— and this was all that could be urged by the mother in favor of an attempt to "bring down her courses." (Morrill 96) The doctor explains to the mother that there is nothing medical to be done in the situation, but six months later he finds the daughter ill and then dead as a result of the oil of savin (the dried tops of the juniper shrub, highly poisonous and often used to induce abortion) supplied by a quack: It seems that the mother, with the view of producing the menstrual discharge, had procured some medicine of a quack, which, upon giving according to his directions, produced fever, loss of appetite, and vomiting? she again called upon the "Doctor," and he encouraged her to persevere with the medicine, saying that the fever, etc., was an effort of nature for the end proposed— "she persevered, fatally persevered? for in a few days more she lost her lovely and only daughter." (Morrill 96) The message to the female reader is that it is important to listen to the scientifically trained doctor's advice. Consulting with a quack can be Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. deadly. The author makes a connection between practicing for the sole purpose of acquiring wealth and "deficient qualifications" (Morrill 96). Thus, a well- trained doctor will also be one for whom the patient's best interests come first and will therefore be the only trustworthy choice. As in Meigs, in this case the patient and her mother are characterized; the daughter is a most amiable and interesting creature, while the mother is willful and negligent in her single-minded desire to induce her daughter's menses. The doctor creates a very sympathetic ethos for himself by so characterizing the dead girl, and by expressing his fatherly concern over the mother's actions. In another set of cases, Morrill warns his audience against the quack practitioner who attempts to cure cancer with caustic substances. "For the purpose of guarding our readers against a certain class of empirics who infest the country, professing to cure cancer, we quote the following sensible and very true remarks of Dr. Dixon's, upon the subject of 'cancer plasters'" (256). Morrill cites Dixon at length about the pain and suffering that will be caused by these false remedies and his argument that the surgeon's knife is a far better option; Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73 It is but a short tine since the coroner was called to inspect the body of the unfortunate mother of a family in this city, who had been poisoned by the absorption of arsenic from a plaster applied by one of these wretched traffickers in human life. We were called to see another, who had lost an eyelid by the corrosive action of a similar preparation; and this too, as she assured us, for a trifling enlargement of a little blood-vessel— 'a mere speck, the size of a pin's head,' as she expressed it— that had remained from infancy to her twenty- fifth year! What more conclusive evidence that it was not a cancer, could there be? Cancer never attacks an infant, as everyone knows. (256-7) Other warnings come in the form of explaining the results of either improper personal management or the more dangerous and, to Morrill, the more immoral practice of inducing abortion. On the less immoral side, he recounts the story of a woman who placed her feet into cold water to stop her menstrual flow because she expected her lover. The result? "[S]he was brought dying into the hospital at Vienna" (103). Morrill's message here is that "[s]o much evil has resulted from such and similar impropriety, that the female cannot be too careful when the 'manner of women' is upon her" (103). Morrill has no sympathy for abortionists or for those who enlist their services. In his introduction, he characterizes abortionists as "female fiends" (10) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and later as "degraded wretches, not less criminal than the unnatural women, who are not ashamed to submit to their disgusting ministrations, . . (316). The result of these attempts is that, in most cases, the woman is not only unsuccessful at ending the pregnancy, but if she lives, she suffers terrible physical consequences. I once prescribed for a female, in whom such attempts had brought on a flooding which conducted her to the verge of the grave; she suffered horribly from pain in the interior of the pelvis for two months, notwithstanding which abortion did not take place, and she is now a prey to a large ulcer of the neck of the womb. I opened the body of an unhappy creature who suffered from like attempts, which did not succeed any better than the one above mentioned. (316) The case histories presented in Morrill are mostly devoid of the scientific language we saw beginning to characterize those in Bard and Meigs. Morrill, however, has a different audience and purpose. Because he wants to convince women to see medically trained doctors, and to act in a "moral" fashion, his purpose is more persuasive than educational, despite his statements in the introduction. It serves his purpose to fill the case histories with the horrible results of the improper actions of both women and quacks. The language is highly charged and seems calculated to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75 create fear. Normal woman, "the most beautiful object of creation," with her "attractive charms which act as an undying stimulus to man," (7) is contrasted with the "disgusting ministrations" (316) of the "female fiends" (10) who perform abortions. The woman who dies at the hands of a quack is an "unfortunate mother," (265) while she who dies after procuring an abortion is an "unhappy creature" (316). Morrill also euphemizes some expressions, in some cases to make the problem appear worse, and in some perhaps to avoid his own questionable interest in the topic. Masturbation sounds much worse when it is called "the degrading vice of artificial indulgence" (63). The term "embonpoint," (177) used to tone down his description of the young nymphomaniac's breasts, allows him to talk about her lasciviousness without sounding guilty of the same crime himself. In this same case we are simply told the young girl performed an indecent action, but we are never told what it is. Perhaps by allowing the reader to fill in this blank herself Morrill can accomplish his purpose of warning women away from any type of "inflamed" thought, while avoiding going into the dangerous details himself. If Morrill flirts with the titillating nature of the material he includes in his book, a later author, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76 S. Pancoast, M.D., seems to revel in it. His book, The Ladies/ New Medical Guide, published in Philadelphia in 1890, is a ladies' handbook intended for "every female interested in the health, beauty, longevity, happiness, and general well-being of her sex" (Pancoast vii). The publisher's preface informs us that Dr. Pancoast has written the book after "having his mind early drawn to the physical perfection and beauty of women . . ." (v). The text itself, however, does not focus on the questions the typical woman would probably have asked about pregnancy and childbirth. Instead, Pancoast seems much more interested in the bizarre and freakish. Embedded in the first section, which deals with woman's anatomy, are chapters on hermaphrodism, the moral institution of marriage, and woman's proper sphere of action. Though hardly medical, the chapters on marriage and woman's sphere of action are understandable in a 19th century handbook that also has a morale purpose. The chapter on hermaphrodism indicates a keen interest in distinctions between genders, and the freakish, side-show attractions that doctors before Pancoast had studied in order to determine what truly separates the masculine and feminine genders. In fact, a closer look at the case studies Pancoast includes suggests that he is using the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77 guise of "glorious science" to discuss topics that seem both inappropriate for a woman's handbook and, perhaps, indicative of his own prurient interests. Of the 112 cases included in the book, 26 are about emotional shocks to the mother causing bizarre birth defects. Twenty are about hermaphrodites; seventeen are about monstrous births like Siamese twins; twelve are about mothers killing their children by nursing them while upset; and nine are about superfoetation (in which the author proves that a woman can be impregnated more than once during a pregnancy). The remaining twenty-eight cases also illustrate very unusual circumstances or situations such as very old men fathering children, women purported to have given birth to as many as 365 children (at once), and early puberty (at ten months of age). None of these cases would have been of particular interest to the normal woman looking for information about how best to manage her pregnancy and most of them would have made her more frightened than if she had no information at all. For example, the readers of this book could learn that "a woman who had longed for a lobster brought forth a child resembling one of these animals" (206) and "another woman had a female child, the head of which looked like a shell-fish, (a bi-valve that opens Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78 and shuts its mouth,) which was caused by the mother having a strong desire for mussels during pregnancy" (206-7). For the reader not frightened by fish stories, there's the one about the woman who, upon seeing a criminal broken on the wheel, gave birth to an idiot child with similar broken bones (205). Finally, one of the most morbid tells of a pregnant woman who longed to bite the shoulder of a baker she knew: The husband wishing to gratify this morbid fancy of his wife, hired the man to submit to the operation. The woman made two bites, and so severe, that he would not allow her to try again. She gave birth to three children— one dead and two living. In this case it seemed to require a bite for each child to remove the morbid disease of the mind. Two bites being granted and the third refused, the refusal no doubt caused the third child to fall victim to the morbid mind of the mother. (207) Once the reader had learned that she had to worry about what she craved and what she saw during pregnancy, she could be further frightened by Pancoast's discussion of nursing, in which he warns mothers not to nurse their children while they are upset about anything. He illustrates this advice with examples of women who killed their children by nursing while in an agitated state: While in [a] state of strong excitement, the mother took up her child from the cradle, where it lay Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79 playing and in the most perfect health, never having had a moment's illness. She gave it the breast, and in so doing sealed its fate. In a few minutes the infant left off suckling, became restless, panted and sank dead upon its mother's bosom. (299) Of all of the odd cases included in the book, the ones about hermaphrodism are perhaps the most inappropriate to a woman's handbook. They are also the most bizarre and perhaps even titillating for both author and reader alike. Pancoast discusses both spurious and true hermaphrodism and sample cases for both follow: Otto has reported a remarkable case of a person who had lived for ten long years in a state of wedlock with three different men. At the age of thirty- five her third husband brought an action of divorce against her, alleging that she was afflicted with some sexual infirmity, which rendered the connubial act on his part extremely difficult and painful. On examination being made by two physicians, they decided that she was not a female but a male. The members of the Royal Medical College of Silesia subsequently confirmed this decision. The penis was imperforated and about two inches in length. There was a perineal fissure forming a false vagina, that was sufficient to receive the penis of the husband for an inch and a half in depth. The general conformation of this individual was strong and muscular, although the beard was thin and soft. The face, mammae, chest, pelvis and extremities were masculine. (142-143) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80 Imagine the images that would be formed in the reader's mind upon reading this story. How would the nineteenth-century woman have responded to this discussion? Surely the subject matter would have offended her modesty, regardless of how open minded she was toward obtaining medical information about pregnancy. In virtually every case about hermaphrodites, the length of the penis/clitoris is discussed; the individual's sexual proclivities are mentioned; and most of the other organs and their functions are described in depth. A case of "true" hermaphrodism is a good example of these features: An interesting case of Hermaphrodism has been given by Dr. Hendry of New York, in a letter dated from Lisbon in 1807. The subject was Portuguese, aged twenty-eight years, of a tall and slender muscular figure. The penis and testicles were in their usual situation, and in form and size resembled those of a male about the same age. The urethra extended to about one-third the length of the penis. The beard had a tendency to grow, but was kept cut short. The female parts resembled those of a well- formed person, except the labia, which were not prominent. The external organs appeared to be situated near the rectum. The breasts were small, voice and manners like those of a female. She menstruated regularly; was twice pregnant, and miscarried in the third and fourth month of gestation. During copulation, the penis became erect, but there never was a desire for copulation with the female sex. (148) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pancoast's book of bizarre cases shows how far the discussion of gynecology had progressed from Bard's distinctly personal account of his reaction to a retroverted uterus, Meigs' blushing apologies, White's controversial student demonstration, and Morrill's impassioned defense of educating women in physiology. Though atypical, Pancoast demonstrates that this type of discussion had become far more accepted by both the medical establishment and the general public, which would have formed the readership for his woman's handbook. A good contrast to this book is Dr. Alice B. Stockham's Tokology: A Book for Every Woman, published in 1884. Stockham's text is strictly practical, with sections on proper dress and shoes, exercise, and diet. She includes whole chapters on constipation, proper ventilation, indigestion and nausea, and the various other symptoms of pregnancy. The last chapter provides recipes for her fruit and rice diet. The case histories included in this volume are also quite different from Pancoast's, or the medical texts we have examined. Stockham uses cases to illustrate the points she makes about dress, exercise and diet, and in each we hear the woman's voice speaking, not the doctor's. All are personal accounts Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. told to the doctor, or sent in the form of a letter. None is quoted from another medical authority. A good example is a letter sent by a Mrs. C., published verbatim in the book: "This is to verify that I know what Dr. Stockham teaches in regard to 'Fruit Diet' is true. When pregnant with my last child, accidentally I lived upon rice and fruit, and my child was born comparatively without pain or sensible effort; could not get a physician in time, nor did I need one. In four previous deliveries I had physicians with me over twenty-four hours, and had prolonged and severe labors. I can account for the difference only in the fruit and rice diet." (122) Stockham's book is definitely a woman's book for women. Her aim is to educate women so that they can better care for themselves; her discussion of specific gynecological matters is limited to the practical issues she takes up. This same pattern is followed in two other women's handbooks also authored by women. Mrs. Prudence Saur's Maternity: A Book for Every Wife and Mother, published in 1896, also illustrates the homeopathic approach to medicine. Dr. Saur takes great care to print her qualifications on the title page of the book, but she does not try to establish herself as a scientist by using case histories to prove her points. Instead we find only three actual case histories cited and these are used to explain the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 83 effect of maternal influence on the fetus and the positive results of a fruit diet very similar to Stockham's. A turn of the century publication, Perfect Womanhood for Maidens-Wives-Mothers (1903), by Mary Melendy, M.D., Ph. D., is a virtual reprint of Saur's book (without acknowledgement), citing the same three cases and no more. These last three handbooks, written near the turn of the century, are good indications of the changes that had taken place in America between 1860 and 1890. Specifically for middle-class women, the changeover from a "productive to a consumer economy" meant that much of the work that had made her a productive member of the household had been taken over by industry (Douglas 77). To compensate, women became deeply involved in literature, both reading and writing to pass the time. As Douglas argues, women became consumers of literature in preparation for their new twentieth-century occupation as the chief household consumer (79). The turn-of-the-century woman had turned to literature and periodicals to find ways in which she could ply her "influence," a largely powerless means of affecting the moral behavior of those around her she had accepted as compensation for her economic "disestablishment" (55). Reading and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. writing the woman's handbook then, satisfied both this nascent consumerism and the need to exert influence, especially when the advice given helped women to become better mothers. Maternity remained an occupation for which women were uniquely qualified; the emerging technologies of the twentieth-century reproductive industry had yet to usurp this function. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter Three Gynecology at the Check-out Stand With the birth of Louise Joy Brown in 1978, the modem gynecological case history became standard fare in the lifestyles-type publication. With 135 articles and 22% of all articles published on reproductive technology since 1977, the lifestyles magazine has printed more on the topic than any other category. Though the lifestyles category is not exclusively comprised of women's magazines, I have chosen to narrow the scene by analyzing only the women's magazine because its audience is the prime target group for the reproductive technologies that the modern case history now promotes. The women's magazine is also an extremely appropriate place to investigate messages being sent to women about the new technology because of the role this periodical institution has played in shaping women's views of themselves and their roles as wives and mothers. The women's magazine has worked closely with the advertising industry to promote products designed to make the American housewife the best possible wife and mother. Edward Bok, editor of The Ladies' Home Journal from 1889 to 1920, explained this symbiotic relationship in 1898: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86 It is the growth of advertising in this country which, more than any other single element, has brought the American magazine to its present enviable position in points of literary, illustrative, and mechanical excellence. The American advertiser has made the superior American magazine of today possible. (qtd. in Wood 112) In his history of American magazines, James Wood explains the flip-side of this relationship: "Women's magazines are likewise a valuable advertising medium. Editorial and advertising pages naturally complement each other. Love is the subject of a romantic short story; the accessories of love are for sale in the advertising pages" (127). Based on this lucrative association, one could also add that the American magazine has made the superiority of the advertising business possible as well. The case history has adapted quite well to the women's magazine, an excellent venue for selling both ideal womanhood and technology. Already a persuasive text, the case history can now draw on the women's magazines' well- established promotion of motherhood to present medical technology as the answer to the childless woman's dreams. The change in agent from doctor to patient or her narrator makes the case history even more effective because personal accounts are both sentimental and sensational, and because the authors have a close Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. affinity with their audience. These are women talking to women: sisters, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers sharing their stories of love, longing and courage. The stories being shared are strikingly similar in their emotional extremes, overblown language, and ubiquitous happy endings. They read like modern fairy tales, with all of the attendant elements: a woman so committed to motherhood that she endures a painful and heroic struggle to complete herself through childbirth and/or motherhood; a doctor who wields technology like a magic wand to make the childless woman's dreams come true; and the final achievement, the perfect "miracle1 1 baby who is the inevitable result. Who is the woman reaching for The Ladies' Home Journal or Redbook as she stands in line during her weekly shopping expedition? She is a woman with many more options than her grandmother or even her mother, and at the same time she has a list of entirely new problems. As a result of several pushes by women's rights activists, she now has the right to vote, to use contraceptives, to obtain a legal abortion, to get an education, and to enter the work force on a career path. To accomplish the latter, she may have delayed motherhood well into her thirties, but today she is most likely to be a married, working mother. With her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88 husband, she owns her home and makes a combined household income of $40,000 per year (Redbook Research). Depending upon which magazine she is reaching for, she may or may not be college-educated, and her age will range from 25 to 55 and over, but either way she probably performs most of the household chores and childcare responsibilities, and she is still the main consumer in the house. Because of the options today's woman has, she may also have had to cope with infertility caused by delaying pregnancy. "If she had children, the young woman of the 1980s was likely to have them later than her mother had done. During the 1970s, fertility dropped precipitously among women in their early twenties although it increased among women a decade older" (Woloch 533) . The professional consumer role that the turn-of- the-century woman adopted has become so expensive that the woman at today's check-out stand now has to work. Rather than having the leisure to spend her husband's money, she must work to help to provide for her children in middle-class fashion, with its attendant ability to buy the consumer goods that are promoted by the magazine in her hands (Margolis 219). Ironically, delaying childbirth to establish her career may also Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have those very children she was working for. For this new problem, medical science now has a solution. Just as technology took over women's productive activities in the nineteenth century, medicine today provides a technology that can take over the twentieth-century woman's reproductive function. Added to the advertisements promoting consumer goods to make life more convenient for working housewives, are case histories promoting the latest marvels of medical technology: the "miracle babies" being created in the nation's laboratories. Consumerism has come full circle; women can now purchase the technology that creates babies. They may even purchase the use of another woman's body to be used as the site of this technology, and have their own genetically-related child delivered into their open but unlabored arms. To understand the audience of the women's magazine better, a brief discussion of the more general cultural scene will illustrate how several key events in the history of America have made this state of reproductive affairs possible. American women have a "gynecological" history that has helped to prepare the way for the emergence of reproductive technology, and this history has shaped the modern middle-class woman's Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90 reality in such a way as to predispose her to accept infertility as a problem that must be cured by any means possible. In the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century, differing public attitudes about the procreational needs of the middle- and lower-class woman were being shaped. One of the most influential forces shaping these attitudes was the birth control movement. The movement itself was characterized by mixed motives. Support for legalized birth control came from disparate groups. Feminists and socialists saw it as a means to free women to choose the course of their lives, while eugenicists supported it for very different reasons. They saw it as a way to limit reproduction by those they deemed unfit: the poor, and the mentally and physically defective (Woloch 365) . For middle-class whites, however, many eugenicists opposed birth control because they feared it would be a means of committing "race suicide" (365). Other opponents included doctors who worried that it would demean the marriage contract and somehow violate the "sanctity of motherhood" (365). Many middle-class women also opposed legalizing birth control because they believed easy access to it would encourage promiscuity among their men (365). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91 The middle-class woman could oppose public dissemination of birth control information because she already had greater access to methods for preventing birth through her relationship with her family doctor. In fact, middle-class birth rates declined steadily through the 1930s, and only began to increase again with the baby boom after the second World War (Evans 238). For the middle-class woman, birth control was a means of continuing financial stability and retaining middle-class status by limiting children to an affordable number. Thus, motherhood was always promoted for the middle-class woman; using birth control simply meant she could do a better job of mothering. For the lower-class woman, however, birth control had an entirely different meaning. In 1873, the passage of the federal Comstock laws made it illegal to dispense any type of information about birth control, or birth control devices, through the mails (Woloch 365). With abortion criminalized by then as well (Margolis 42), and no funds for regular visits to a family doctor, the large, poverty-stricken, immigrant population of the country had no means by which to limit birth. For the lower-class woman, birth control meant economic survival— and often physical survival as Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 92 well (Evans 200). Many of those who promoted birth control for her, however, saw it as a way of preventing her from ever becoming a mother and thereby ensuring the quality of the race. In 1912, Margaret Sanger, working as a public health nurse in New York's Lower East Side, witnessed the results of legal prohibitions of birth control as she nursed women back to health from botched, illegal abortions (Woloch 363). After her apocryphal Sadie Sachs experience, Sanger began her lifelong crusade for contraception.1 Success for the birth control movement was marked by a federal court decision in 1936, which made it legal for doctors to distribute birth control devices and information (443). In 1960, the birth control pill was approved by the FDA (Evans 265). Finally, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973 (Woloch 524). These legal developments made it easier for women to have sex without bearing children. For the middle- class woman this freedom meant the opportunity to attain a higher education and, with it, a better position in the work force. At the end of World War II, however, the American housewife was asked to vacate the marketplace so that the returning troops could find employment (Woloch 472) . To encourage her to go "back Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 93 to the kitchen/' motherhood was promoted even more assiduously than before (473) . The baby boom period of the fifties and sixties is a testament to the efficacy of this movement. Whether she was educated or not, and whether she continued to work or not, the fifties woman was still intent upon marriage and family. Her education would simply make her a more interesting wife and a better mother (500-501). Working would allow her to contribute to the family income before childbirth and after her children were reared (500). The women's magazine was a major proponent of the new domesticity, touting motherhood as women's only real vocation. "'Whether they work at outside jobs or not, today's young mothers find their greatest satisfaction in home, husband, and family'" (Ladies' Home Journal qtd. in Margolis 222). Meanwhile, medical science had gone far beyond its nineteenth-century focus on mastering techniques for treating dangerous and painful labors. The isolation and synthesis of the female sex hormones led to far more than the development of the birth control pill in the 1950s. Scientists now began to experiment with these new hormones. The use of DES to create "bigger and better" babies is one example of this Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. experimentation (Seaman and Seaman 5-6). More importantly, having access to and knowledge of the hormonal and physiological workings of the female reproductive system meant that medical science could turn its attention to an exciting new arena of research: creating life in the laboratory. Genetic research is providing the last piece of the puzzle; the human genome project's ongoing mission is to map the entire human genetic code. Doing so will mean that science will have the ability to detect and eliminate the genes that cause diseases like cancer, muscular dystrophy, and Tay Sachs. Will we also learn to eliminate physical and psychological traits considered by some to be undesirable as well? Will the next "dis eases" on the list be traits like eye color, gender, race, and homosexuality? The middle-class represents a ready and accepting market for this new technology with what appears to be a growing incidence of infertility, a strong desire to procreate genetically, and the well-trained consumer's desire for perfection. This combination of factors means that gynecological practitioners are now in possession of all of the tools necessary to manipulate every stage of the production of life. Women's acceptance of reproductive technology is crucial to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 95 this manipulation. Gynecological practice has moved from mystery to miracle in less than one hundred years, but for the miracles to be successful, women must want them. In the women's magazine, the case history has been an integral tool in the promotion of this new technology. With the women's magazine still hard at work promoting motherhood for the woman of the nineties, it comes as no surprise that the case history performs the dual role of selling both motherhood and technology within its pages. Because she may have delayed childbearing to achieve her career goals, today's woman may now find herself in need of medical help to accomplish what is still considered (at least within the pages of the women's magazine) to be the ultimate expression of true womanhood: maternity. As it appears in the women's magazine, the case history supports the medical goal of unravelling the mysteries of reproduction by selling the new technologies as medical miracles. Case histories are presented as success stories that rarely, if ever, address the underlying ethical and moral questions they should inevitably raise. Instead, the case histories reinforce the belief that women's lives will be unfulfilled if they do not reproduce, emphasizing this Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 96 reproductive goal over any potential deunage to the woman's body. The women in these stories are presented as heroic sufferers who would endure any amount of pain to attain their goal of motherhood. This emphasis on women's instinctive need to reproduce helps to maintain an underlying definition of women as incubators, valued solely for their ability to nurture new life. Ironically, the new technologies take reproduction out of women's bodies, and place control over it firmly in the hands of the quality-conscious field of medicine. To create a need for services such as contractual motherhood and in-vitro fertilization, motherhood must be presented to the reader of the women's magazine as the most vital accomplishment of her life. This is not a difficult task; women's magazines have been dedicating themselves to the goal of helping their reader to become the best housewife and mother possible since the nineteenth century. The magazines are filled with stories whose morals offer advice on how to properly fulfill the duties of wife and mother. Goodev's Lady's Book is an excellent example of a popular nineteenth-century publication that promoted ideal femininity. A women's magazine which flourished under the editorship of Sarah Josepha Hale from 1837 to 1877 (Zophy 1-2), Goodey's large, middle-class Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. readership provided Hale with a forum for the editorials she used to promote her ideas on the appropriate expression of womanhood during the Victorian era (3). She believed that women should exhibit the four basic virtues identified in Chapter Two as defining "True Womanhood”: purity, piety, domesticity, and submission (Zophy 44). With a peak circulation of a half-million readers in 1869 (Zophy 50), Sarah Hale had an excellent forum in which to express her ideals. This she did by printing a combination of her own editorials, short fiction, poetry, feature articles and essays, fashion plates and engravings (49). A fictional story that teaches how important submission is to the ideal wife was printed in the May 1844 edition of Goodey/s Magazine and Ladv/s Book. Titled "I Will!” the story tells of a young girl who is worried that her fiance will prove to be an overbearing husband. Her aunt, concerned that her niece will make the same mistake she did, decides to tell her the story of her own marriage. It seems that as a young bride, she stood up to her husband: when he forbade her to see a friend he didn't like, she refused to obey. He left the home and ten days later she received word that he was on his deathbed. Though not Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 98 explicitly stated, his subsequent death is attributed by implication to her disobedience. Her advice to her niece is to "[a]void carefully, religiously avoid, setting yourself in opposition to your husband" (Arthur 215). The niece follows her aunt's advice, and she and her husband live happily ever after: "now they smoothly glide along the stream of life blessed indeed in all their marriage relations" (215). Another fictional story, titled "Baby-Visiting," exemplifies the ideal traits of domesticity by telling the story of a sensible young mother. Mrs. Dunham sends her three children and their nurse off to several of her friends' homes on their first rounds of visits. At each household, the reader is treated to an example of bad mothering. The first friend refuses to see the children at all because she "would as soon admit so many spaniels; and as to having my carpets soiled and my bijouterie broken by other people's children, that's out of the question" (Annan 266). The second mother, Mrs. Fenwick, is obsessed with clothing her children in the most luxuriant materials she can find, and she criticizes the simple clothing Mrs. Dunham prefers. When Mrs. Fenwick's children enter the room, it is evident that they are spoiled brats, arguing and fighting amongst themselves. They then turn to the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dunham children to continue their fight (268). The nurse takes the children and leaves, but not before the Fenwicks have influenced little Lizzy Dunham, who produces a temper tantrum on the street over her plain bonnet (269) . On they go, from house to house, being stuffed with sweets, quizzed by a woman who is obsessed with education, and exposed to illness by a negligent mother. When they finally return home and Mrs. Dunham learns of their adventures, she wisely decides that this will be their last visiting expedition. Nearly one hundred years later, we find the case history still teaching submission and domesticity in Ladies7 Home Journal (LHJ). Now it is in the context of obtaining medical care. A case history that appeared in the April 1949 edition promotes the importance of the gynecological expert. It also shows just how well accepted medical birthing practices had become by the end of the first half of the century. The author, Betsy Marvin McKinney, tells the story of the birth of her third child. After two anesthetized births, the author decides to have her third child "naturally.1 1 She cites a book by Grantly Dick Read, Childbirth Without Fearf and chronicles her experience persuading her doctor to go along with this unusual plan (116). At the hospital she is viewed as something Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 100 of a medical curiosity by those who attend her. She tells her story about her "desire to witness the birth of [her] child as a rational [i.e. undrugged] woman" in order to help other women to experience the same pleasure that she did (116). Though on the surface this account may seem to call the doctor's authority into question, McKinney does not question the necessity for medical attention or for the doctor's approval of her choice to give birth without drugs. She has her child at the hospital with both an internist and her obstetrician in attendance. The story reinforces the normality of the hospital birth, and simply modifies it by showing that with doctor approval anesthesia may not always be necessary. McKinney has acted quite correctly. She has submissively asked for her doctor's permission for her unusual treatment, and she has done so to maximize her enjoyment of childbirth, the experience that most fully defines her domesticity. Another group of case histories appears in LHJ in 1950 in its "Tell Me Doctor" series, authored by Henry B. Safford, M.D. He recounts the stories of several women who come to his office with gynecological complaints. While he treats them, he gives a running commentary on what he is doing and why. His Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 101 explanations are often very medical i.e. "paroxysmal vasomotor dilation of the surface vessels" for hot flashes (#10 31). This series is an interesting hybrid of the scientific approach to gynecological treatment and the human interest type of account we see in McKinney's story. Though Safford's primary objective seems to be presenting medical information for his reader, his moral and social values are at best thinly veiled, at worst overt and obvious. His patients are linguistic constructs, easily manipulated to show his approval or disapproval for their actions. He asks the patients questions about abortions with a disapproving frown, and when one woman asks his opinion about artificial insemination, he hesitates, then responds that it is only acceptable when the husband's sperm is used. Certainly the purity ethic still holds true for Dr. Safford. The eighth case in the series is a good example of the doctor's expectation that his patients will submit to male authority— in this case the medical authority. It begins with the caption: "I guess I had to learn the hard way, Doctor. And now that I've learned— it's too late" (Safford #8 31) . In this case, a woman has come to the doctor's office with a problem she has had for Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 102 two years. Though she has seen other doctors, no one has cured her and she has discontinued treatment. She appears to be rather ignorant. When the doctor asks what the diagnosis was, she says [s]omething about my tubes. I didn't understand what'" (31). When he finally gets it out of her that she has gonorrhea, he chastises her severely for discontinuing the treatments. "'You were a foolish woman not to have done as you were advised— criminally foolish! . . . You never would have gotten away with it in this town!'" (31) The characterization of this woman as foolish is reinforced when the doctor begins to explain the nature of the infection to her and she says she doesn't understand him. He responds "'I'll take a couple of minutes to explain, even though it can't make much difference to you'" (31). The doctor explains the etiology of the disease, in medical terms, then asks "'[h]ave I made it clear what has taken place?'" (212) The patient, obviously lost in the language, answers "'I guess I'll have to believe what you tell me Doctor. They said you knew your business'" (212). Next the doctor tells her that because of the seriousness of the disease, all of her reproductive organs will have to be removed. When the patient Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 103 objects, he tells her that she will never have children, that her ovaries are gone, and her "'uterus is of no use/M (213). By the time the doctor is finished explaining her condition to her, the patient is subdued by his knowledge and compliant in the face of his authority. Finally showing the submissiveness that could have saved her reproductive organs, she tugs "silently at the corner of her handkerchief" and makes the statement that serves as the caption to this case: "'I guess I had to learn the hard way. And now that I've learned— it's too late'1 1 (213). In another case the doctor shows his almost god like knowledge of the human body when his patient walks into the office and he says he has been expecting her. He has already calculated her due date from the wedding announcement he received three months earlier. It seems that he knew she was pregnant before she did. In the ensuing discussion, her sensitive and innocent feminine nature and the doctor's professional authority are both emphasized. This patient is the exemplar of the nicely domestic woman, newly married and now preparing for motherhood. She objects to the "rabbit test" because the rabbit has to die: "'The poor thing! I wouldn't want to do that. . . . Couldn't you use a rat?'" (#11 194) He responds Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104 reassuringly: "'You'd better leave that to me'" (194). At the end of the exam, the patient is excited and eager to see an X-ray of the child. "'What a thought— having a picture of one's baby before it was bom! I'm so interested in all this'" (194). Doctor Safford responds: "'I see that you are and I approve of it'" (194). A very notable characteristic of this series is that all of the stories are cliffhangers. Just as the doctor has diagnosed the woman's problem, the case history ends with "To Be Continued." We leave one poor woman on her way to the hospital for a biopsy on a lump in her breast with a possible related endometrial problem (#10 31). Certainly, this kind of suspense makes for good magazine sales as most readers will fret over the fate of the women, not only because they have become interested but also because the very same problems may happen to them. Overall, these cases are very informative for the reader, but they are also rather judgmental and possibly frightening. Safford has done an excellent job of reinforcing the need for medical expertise, infusing his message with his own moral stance on such issues as abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and artificial insemination. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. When these "Tell Me Doctor" accounts appeared in 1950, Ladies's Home Journal had already been in publication for 67 years. Though not all of the women's magazines that began in the nineteenth century have survived into the twentieth, those that have create a solid foundation for the industry, bringing much of their nineteenth-century heritage with them. Of the seven "sister" publications in the service magazine category, three have been in publication for over 100 years: McCall's (1870), Ladies' Home Journal (1883), and Good Housekeeping (1885) (Wood 103, 105). The remaining four have been in publication since the first half of the twentieth century: Redbook (1903), Better Homes & Gardens (1922), Family Circle (1932), and Woman's Day (1938) (Garvey 674 and Wood 337, 264, 259). The seven sisters have a combined circulation of over 40 million (Katz and Katz 1066), which means they reach an incredibly wide audience of American women. To demonstrate just how high these figures are, the four most popular fashion magazines have an approximate total circulation of 7 million (Redbook Research). For my study of the how the modern gynecological case history represents reproductive technology to the readership of the women's magazine, I will look at two magazines— both originating in the nineteenth century— Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 106 that appeal to the older woman: Ladies/ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping; two that sell to young career woman: Redbook and Glamour: and two very recent weeklies that appeal primarily to the young housewife: Woman's World (1981) and First For Women (1989). From these six magazines I will examine twenty- seven articles, all of which present gynecological case histories. Eight of the accounts are first person narratives written by the woman who experienced the events. Two are first person accounts as told to a staff writer. Seventeen are profiles of women involved in reproductive technologies. Included in this last group are newsworthy pieces like Ladies* Home Journal's exclusive interview with Leslie Brown (mother of Louise Joy Brown) and Good Housekeeping's exclusive interview with Laurie and Jon Steel (parents of Samantha Steel, one of the first American "test-tube" babies).2 These six women's magazines can be loosely divided into three groups representing "high," "middle," and "low-brow" publications based on their circulations, longevity, and editorial policies. At the "high-brow" end I will place Ladies' Home Journal and Good Housekeeping. A the ripe old age of 112 and with a circulation of 4.1 million (Katz and Katz 1071), LHJ is one of the standard bearers in the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 107 industry. The Journal had a colorful beginning with Edward Bok at its helm. His expose of the patent medicine manufacturers contributed significantly to the passage of the Food and Drug Act (Wood 117) and his 1906 campaign to educate his readers about venereal disease brought lifesaving information to many women, despite the lost circulation and the criticism it provoked (119). We have seen examples of LHJ's promotion of domesticity in the 1950s; it now covers "parenting, family life, and women's changing roles. . . . LHJ believes that women today are living on a dual track, and appears to be reaching for an updated, intelligible philosophy" (Katz and Katz 1071). LHJ continues to promote domesticity, albeit an updated version. The typical reader has a high school education and an average age of 44, though a considerable number of readers is in the 50 plus age category (Redbook Research). Founded in 1885, just two years after LHJ. Good Housekeeping (GH) has been sending its 5.2 million readers the same messages about domesticity for 110 years (Katz and Katz 1070). The magazine's editorial goal is "'to uphold high levels of good taste'" (qtd. in Katz and Katz 1070) and its articles are largely Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108 based on nostalgia or personal accounts (1070). Written for a general audience with an average age of 43, it also has a number of readers in the over 50 group (Redbook Research). Like the Journal, Good Housekeeping's nineteenth- century accomplishments were considerable. The Good Housekeeping Institute provided information on the quality of household merchandise and grew into a sophisticated laboratory that did its own testing prior to affixing its coveted "Good Housekeeping Seal" on those products that passed its scrutiny (Wood 123). Since many of the readers of these two journals are in their fifties, they are not a direct market for reproductive technologies (at least for now). These demographics are supported by the advertisements that surround the case histories. Along with the usual ads for feminine products, clothing, foods, recipes, and makeup, we find arthritis medicine, "Oil of Olay" for the woman whose daughter just went off to college, and grandma trading an "Etch-A-Sketch" for a hug. This older reader is, however, quite likely to have daughters, which makes her an important secondary audience. The technologies may not appeal to her directly, but she will certainly think of a childless daughter in pain as she reads Laurie Steel's tale of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. barren woe in Good Housekeeping. The advertisement for Gerber baby food that has been placed there will only make the problem more poignant. While reading about Louise Richards' four surrogacies in LHJ. our grandmotherly type will probably not consider buying "Bundle of Joy" for her barren daughter. "An enchanting porcelain doll capturing all the warmth and innocence of a newborn baby" (23) and complete with its own hospital I.D. bracelet, this would be a cruel gift for someone who yearns for motherhood and cannot achieve it on her own. On the other hand, our reader can now tell her daughter where to go for help since Richards' story tells her about the agency she contracts with: Surrogate Parenting in Louisville, Kentucky. For their part, without their mother's support, many daughters would probably hesitate to go ahead with such reproductive technologies. The "Oil of Olay" advertisement which appears on the second page of the Journal's exclusive coverage of the Leslie Brown story is a subtle reminder of how influential this older audience is. "Isabel," who is now using the product to preserve her looks, has recommended it to her daughter. The two confide in each other. The daughter, who is now also a good friend, follows her mother's advice (64). When Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 110 Isabel's daughter is ready to start a family, she may need the assistance of reproductive technology and she will want her mother's approval. After reading the heartwarming birth stories printed in the pages of her trusted magazine, her mother will be much more disposed to grant it. Both the Journal and GH have printed only articles that are supportive of reproductive technologies. Titles in the Journal read like a menu of available repro-tech services with titles like "I Had My Sister's Baby," "Giving the Gift of Life," "Brave New Baby," and "Our Miracle Daughter." The women depicted in these stories are exemplary illustrations of LHJ's motto: "Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman." Good Housekeeping can match the Journal's coverage tear for tear, personal story for personal story. Indeed, GH appears to have affixed its prized seal on reproductive technologies without the benefit of the scientific testing to which it submits other household products. The emotional, first-person accounts, with titles like "Kim Casali's Miracle Baby," "God Willed It," and "Good Housekeeping Gave Us Our Son." make the magazine's endorsement of modern technology as apparent as the value it places on motherhood. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Appealing to a younger audience of fashion, beauty, and health conscious women, Redbook and Glamour have lower circulations than their older counterparts— and racier editorial policies. In the context of the industry, we will consider them to represent the "middle-brow" group. They also offer a more balanced presentation of reproductive technology than LHJ and GH. Redbook. though considered one of the seven sisters, blurs the lines between the service and fashion categories for its 3.3 million readers (Redbook Research). Boasting that it is an "editorial rebel" by virtue of its greater coverage of beauty and fashion (Redbook Research), the magazine prefers articles that "entertain, educate, and inspire [its] readers to confront challenging issues" (Garvey 674). Katz and Katz characterize its tone as "confident, even brash" and say that it "pulls no punches" on matters of sexuality (1074). To its credit, of its seven articles on reproductive technology, two are commentaries that examine the issues raised by such practices as egg donation and sperm banking and two of the cases were written by former contract mothers who now disapprove of the practice. Overall, the coverage afforded to reproductive technology provided by Redbook is mixed, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 112 presenting both critical and positive views of its value. Glamour was founded in 1939 and has a circulation of 2.3 million Garvey 670). This glossy fashion magazine is responsible for printing perhaps the best critical article on reproductive technology in any of the traditional women's magazines. Sociologist Barbara Katz Rothman is a professor at CUNY and she has written a book on the topic, Recreating Motherhood. Sandwiched between an eight page spread of very young, very thin bathing suit models, and a seven page spread of equally young, equally gorgeous hair and makeup models, "The Frightening Future of Baby-Making" is a surprise find in these pages. And it is not the only critical article Glamour has published. In 1989, Rasa Gustaitis' expose of what she calls "Infertility Hype" warns readers to choose their fertility specialists carefully. This expose is balanced by a defense of contractual motherhood written in 1991 by one of Glamour's contributing editors. Another small article also printed in 1991 profiles a lesbian woman who fought for and lost visitation rights to two children her former partner gave birth to through artificial insemination. The editors insult their readers by stamping the word controversy in big block letters Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113 across -the page. So Glamour too presents a rather mixed bag where coverage of reproductive technology is concerned. Woman's World (WW) and First For Women (FTW) can easily be placed at the "low brow” end of the women's magazine industry. Published weekly rather than monthly, both are recent entries into the market: Woman's World in 1981 and First For Women in 1989 (Katz and Katz 1077, Ulrich's 2753). With circulations of about 1.5 million, both magazines reach a smaller audience than their bigger sisters (Katz and Katz 1077, Ulrich's 2753). Though WW invites articles that cover "controversial, dramatic, and human interest women's issues,” (Garvey 675) the controversy seems entirely left out of its pages. Katz and Katz describe the magazine as busy and cluttered and find value only in the food section. "Woman's World covers just about everything briefly and not very well. It is an exercise in oversimplification" (1077) . With articles on losing weight, child safety, adoption, children with cancer, how to strengthen your marriage, and home furnishings, and a child on almost every page, it is easy to see that this magazine is aimed at the young mother. It comes as no surprise then to find the story Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 114 of Kim Arnott's miracle babies (quadruplets) on the cover of one issue, and Naomi Durst's bouncing quadruplets on another. First For Women has not been in publication long enough for Katz and Katz to have passed judgment on it, but with the same publisher as WW, its format is strikingly familiar. (The quality of the paper and the layout are better.) Like its sister publication, its best offerings are in the food section. It also has home, family, and health articles aimed at the young mother. Every issue has a story on childbirth and its most striking case history is illustrated by a cover photo of soap opera actress Deidre Hall holding her "miracle baby" born through a contract mother. Whether they appear in the "high," "medium," or "low-brow" magazine, the case histories presented in the women's magazines function as less-than- representative anecdotes. They deflect one reality in the place of another. The reality represented in these case histories is the medical attainment of an ideal and "modern" (technological) motherhood. This ideal is still based on the four qualities that defined the cult of true womanhood in the nineteenth century: purity, piety, domesticity, and submission. The case histories form a persuasive body of texts which demonstrates Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 115 these four qualities in the modern mother and convinces the reader that reproductive technologies make it possible to attain them through the medical miracle: "[I]t was a miracle of modern medicine" (Baker 46); "She is a miracle" (Remsberg 73); "We've shared the miracle of life" (Richards 22); "Sam's birth . . . was literally a medical miracle" (Edmondson Gupta 141); Arlette Schweitzer "tells her miraculous story" (Schweitzer and Casey 125); and finally, "Our Miracle Daughter" (Travaglini 24). Filled with overly sentimental language, superlative descriptions, and the extremely overused miracle metaphor, these fantasy accounts are made up of a blend of elements from the fairy tale, the heroic quest, and the religious miracle. The elements they have in common include: a good wife, pious and pure, endowed with an overwhelming desire to become a mother despite the insurmountable obstacles in her path; a heroic and arduous (often quite painful) quest to fulfill her dream; a kind and fatherly wizard/doctor to whom she submits her body in order to achieve her goal; his magic wand, the technology that holds the power to transform her barren womb into fertile ground— the ultimate expression of domesticity; and finally, a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 116 perfect baby, a little miracle from God, who inevitably populates the happy ending to the story. As fairy tale heroines the women in these case histories are more akin to Cinderella than to Sleeping Beauty. They are not royalty; they are ordinary, suffering women, waiting for childbirth to rescue them from the cinders of childlessness and make them complete. "Who cares about me? I'm a nobody from Plattsburg, N.Y." says Doris Del Zio (Del Zio and Wilding 135). Leslie Brown tells the world, "'We're just two ordinary people with a simple ordinary name. We're the Browns'" (qtd. in Libman Block 71). Laurie Steel, transformed like Cinderella by the magical dress of the princess, goes in to Dr. Steptoe's operating room hoping fervently that his magic will make the transformation permanent; "A tradition has developed among the women at Bourn Hall to dress for the occasion [implantation]. Laurie brushed her long blond hair, put on makeup and a magenta velvet gown" (Remsberg 106). By proclaiming their affinity with the common woman, these heroines also proclaim the normality of their actions. They are like any other woman who wants to experience the ultimate expression of domesticity; "You may have read about me. . . . I am the woman who Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 117 wanted desperately to have a baby" (Del Zio and Wilding 135). No one illustrates the intense drive to motherhood that is characteristic of the women in these tales better than Leslie Brown, who was willing to endure any amount of pain to achieve her goal. She tried for twelve years to have a baby before becoming Dr. Patrick Steptoe's first successful in-vitro patient: Nothing slowed Leslie. Uncomplaining, she underwent dozens of tests and explorations. She permitted Dr. Steptoe to completely remove her useless Fallopian tubes. The operation was extremely painful and on the long train ride back to Bristol from Oldham the wound in her stomach began to bleed. Leslie was in agony until she reached home and John could gently pull away the layers of her clothes that had become glued to her by her clotting blood. (emphasis added Libman Block 66) These lines create a grisly image, but also one of a courageous woman who would go through anything to achieve the ultimate goal of motherhood. Like Brown, Doris Del Zio was willing to deal with pain if it meant she could accomplish her goal of motherhood. And she did have pain. In spite of her allergy to painkillers she tells us through staffwriter Suzanne Wilding that she endured three operations to open her blocked Fallopian tubes (200). Even before Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 118 the third operation she describes herself as "utterly miserable. My abdomen now looked like a road map and my insides were a mass of adhesions. Sometimes they were so painful that I just couldn't straighten up" (200). In spite of all of this pain, Del Zio participated in an attempt at in-vitro fertilization in 1973 at Columbia-Presbyterian in New York. Because the experiment had not been approved by the hospital, the head obstetrician destroyed the fertilized eggs, washing them and Del Zio's hopes for motherhood right down the drain (202). In a nation-wide extension of motherly concern, Del Zio took the hospital to court "to help some of the 250,000 other American women who also have fertility problems" (135). LHJ got the exclusive on America's first test-tube baby from Laurie and Jon Steel because they considered the magazine a "longtime friend" (Blyth 2). Freelance author Bonnie Remsberg was asked to write the story by the magazine's publisher because she admired her superior writing skills (2). Remsberg's description of Laurie Steel illustrates how well she fits the good- wife-with-trouble-conceiving category: "Laurie was ... a long-legged, suntanned California blonde, bursting with good health and honest charm" (75). Her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 119 husband Jon calls her "'a golden girl, not just her looks, but her whole being'" (gtd. in Remsberg 75). Unfortunately, a disease that put her in the hospital shortly after they were married distorted Laurie Steel's reproductive organs. Despite her medical condition, she tried to conceive for twelve years because she "simply, instinctively and profoundly wanted to have a baby, to love it, to meet the challenge of raising it, and to share it with Jon" (75). Laurie Steel is an example not only of persistence, but of a willingness to endure anything to achieve motherhood. In her "12-year search for the solution to her problem" (77) she had surgery to open her tubes, took fertility drugs, and went on "painful, expensive and debilitating rounds of doctors" (105). When she learned of Dr. Patrick Steptoe's work on in- vitro fertilization she eagerly told her husband "'I don't mind being a guinea pig'" (qtd. in Remsberg 105). In another account, Claudia Franson tells the reader: "'I don't think I was fanatical about having a baby. I just didn't want to give up without having tried everything'" (qtd. in Baker 50). Claudia Franson's quest took seven years. She took Clomid, had Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 120 surgery to remove an adhesion, was treated for a microscopic infection, and miscarried. Yet after all of these impediments, shortly after the birth of their son she and her husband were already preparing to try to conceive a second time. Soap opera actress Deidre Hall takes the award for the longest pursuit of motherhood. First For Women's profile details her ”20-year struggle for son David" (Radovsky 37). Hall divorced two husbands who did not want to adopt and subjected herself to the entire gamut of fertility treatments. In her own words: "'I injected myself with hormones, tried artificial insemination and had every hand in the medical profession up my skirt trying to figure out what was wrong with me/H (qtd. in Radovsky 37). Now married to her third husband and mother to David (via a contract mother), Hall proclaims: "'[m]y hands and heart are full/" (38). If Hall takes the prize for longevity, then Pamela Lowe is definitely in the running for the award for most painful medical experiences. Lowe went on a five year and $40,000 "quest for conception" (McDowell 30). Like the other women discussed here, Lowe tried everything: "Along the way they had become seasoned travelers on a tortuous journey that included daily Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121 temperature-taking, hormone injections, artificial insemination, sperm washing, in-vitro fertilization, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, psychotherapy, countless visits to the doctor and buckets of tears" (30). According to the standards of these fairy tales, Lowe is all the more heroic for the pain she went through in the pursuit of motherhood. A good wife also remains faithful to her husband, even after his death. Kim Casali's story shows that the ideal of purity still holds true for the twentieth century woman. After "four golden years of marriage," her husband Roberto was diagnosed with cancer (deHolguin Cayzer 90). Because of her "boundless love" for him, she took him off to a sperm bank so she could be artificially inseminated and bear him a third son posthumously (90). A cartoonist responsible for the sentimental "Love is . . ." cartoons, Casali shows how well she fits the fine feminine mold when she says that she feels guilty about her success: "My doodling was just for Roberto" (92). (One can almost see her blush.) Her real ambition was to achieve their goal of having four children and "living happily ever after," (92) regardless of her husband's medical condition. "But often her husband was too ill or in too much pain for Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 122 lovemaking," so Casali devised the sperm bank plan (92). The quality of purity comes in many forms. Claudia Franson describes herself as "'very old- fashioned,'" a virgin when she married (qtd. in Baker 53). Being artificially inseminated with a donor's sperm made her very uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she resigned herself to the procedure so she could give her husband a child. In contrast, Susan Walker, who wanted to have a child though she was not married, found artificial insemination to be the answer to her moral dilemma: "I am a deeply religious person and would never consider having sex with a man out of wedlock. But this new method involved no intimate contact" (Walker 22). For Patty Nowakowski, however, who acted as a surrogate, being artificially inseminated made her feel "sick to [her] stomach knowing it was not [her] husband's semen" (Nowakowski 38). For all of the women profiled here, there is a hierarchy of motherhood. The top preference is to experience pregnancy and childbirth, even if this means the woman has to use an egg donor. Next in line is hiring a woman to carry a child who is created from the mother's genetic material, followed by the hiring a woman who "donates" her own egg but is fertilized with Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 123 the contracting male's semen. Finally, the last method on the list is adoption. For those who demand a biological connection this is never an option, but for those who do choose it, adoption is not as fulfilling as pregnancy and childbirth. Thus, even if a woman has already adopted children, if she has the opportunity to acquire a child even remotely biologically connected, and/or she can gestate herself, she must do so to properly consider herself a mother. Debby Dinsmore's story reaffirms the importance of genetic connection and personal parturition. After adopting one child and hiring a contract mother to give birth to a second, Dinsmore finally succeeded in conceiving through in-vitro fertilization. Only after giving birth herself could she consider herself as having truly succeeded at motherhood. "'When I held the twins in my arms, I knew my life was complete'" (qtd. in Collins 54). Many of the women discussed here had other children as well, but for one reason or the other they were not good enough. Kim Casali already had two sons by her husband before she conceived the third through artificial insemination. Leslie Brown considered raising her step-daughter to be simply practice for the real thing (Libman Block 65). Doris Del Zio had a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124 biological daughter, but wanted a child with her present husband (Del Zio and Wilding 135). Although she had already adopted a "Korean girl" (Mills 20), Kit Mills thinks the "sun rises and sets on Jessica," the baby her sister bore for her (190). Linda and Glenn Merkel had a child fathered by him with a contract mother, but when they heard that they could have a child genetically related to both of them, they decided to "'try something a little more challenging'" (Glenn Merkel qtd. in Edmiston 236) and hire a woman to serve as a "gestational surrogate." Finally, Elaina and her husband Sam had already adopted two children, but when she had the opportunity to carry one of her own with an egg donated by her best friend Beth, she leapt at the chance: "In the labor room, all I did was cry, because I wanted the baby to be born, but I didn't want the pregnancy to end. I had had such a beautiful nine months- -I had never felt so good in my life." (qtd. in Liebmann-Smith 177) Every good fairy tale needs a magician or fairy godmother. The gynecological case history in the women's magazine has both: the doctor and the "surrogate" mother. The doctors are the Merlins. Part demi-god, part wise old man (sometimes goddess and wise old woman), they are almost always benevolent figures Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 125 whose altruistic goal is to usher new lives into the world. Their age and confidence reassure their patients— and the readers— of their good intentions as well as their skill. Patrick Steptoe is the kindly grandfather of the technology. He is described in Leslie Brown's story as a "brilliant gynecologist" and "a kind, gentle man of 64, soft-spoken, but very assured" (Libman Block 64). When Laurie Steel met him he was the "genial, gray haired doctor" (105), who was "deeply devoted to the reproductive health and well-being of women" (104) and, of course, a father himself. Kris and John Travagiini were inspired by Dr. Lori Marshall's "calm, reassuring manner" to go ahead with in-vitro fertilization despite its low success rates (Travaglini 28). Doris Del Zio, hurt and angry over the loss of her fertilized egg, saw the doctor who destroyed it as a villain, not qualified to play God (202). In contrast, the doctor who performed the procedure, "[pjlump, grandfatherly Dr. Shettles, who had worked on in-vitro fertilization for 20 years," (202) apparently was. The day her son was born as a result of using a new sex selection technique she learned about in GH, Joy Delepine drank a "heartfelt toast to Dr. Ericsson," the doctor who developed the method (49). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 126 Even more powerful than the doctor is the magic wand of technology. ART (assisted reproductive technology) offers a "dazzling" menu of reproductive options. The list includes fancy acronyms like AIH, AID, AIM, GIFT, ZIFT, TUDOR and IVF.3 Stories about these procedures invariably begin with headlines proclaiming the wonders of the latest techniques: "Technology is making dreams come true for millions of infertile couples" (McDowell 3). Kim Casali's "miracle baby" was created through simple artificial insemination (AIH), but the technique is described as "the symbol of all that is hopeful and alive and loving ..." (deHolguin Cayzer 90). Zygote Intra-Fallopian tube Transfer (ZIFT) is characterized as a "breakthrough procedure" that ensures the gestating mother will have no "genetic claim" to the child she carries (Edmondson Gumpta 141). Arlette Schweitzer had so much faith in science that she predicted that there would be a way she could carry children for her daughter Christa, born without a uterus, even before the IVF procedure was developed (127). Finally, the Loews call their child their "gift" (30) referring to the GIFT procedure that created her. Children used to be considered gifts from Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 127 God, but in this case, the child is a gift from the fertility clinic. Perhaps the best image of the benevolent doctor working miracles through the magical powers of technology is the one created by Bonnie Remsberg when she describes Laurie Steel's implantation by Patrick Steptoe. Laurie, in her flowing magenta gown, enters the operating theater at night— Steptoe likes to do it "when the uterus is quiet" (106) . The embryo is carried in from the laboratory; Steptoe takes the long tube that encases it— the wand of technology— and "places it through the cervix into the womb. He waits several minutes, then removes the instrument" (108). Magical doctor, phallic technology, fertilizing transformation: it comes as no surprise when Remsberg tells her reader that "[w]hen the procedure was over, Laurie felt hugely relieved" (108). If the doctor plays the magician in these technological tales, then the "surrogate" is the fairy godmother. She is the facilitator, the "human incubator" (qtd. in Edmondson Gupta 141), Hagar's good sister, for whom pregnancy is so easy she may as well do it for someone else too. She is depicted as an altruistic mom who wants to make a contribution. "Elizabeth Kane is a saint" (Markoutsas 96); Susan Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 128 "acted out of deep friendship" (98) ; and another nameless contract mother is "something of a humanitarian, a crusader" (98). Arlette Schweitzer was simply extending the duties of motherhood when she carried twins for her daughter. "I am simply a mother who is trying to help her daughter fulfill her dreams. What mother could do less?" (191) Deidre Hall believes that Robin, the woman who bore David, "'came from God with our name on her/M (qtd. in Radovsky 37). The contract mother feels she was "made for having babies" (Mills 190) and she finds pleasure in being pregnant. "'I have babies so easily— they just pop out/H (Kane qtd. in Markoutsas 98). Norma is eager to become pregnant: "'I can't wait to feel that baby kicking inside me'" (qtd. in Edmiston 275), and Laurie Richards became a contract mother after realizing that she "yearned to be pregnant" (22). Even egg donors are fulfilling motherly urges. Dr. Martin Quigley, head of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation explains that egg donation provides women with a way of "'still being able to reproduce,'" and to "'pass on their genes'" (qtd. in Liebmann-Smith 174). In fact, success at egg donation seems to equate to female potency. Jeniffer, who "was just glad that someone else could put them [her eggs] to good Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129 use, ..." was very pleased to be a "superdonor," able to provide 26 eggs (Nevins 121). Another donor, characterized as a twenty-three year-old "egg queen" (121), thought that "being able to contribute to the advancement of medical technology and helping people have babies would be really neat" (121). For Beth, who donated her eggs to her friend Elaina, egg donation was a personal accomplishment: "'[A]11 the eggs they got— nine in all— were determined to be excellent to superior, and that made me feel real good. I've always been an overachiever, and I wish I could have produced even more eggs!" (qtd. in Liebmann-Smith 17 4) The drive to motherhood qualifies the woman who is playing the role of surrogate— traditional, gestational or egg donor— as the ideal domestic woman. She fulfills her function and submissively hands the child (or egg) over to its rightful owners (those who have purchased it). On the surface, this willingness to give up her child could make her look like the embodiment of the bad mother. In fact, she is creating a new twist in the definition of ideal motherhood: the ability to produce a child for another couple, and to distance herself from that child emotionally. Louise Richards, who has given birth to four surrogate children, knew she could be a "good surrogate mother" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130 because she had already given up two children of her own for adoption (22, 28). Her willingness to give "the gift of life" (22) makes her just as heroic as the woman who has been through countless medical procedures. "'These are the most wonderful women in the world'" proclaims the husband of a woman acting as a surrogate (qtd. in Edmiston 275). Finally, the survival of Beth and Elaina's friendship seems to have depended a great deal on Beth's "ability to distance herself from the baby" who was conceived using her egg (Liebmann-Smith (178). The women distance themselves from the babies they carry by euphemizing their relationship to them. For Karen Mills, who was acting as a "traditional" surrogate, her baby was simply her "little passenger" while she was the "carrier" (209) . Debbie, performing as a "gestational" surrogate says she was "just a baby sitter" (Edmondson Gupta 215). Instead of bonding with the babies they carry, the women claim to bond with the contracting mother. "I'll never forget Sarah's squeals of excitement when, after four unsuccessful tries, I reported that I was pregnant" (Richards 28). Kathy, who says she "had no emotional trouble giving up . . . twins," explains that her real bond is with Linda, the woman for whom she carried them (Edmiston 237). Deidre Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 131 Hall explains that she and Robin bonded in what she calls a "'girlfriend process'" (qtd. in Radovsky 38). Hall even believes that "'having a child through a surrogate mother is more involving than having it come from your body, because you're forming a kinship with another woman as intimately as you can'" (38). Contracting out motherhood does not always produce happy endings. In some instances, these arrangements have resulted in custody suits. When this happens the woman who acts as surrogate is not automatically disqualified as the ideal mother. Depending on the circumstances, she may adapt the role of fairy godmother to protect the child or children to whom she has given life. Laurie Yates contracted to bear a man's child precisely because she wanted to be a mother so badly. Her husband was sterile and they could not afford artificial insemination. She thought that if she became pregnant for someone else first she could earn the money to have her own children later (Yates and Libman Block 183). She asks her audience to read her story and then judge her. "[A]sk yourself what you would have done" (114). She explains that she reneged on her agreement because she was duped into believing she had to go through with the surrogacy contract after Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 132 a miscarriage, despite having changed her mind. In this case the duplicitous lawyer and the uncaring couple become the villains. Yates suffered through a difficult pregnancy with twins, and the cold-hearted couple refused financial help. By the time the babies were born, not only had she bonded with them, she believed they were better off with her. "When the babies were put in my arms, it was one of the happiest moments of my life" (189). Placed in an even more awkward situation, Patty Nowakowski sued for custody of the twins she carried. The couple she acted as surrogate for refused to take both of the babies because they did not want a boy. She took custody of both babies for the best of motherly motives: to stop the uncaring couple from putting the boy up for adoption and to keep the twins together (Nowakowski 41) . Most of the case histories that are printed after 1986 have one constant image refracted in them. This is the image of Mary Beth Whitehead (now Whitehead- Gould) , the infamous mother of "Baby M," the baby girl she tried to retain custody of after contracting to carry her for William and Elizabeth Stern. Whitehead- Gould's custody suit has probably made her the most famous "surrogate" mother since that other Mary gave Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 133 birth in a stable 1,995 years ago. In most of the case histories, Whitehead-Gould represents the bad mother. In fact, she is the wicked witch of the fairy tale: the selfish woman who went back on her promise to deliver up her child to an unfulfilled "mother." In January 1994, Redbook took a current look at Whitehead-Gould and her daughter and reaffirmed this view of her. The cover headline reads "Torn Between Two Moms: 'Baby M' 8 Years Later." The message to the reader is that Baby M (she calls herself Sassy) is not better off for the final outcome of the case. (Whitehead-Gould has visitation rights). She "has the kind of guarded, sharply observant personality that so many children of messy divorces seem to have ..." (Squire 63). The author of the article paints a picture of an eight-year old in the middle of a tug-of- war between two women, neither of them the ideal mother. Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould is controlling, possessive, and competitive, and Betsy Stern is sickly, manipulative and cold. Sassy placates each, and suffers. The text of the article describes Sassy's visit with Gould, the first in seven months. We learn that "[i]t drives Mary crazy when Sassy starts acting "frumpy, old . . . like Betsy" (64). She interrogates Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 134 her daughter about her life with the Sterns in an attempt to show who is the better mother: "Who reads to her at night? (Daddy) . Who gets up with her on weekend mornings? (Daddy)" (98). She has "spies" in Tenafly to report on Sassy's activities with the Sterns. She also mimics her daughter mockingly when she is not there, "'[s]he's always saying . . . [t]hey don't have anybody else. . . . [Y]ou have four other children'" (96). This wealth of children is probably the most notable thing about Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould. She has a total of five with three different men. This is a woman who has no difficulty conceiving; in fact, it seems she has difficulty not conceiving, at least at inappropriate times. The author tells us that she became pregnant with Dean Gould's child while still married to her first husband and between custody trials. This is not the pure, submissive woman we have come to know in the fairy tale stories of surrogacy. Instead she appears unfaithful, unsympathetic, selfish, and willful. Elizabeth Stern is not portrayed any more sympathetically than Gould is. She represents the childless woman who is not willing to endure pain or take physical risks to achieve motherhood. She has multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease. Pregnancy Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135 could have further endangered her health so she chose not to bear a child herself. Whitehead-Gould's father says "she's not a mother. I just felt she wasn't really qualified to raise a child" (102). The characterization of Betsy Stern implies that she also lacks certain personal qualities that are necessary to mothering. She is "frumpy," "prissy," and incapable of nurturing her daughter in the ways that Whitehead-Gould does. She doesn't come and sleep with Sassy when she has a bad dream. She doesn't read to her at night and she calls and upsets her when she is visiting with Whitehead-Gould (96, 64). Whether by GIFT, ZIFT or stork, the babies that result from these technologies represent the combined work of God and the medical wizard. They are almost always characterized as a medical miracle, and they are always described as perfect. Louise Joy Brown is a "cooing, gurgling, blue-eyed beauty" (Libman Block 62). Laurie Steel's Samantha is "a beautiful baby . . . gorgeously healthy and rosy looking (Remsberg 108). Little Brent was born "healthy and robust, loudly protesting his rough introduction to life" (Baker 46)? and Kris Travaglini tells her readers that "we experienced the happiest moment of our lives: the arrival of our perfect baby girl . . . (28). For all Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136 of the women, the babies are "dreams come true" (Delepine 49) because they can now define themselves as true mothers. The miracle metaphor suggests more than an accidental collusion with God. If this is the case, then how do the people profiled in these accounts rationalize what seems to be excess hubris on the part of the medical practitioner? What has become of that last of the four feminine qualities— piety? Those women who are religious either consult their ministers for approval, or they rationalize that God creates everything, including technology. Laurie Yates talked to her pastor. "He . . . told us that he could think of nothing in the Bible forbidding surrogacy" (Yates and Libman Block 183). Doris Del Zio believes the two forces work hand in hand: "I'm quite a religious person and I'm firmly convinced that there is a bond between science and religion. I always say a prayer for my doctor before I undergo surgery" (Del Zio and Wilding 200). Leslie Brown tells her audience that she and her husband are not religious in the conventional sense, but she "'reckoned that God wanted [her] to have this baby or He wouldn't have let that miracle of modern science happen to [her]'1 1 (qtd. in Libman Block 67). When the baby was finally placed in her arms she Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. knew that "'God willed it'" (70). Dick and Cynthia, the first ZIFT parents use a similar rationale: "'Why would God have created the technology that made ZIFT surrogacy possible if He didn't want people to use it?'" (qtd. in Edmondson Gupta 216). Finally, Arlette Schweitzer had a more difficult dilemma because she is a "devout Catholic" and the church opposes contract motherhood (Schweitzer and Casey 189) . Her motherly instinct prevailed: "I must follow my conscience and do what I can for Christa. It's in God's hands" (189). Indeed, for most of those profiled, putting the problem in God's hands is the same as putting it in science's hands. Looking at the modern gynecological case history as a fairy tale means that many issues raised by the technology have either been left unaddressed or glossed over. In Chapter Four, "Gynecology on the Coffee Table," I will examine how the commentary magazines discuss the same technologies. These magazines refocus the discussion to debate their special concerns. The religious critic examines the God/science relationship. The feminist commentator considers the impact the technology has on the rights of women. The ethicist comments on the impact the scientific innovations will have on society and those concerned with eugenics Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. explore how the new technologies compare to other schemes to perfect the race. This kind of focused scrutiny renders impotent a fantasy depiction of reproductive technologies. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139 Notes 1. Sanger attributes her "conversion” to the cause of birth control to her emotional reaction after witnessing the death of Sadie Sachs. Mrs. Sachs was a patient Sanger attended in New York's Lower East Side. After nursing her back to health from one abortion attempt, Sanger was called back to the Sachs' home just a few months later to watch Sadie Sachs die (Kennedy 16). In his biography of Sanger, David Kennedy argues that she exaggerated her reaction to the incident in what he calls a "common autobiographical ploy of reformers" (17). Though he does not question her emotional reaction to Mrs. Sachs' death, he believes she used her account of the event to secure her status as a symbolic leader in the birth control movement. 2. The twenty-seven case histories come from a sample set of thirty-eight articles printed in these magazines in the last seventeen years. Of the thirty-eight, twenty-seven are case histories, four are readership polls, four are commentaries, and three are short information pieces advertising various technological options. At least two of the ladies' magazines solicit personal stories from their readers. Redbook has a special column whose title has evolved from "A Young Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Mother's story" to simply "A Mother's story," and Ladies' Home Journal's "A Woman Today" has been shortened from an earlier version entitled "It's Not Easy to Be a Woman Today." The authors of these stories certainly qualify to be put under the longer heading as well. 3. For definitions of these technologies, please refer to note #2 in Chapter One. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 141 Chapter Four Gynecology on the Coffee Table What is new today is that conflicts reach the public through the courts and are being debated as individual cases, containing all the complexities and ambiguities of real life. . . . Because the issues are embedded in human stories, they are more gripping, and the debate is broader. That creates greater opportunity for widespread democratic opinion to be heard— and, of course, to be manipulated. (Gordon 230) Writing for The Nation at the height of the Baby M trial, historian Linda Gordon gives this very appropriate analysis of the effect the litigious gynecological case history has had on national opinion. We have seen in Chapter Three how the case history can manipulate this opinion for one audience— the reader of the women's magazine. In that venue, the case history cuts off any productive debate by creating a fantasy of feminine fulfillment to promote the new technologies. To find a debate that fully explores these issues, we must turn to the commentary magazines that are typically displayed on the coffee table of the educated middle-class reader. The commentary debate is limited, however, by the fact that, for the most part, the cases must make the news before they appear on the coffee table. As Gordon points out "the stories that reach us are of arrangements gone wrong" (230). For her this Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 142 "soap-opera approach to reproductive conflicts obscures the social causes of all this litigation" (230) . While the happy endings profiled in the women's magazines obscure the many questions raised by the technology, the reactive nature of the commentary discussion limits that discussion to the specific issues that are raised by the problematic cases. Despite these limitations, the commentary discussion goes a long way towards debunking the myths created by the women's magazine. Debunking myths comes naturally to the nation's commentary magazines. They are in the business of provoking debate. The commentary magazine depends upon an educated, up-to-date reader who appreciates a good moral, legal, or ethical argument. This change in scene brings a corresponding change in purpose: the modern gynecological case history now serves as a springboard for discussion. In the women's magazine, the case history was pressed into the service of that venue's promotion of motherhood. In the commentary journal, the case history can be appropriated for discussions focusing on concerns as diverse as women's rights, race and class relations, medical ethics, religious morality, and social policy. Voicing these concerns is a new and diverse set of agents. Whereas in the women's magazine the voice was for the most part Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 143 homogenous, in the commentary magazine the voice becomes pluralistic; the feminist, the academic, the theologian, the medical ethicist, and the journalist are all to be found in these pages. Because it is now only the instigator of the discussion, the case itself has a new agency. The focus is no longer on the personal story (though the personal is what brings the case to attention); the people whose lives are being debated fade to the background and come to represent the issues about which the intellectual discussion forms. Thus the Baby M case becomes significant not because it tells us about Mary Beth Whitehead/s love for her daughter, but because it provokes a discussion of contract motherhood. Like the lifestyles publication, the commentary magazine responded to the birth of Louise Joy Brown with a sharp increase in publications on reproductive technology. The commentary category is responsible for ninety-three articles, 15% of the 621 articles in the sample. To narrow the scope of my discussion, I have selected eight commentary journals based in part on their editorial policies and/or religious focus, and in part on the extent of their coverage of reproductive technology, or lack thereof. The Nation. The New Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 144 Republic. National Review, and Ms. make up the secular group, and Christian Century. Commonweal. America. and Commentary represent the religious interests. Though library science categorizes Ms. as a lifestyles selection, I have added it to the commentary group because I think it is extremely out of place in the company of the decidedly traditional seven sisters. Ms. also adds to the commentary discussion by raising a distinctly feminist voice. Altogether, the seven commentary publications are responsible for thirty-nine of the ninety-three articles published in that category since the birth of Louise Joy Brown. Ms. adds another eight for a total sample of forty-seven. Of these forty-seven articles, twenty-eight are responses to specific case histories; nearly half of these— sixteen— are reactions to the Baby M case. Eight of the authors are theologians and/or priests. Twelve are academics. Twenty-six of the authors are men and sixteen are women— eight of whom are published in Ms. alone. In contrast to the contributors to the women's magazine, the authorship of the commentary journals is richly academic, greatly concerned with ethics, and decidedly masculine. The circulations of these periodicals are difficult to compare with those of the women's Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 145 magazines because many of the commentary journals are published weekly or bi-weekly rather than monthly. The weeklies in the sample set have an approximate circulation of 218,000, the bi-weeklies 129,000, and the monthlies 511,000 (466,000 of this figure represents the readership of Ms. alone). Clearly, these publications have a far narrower audience than the 40 million total for the women's magazines. Because the commentary journals cater to specific political and/or religious viewpoints, the audiences of these publications tend to be more refined. While the reader of the women's magazine is quite likely to read more than one of the seven sisters, the readers of the commentary magazine, while sharing general characteristics such as education, may select only the one that reflects their specific orientation. The Nation is the oldest journal in my sample. Established in 1865, it has a weekly circulation of 50,000 and is staunchly liberal (Katz and Katz 818). Katz and Katz praise its investigative reports and describe its editorials as "quite superior in both content and style" (818). A look at its advertising confirms that its audience, which ranges from those with a high school education to those in academia (818), is economically stable enough to be investing in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. both the future and PBS. The reader of The Nation is also interested in investing in his/her mind. The majority of advertising is for books and literary videos. The three articles published on reproductive technology in The Nation were written in a three-year period beginning in May 1987 and ending in December 1990. Obviously, the Baby M case was the main impetus for the coverage. The articles are, however, substantial pieces written by women with impressive credentials. Two are by Katha Pollitt, a journalist and feminist writer who confirms the opinion that "[s]ome of the best stylists in journalism are regular columnists . . ." in The Nation (Katz and Katz 818). The third is by Linda Gordon, a professor of history and author of a feminist discussion of birth control in America. The Nation has the distinction of being the only commentary journal in my sample, with the exception of Ms., to publish only female authors on the topic. Though it was established to be a liberal voice in 1914, The New Republic now attempts to take a balanced approach to its commentary. According to Katz and Katz, the New Republic prints "lively criticism . . . of the current political and economic scene, ..." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 147 (819) and "[t]he conservative as well as the voice of the left is heard in its pages" (819) . The magazine publishes weekly and has a healthy circulation of 95,000. The New Republic's six offerings include two commentary pieces with the playful title "In Vitro Veritas." The editors obviously expect the reader to understand the pun and chuckle at the comparison between wine and "bottled babies," something an educated reader would do quite readily. The journal's advertising reflects its attempt to reach a politically diverse audience. PBS, financial planning, and books are highlighted, and a full page argument for zero population growth is placed near a PR piece for a Northrop-Grumman bomber. All of the commentary on reproductive technology is written by journalists, with only one female coauthor. With a bi-weekly readership of 110,000, National Review has the highest circulation of the commentary publications (with the exception of Ms.) (Katz and Katz 818). Established in 1955 and edited by William F. Buckley, it is "[t]he premier conservative journal" publishing "on topics of current political, social and cultural interest" (818). The advertising in this publication reflects the conservative bent of its audience. Conservative Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 148 summits and symposiums are offered, along with the now- common ads for financial planning, books (conservative) , and Northrop-Grumman. PBS is absent. National Review has moderate coverage of reproductive technology: two short discussions of the birth of Louise Joy Brown in 1978, a reaction to the "Repository for Germinal Choice" in 1981, and a lengthy critique of the Baby M case in 1987. Written by the National Review's assistant articles editor Maggie Gallagher, "Womb to Let" is a witty critique of the Whitehead custody situation. Her sarcastic style makes a forceful statement about the practice of contract motherhood. It's a pity that National Review has not printed more on the subject. Commentary. established in 1945, with a monthly circulation of 45,000, prints articles on matters of general political and cultural interest. A Jewish publication, its purpose is to "enlighten and clarify public opinion on problems of Jewish concern ..." (Katz and Katz 815). It comes as no surprise that its one article on reproductive technologies— albeit written by a Lutheran minister— is a warning that they will lead to a modern eugenics. Most of its advertising has some link to Middle Eastern issues. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Commonweal represents a liberal Catholic perspective on current issues. Established in 1924, it does not hesitate to challenge the Church when it disagrees with its policies or views (Katz and Katz 935). Since its advertising appears to target the lay Catholic rather than the clergy, perhaps this audience is more likely to tolerate some criticism of the Roman authority. With only 19,000 bi-weekly readers it has the smallest circulation of the group, but it has published the most articles on reproductive technology. Of its eleven articles, three are authored by women and six are editorials taking a firm stand against commercial motherhood. Seven of the articles are responses to the Baby M case. Apparently, the editors see this issue as one which their readers need to see debated. The clerical counterpart to Commonweal is America; established in 1909 with a weekly circulation of 35,000, it is published by the Jesuits of the U.S. and Canada (Katz and Katz 933). The journal presents views on current issues: religious, political, social, and cultural (Katz and Katz 933). The market for parish census software probably does not extend beyond the rectory, and the many additional advertisements for seminary schools, the Army chaplain corps, and study Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. seminars in Rome confirm that the audience is more likely to be pastor than parishioner. The four articles published in America also reflect its clerical audience. The lengthiest moves tediously through papal proclamations on artificial methods for reproduction, looking for but not finding a loophole big enough to permit them. Another defends a judge's decision that seven frozen embryos were indeed children and should be awarded to their genetic mother in a custody suit. Christian Century represents the Protestant point of view with articles that are "strong on ethical and social issues" and written for the educated lay-person and religious professional (Katz and Katz 934) . A moderate-to-liberal journal, it tries to take other religious views into account. In publication since 1908, the journal has a weekly circulation of 38,500 (934). Its advertising indicates the greater diversity of its audience: theological seminaries and insurance companies are offered along with Pastor Marty's recipes. The Christian Century has published ten articles on a variety of issues raised by the new technologies, its authors generally developing carefully reasoned arguments that grant a qualified Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 151 acceptance of some of the basic reproductive technologies. Ms. was established in 1972 to express feminist concerns and today it "stands fearless, willing to confront the controversies of the day that Ms. sees as continuing issues: motherhood in an age of reproductive choices and technology, child-care legislation, career discrimination, homeless women" (Katz and Katz 1073). Its monthly circulation of 466,154 shows that it has a far wider audience than any of the other commentary journals described here (1073). Ms. no longer runs advertisements in its pages because the editors felt the concerns of the advertisers were limiting the scope of their commentary. The journal is now supported entirely by subscriptions. All eight pieces discussing reproductive technology were written by women, and whether they support such practices or not, all take a close look at how they affect women. Though the readers of the commentary magazines differ in their political viewpoints and religious convictions, they are all educated, critical readers who are interested in discussions of social and cultural problems. Even if they do read the version of the case history presented in the women's magazine, it is unlikely they will be drawn in by the fabulous Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. pictures these cases create. The readership of the commentary journal will, however, be interested in the intellectual debate inspired by the case history in the commentary journal. This debate, ranging from the theological to the feminist, is far more likely to condemn modern reproductive practices. The commentators express concerns that the new technologies will violate women's rights and bodies; commodify women and children; disrupt the marriage relationship; devalue the sanctity of human life; lead us to a modern eugenics; and cause public policy nightmares. Though they are not expressed as direct responses to the case history represented by the women's magazine, the commentators' concerns do address the belief-system that is intrinsic to the fairy tale representation. To see just how the fable falls apart in the commentary discussion, we will look at the components of the fairy tale/myth presented in the women's magazine to see how they are treated in this more critical venue. The first component of the fairy tale/myth is the questing mother whose pain and suffering were well worth the gain— the perfect baby. The problem with this view is that success rates for IVF procedures are actually quite low. Janice Raymond, writing for Ms., claims that clinics skew their data by reporting Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 153 statistics based on egg harvesting, implantation, and chemical pregnancy. None of these statistics means that a live birth has been achieved. Raymond reports that the "take-home baby rate" in the United States in 1991 was only nine percent (30) .x This means that ninety-one percent of the women who go through these procedures will remain childless. These are the stories that are not being told in the women's magazine. To make real the pain these women experience, Raymond's expose brings us into the operating room to see a "vaginal harvesting" as it is being performed. A medical student's observations about the egg removal also retrieve the image of the more benevolent techno sex episode described between Laurie Steel and Dr. Steptoe in Chapter Three: "At each follicle puncture he [the doctor] retracted the needle and then drove it in hard. The woman asked him to stop, because she was in great pain. But Dr. M. would have none of that . . . and so [more] follicles were punctured against her will . . . again each puncture unmistakably resembled a penetration." (qtd. in Raymond 32) For Raymond, reproductive technologies "bear resemblance to primitive torture techniques" (28). If this description seems to be the exaggeration of an angry feminist, it can be compared to testimony Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 154 given in the portrait of Beth and Elaina in Redbook magazine. Beth donated her eggs to her friend Elaina and she describes the egg retrieval as "'the pits'" (qtd. in Liebmann-Smith 174). "I had to be in a weird position, lying with my legs strapped up real high and pushed back against my chest. ... I was there from seven a.m. until four p.m. My hips were throbbing so much that, when I got home, I couldn't move or sleep all night" (174). Though Beth dismisses this pain as "'irrelevant,'" emphasizing instead her pride that the eggs retrieved were all graded "'excellent to superior'" (174), her account confirms the point Raymond makes about the extreme pain the procedure incurs. Even more worrisome is the fact that IVF procedures are experimental and potentially harmful to women's reproductive systems. A Commonweal editorial expresses concern over the fact that "[t]here was no groundwork of primate experimentation" prior to the experiment carried out on Leslie Brown's body ("Test- Tube Babies" 548). Raymond adds that chemical superovulation can lead to ovarian cysts and hyperstimulation. She tells the reader that at least ten deaths connected to IVF procedures have been documented (30).2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 155 One of the most potent aspects of the women's magazine myth is that reproductive technologies enhance motherhood. Katha Pollitt, Linda Gordon, and Maggie Gallagher argue that contracting for this role instead degrades motherhood by fragmenting its definition and equating pregnancy with sperm donation. Pollitt, whose article appears in The Nation, contends that while men and women make equal genetic contributions, merely contributing genes is not sufficient to describe the woman's role in creating a child: [T]wenty-three pairs of chromosomes do not a baby make. In the usual course of events the woman is then pregnant for nine months and goes through childbirth, a detail overlooked by those who compare maternity contracts to sperm donation. ("The strange Case" 686) She adds that the proper corollary is egg donation, a connection that Raymond would probably argue with considering the ease with which men can supply sperm. To illustrate how confusing the definition of motherhood has become, Pollitt compares the courts' decisions in the Baby M case and a subsequent case filed by Anna Johnson, a woman who acted as a "gestational surrogate." In the Whitehead case, Stern's wife was originally deemed to be the proper legal mother of the child, in spite of her lack of a genetic link. In the Johnson case, motherhood was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 156 determined by the genetic link Crispins Calvert provided with her egg. Pollitt concludes that "[t]o the small and curious class of English words that have double and contradictory meanings— 'moot,' for example, and 'cleave'— the word 'mother' can now be added" ("When is a Mother" 825). Gallagher, whose article is printed in the conservative National Review, often uses dry wit to make her case. Her argument is a bit more graphic: "I hate to be the one to have to point this out, but masturbating into a little cup is not at all like having a baby" (28). Phyllis Chesler argues in Ms. that the Baby M case exemplifies our society's already skewed valuation of fatherhood and motherhood. "How can this case have happened? Very easily— in a culture that overvalues men, fathers, and money and undervalues women, mothers, and mother-child bonding" (38). For her the Sterns' role in the creation of Baby M is amplified by its equation with "enlightened progress" while Mary Beth Whitehead's role is belittled by its portrayal as "primitive instinct" (39). chesler explains that Whitehead's claim to the baby had to be devalued so that William Stern's could be acknowledged. "[I]n order for the idea of fatherhood to triumph over the fact of motherhood, we had to see Bill as the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 157 'birthfather' and Mary Beth as only the surrogate uterus" (39). The women's magazine myth also implies that reproductive technologies are available to and provided for any woman. In fact, the expense of these services narrows the market to the well-off. The Stems paid $25,000 for Baby M (Pollitt "The Strange Case" 684), and in-vitro costs approximately $5000 per cycle (Raymond 30). In addition, most clinics screen potential customers to ensure that they fit their criteria for parenthood (Thom 71) . This screening means that single and lesbian women are, for the most part, excluded. The commentators associated with the religiously oriented journals agree with this screening. Sidney Callahan, writing for the lay Catholic audience of Commonweal. explains her carefully qualified approval of reproductive technologies: It is ethically appropriate to use alternative reproductive technologies if, and only if, such technologies are making it possible for a normal, socially adequate, heterosexual married couple to have a child as they would, or could, if their infertility were not an obstacle. (Callahan 235) Callahan's position, while straying from the Church's blanket rejection of artificial reproduction, reflects Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 158 that of the Church on the sanctity of the marital bond. Theologian Jack Moore takes a similar stand in the more ecumenical Christian Century by defining a very limited arena in which IVF can be justified: "married couples . . . using their own egg and sperm" (444). Feminist critics claim that the enhancement-of- motherhood myth has an even greater "phallacy." Phyllis Chesler's critique points out that reproductive procedures are not really provided for wealthy, heterosexual women. They are instead technologies created for wealthy, heterosexual men who, like William Stern, feel "an enormous sense of genetic entitlement" (39). She is not alone in this opinion. Katha Pollitt, Janice Raymond, and Mary Kay Blakely direct the same criticism at the practice of contractual motherhood. Pollitt's is perhaps the most biting: But take away the mothers' delusion that they are making babies for other women, and what you have left is what, in cold, hard fact, we already have: the limited-use purchase of women's bodies by men— reproductive prostitution. ("The Strange Case" 684) The feminists have an even dimmer view of the consequences for the woman who plays the role of contract mother. Mary Thom argues in Ms. that the term "surrogate" euphemizes the relationship between the woman and the child she carries, thus diminishing the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. woman's contribution: "A surrogate mother, pregnant with a fetus that developed from her own or another woman's egg is hardly a surrogate anything but is certainly a mother even if not the only mother" (74). Speaking of Mary Beth Whitehead, who did "donate" her own egg, Katha Pollitt explains that using the term surrogate allowed Whitehead's role to be minimized. She was simply the "trivial physical means by which their [the Sterns'] desire . . . was fulfilled" ("The Strange Case" 683). Pollitt believes that Judge Sorkow's decision in the Whitehead case legalized what she defines as reproductive prostitution. To make a similar point, and mindful of the emotional effect that such a scene will have on her reader, Gallagher describes the "snatching" of the four-month-old Baby M from her crib in Whitehead's home. She adds that at a subsequent visit "Baby M, smelling her mother's milk, nuzzled at Mary Beth's neck, but the court appointed chaperon wouldn't let Baby M nurse" (27) . She warns that legal decisions like Sorkow's will create a society in which "judges ponder whether a loving mother may nurse her baby, and where the state can declare a woman mater non grata— because someone else outbids her for her child" (30). Gallagher also likens contractual motherhood to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 160 prostitution, but true to the spirited manner of her discussion, she also adds indentured servitude into the equation (30). The women's magazine depiction of the woman who acts as surrogate mother is that of an altruistic woman who likes being pregnant. She agrees to bear the child because it gives her pleasure and she remains emotionally detached from the child for the best of reasons— so that another woman who craves it can experience motherhood. The feminist commentators disagree with this view of the contractual mother because they believe that contractual motherhood is a means of exploiting women, especially poor women. They worry that women will be coerced into participating by what seems like a large sum of money. (The price Whitehead was paid— $10,000 works out to about $1.50 per hour) (Pollitt "When is a Mother" 844). Gallagher reports that William Handel, a broker, tells the women who work for him that if they try to keep the child "we'll sue you for intentional infliction of emotional distress. You'll have ruined this couple's life. And we'll make it awfully expensive for you to hold on to the child" (30). Certainly none of the "saintly" mothers depicted in the women's magazine reported this kind of treatment. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 161 Pollitt also points out that contract motherhood invites race and class exploitation. Citing the Anna Johnson custody suit as an example, she argues that no judge would honor a black woman's claim to a white baby— especially a working-class black woman ("When is a Mother" 842). In her article for Ms., Mary Gordon raises the specter of the baby farm where poor women are used to breed for the rich (26). Finally, Blakely, also writing for Ms., suggests that women drafted into service as contract mothers may some day be classified and paid according to looks and intelligence. With a bitter yet humorous snipe at the future she explains that couples could then choose between the "Saks Fifth Avenue price tag" and the "K-Mart price tag"(20). Callahan's assessment of the emotional detachment required to have a child for someone else is damning: From another perspective, the woman could also be seen as deliberately producing and selling her baby. What will these practices do to the other children a surrogate may have, or for that matter to other children in the culture? Can children comprehend the fact that mothers make babies and sell them for money? The great primordial reality of interdependency and mutual bonding represented by mother and child is attacked. (239) Pollitt also couches her objections in terms of the contracting mother's other children: "[H]ow can it not Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 162 damage a child to watch Mom cheerfully produce and sell its half-sibling while Dad stands idly by?" ("The Strange Case" 688) An alternate view about the detachment a woman must cultivate to work as an incubator for someone else is presented by Malcolm Gladwell and Rochelle Sharpe in The New Republic. The authors support the practice if it is managed by a scrupulous broker, one who would provide counseling for women like Mary Beth Whitehead. Such counseling, they maintain, would have "helped Whitehead overcome her bonding with Baby M" (emphasis added 16). Pollitt's rebuttal to this argument would be that counseling is just another form of coercion. "True therapy seeks to increase a person's sense of self, not reconcile one to being treated as an instrument" ("The Strange Case" 688). The female commentators have so far clustered around the women's issues, and especially those involved in contractual motherhood: the degradation of motherhood and the commodification of women's bodies. Their male counterparts cluster around the moral and legal aspects of reproductive technologies, some condemning them just as strongly on moral grounds, others approving such medical services because they allow wanted life to be created. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ethicist James Gaffney, writing for Commonweal. explores the Biblical precedents for surrogacy arrangements that many of the other commentators allude to in their discussions. These are precedents his Catholic readership may be curious about since the Church has forbidden any use of modern reproductive technologies. He likens the Mary Beth Whitehead-Baby M case to that of Hagar and Ishmael, reminding the reader that Hagar was punished for challenging Sarai's claim to motherhood, and thereby overstepping the boundaries of her role as substitute mother (240). Gaffney then characterizes the male-heir competition carried out between Rachel and Leah— through their handmaids— as a feminine power struggle. Clearly, he interprets the Biblical precedents as arrangements between women. The feminist commentators would be quick to point out the motivations Rachel and Leah may have had for finding solutions to their infertility: their need to solidify their status by providing their husband with male heirs. (Both were married to Jacob.) Without stating his position overtly, Gaffney discredits contract motherhood by drawing a parallel between modern practice and what appears to be a petty competition between Rachel and Leah. He makes this position clear when he ends his discussion with a question: "Does our Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 164 own society's disposal of surrogate motherhood as one more commercial transaction, . . . really represent a much higher order of social and moral wisdom than was attained so many centuries ago . . . ?" (242) Theologian Michael Novak and columnist John Garvey, both writing for Commonweal. also view the Baby M case as a problem in legally controlled morality. Novak, who sees the situation as a case of "trafficking in human life" (406), finds the practice to be morally repugnant: "To separate Mrs. Whitehead's uterus from her self merely by verbal agility is an outrage" (406). Garvey also argues that contractual parenthood is tantamount to slavery. With an understandably Catholic revulsion at the abortion clause in the Baby M contract, Garvey rejects such legal manipulation of what he calls human dignity: "[B]ecause of what it says about our attitudes towards women, children, and humanity in general, surrogacy should be repudiated" (232). The editors of Commonweal also object to contractual motherhood on moral grounds. Presented in a series of editorials printed in reaction to the Baby M case, their objections reflect the position of the Roman Catholic Church on reproductive technologies in general. The editors believe that the practice of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 165 contracting for babies is made possible due to a "breakdown in moral understanding," one which fails to recognize that the relationship between reproduction and marital and family bonds should not be severed ("Surrogate-gate" 35). They found the Baby M case appalling, thought that commercial motherhood should be outlawed ("Birth-Marketing" 692), and believed the New Jersey Supreme court's restoration of Mary Beth Whitehead's parental rights was appropriate ("There Ought" 100). The editors also concluded that the New Jersey decision would be a definitive one, likely to "put an end to the growth of the surrogate-motherhood business ..." (100). This assessment, made in 1988, failed to take into account the free-market forces that would keep other states from regulating a service that promised to become a lucrative business. The 1988 editorial was the last on the subject for Commonweal. In a Christian Century editorial, James M. Wall also poses the Baby M case as a moral question: "[A]t the center of the debate is a moral question: Is there anything wrong with allowing individuals to contract to be surrogate mothers?" (99) His answer, that we should not necessarily have access to technologies just because they are possible, takes a swing at science, which he characterizes as a "mindless giant" (99). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 166 This is the same mindless giant that is characterized as the tool of God in the women's magazine. The heartwarming stories narrated there proclaimed God's support for the technological innovations that made mothers' dreams come true. In those tales, God and science seemed to be working together to create miracle babies. Religious commentators like Wall, however, do not share this unconditional support for scientific innovation. Nor do they assume that religious approval should be granted to technology simply because it has the power to give some people what they desire. Novak views technology as a challenge requiring humanity to establish moral limits: "[N]ew scientific knowledge and technical skills offer so many possibilities that, more and more, the impulse to establish the limits that define who we are ... is becoming a self-conscious imperative" (407). Similarly, Callahan, who approves of some reproductive technologies, contends that we should avoid the urge to follow what she calls the "technological imperative" (233). She believes that we cannot allow a combination of human desires and what is technologically possible to decide for us what the right or good course of action may be (233). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 167 In an article published in America in 1978, just after the birth of Louise Joy Brown, medical ethicist Andre Hellegers and theologian and ethicist Father Richard McCormick explore papal proclamations on artificial reproduction. They are looking for any sort of justification for in-vitro technology by attempting to determine whether the papal disapproval of the practice was based on its experimental nature or the manner in which it separates the "unitive and procreative dimensions of marital intimacy" (75). Though they find some value in a procedure that allows married people to obey the mandate to reproduce, ultimately they cannot condone in-vitro because they "believe that the procedure must be seen in broader social and cultural terms and that, when it is, it is not without serious moral problems" (78) . They characterize reproductive technologies as a package deal. If we accept some portion of the practices, then we must also accept practices they enable for the future. In what was a prophetic prediction for 1978, they pose the potential uses to which in-vitro could be put: And, in time, the next step may well be the surrogate or host womb, where a woman, from medical necessity or convenience, cannot or will not bear her own child. The embryo transfer and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. child will be carried by a third party. This may seem incredible, but today's incredibles are often tomorrow's facts, and it is the part of wisdom to recognize this. (77) In keeping with the Roman Catholic Church's disapproval of interfering with the "natural" functions of procreation, even the possibility of contractual motherhood is enough to make these two Catholic ethicists find the entire package morally unacceptable. In contrast to the Roman Catholic Church's unequivocal stance against reproductive technologies, Jack W. Moore, professor emeritus of religion and philosophy, asks: "Are we not on holy ground where we have no right of passage when we create human beings in a test tube?" (442) His answer, published in the more moderate journal Christian Century, is that "[w]e not only have the right but the responsibility to further procreation when it is impaired" (445). Rather than viewing scientific innovation as a disruption of God's natural plan, Moore believes it illustrates how God and man operate as co-workers to improve the "patterns and processes in nature" (445). Also writing for Christian Century, theologian Janet Dickey McDowell argues against the Catholic Church's rejection of in-vitro on the grounds that the Church's position is inconsistent with its acceptance Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of other medical technologies (936). She likens IVF to using a dialysis machine in that both mimic normal physiological functions. She believes that " [conceptions via IVF ought not simply to be tolerated; they should be celebrated, ..." (937). Her approval, however, does not extend beyond using IVF for a "loving couple" (937). She does not define who qualifies as a loving couple, but it seems apparent that she refers to married, heterosexual couples. Like many of her colleagues, she does not condone the use of other aspects of reproductive technology. For a secular opinion of the role that religious morality should play in determining the acceptability of reproductive technology, we can look to Charles Krauthammer, whose article appears in The New Republic. Characterized by Maggie Gallagher as The New Republic's "foreign-policy guru . . . [making] a little foray into social issues" (28), Krauthammer offers the most substantial of the five articles printed on the topic in the journal. He praises the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's document on artificial reproduction as "a radical act of resistance to the technological hubris of modern reproductive medicine and to the Frankenstein world that it is rapidly making possible" (17). However, the pragmatic Krauthammer Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 170 dilutes this praise by ultimately finding the Catholic document to be unrealistic and therefore of little use. Instead he calls the Vatican's rejection of artificial insemination a poor attempt to influence civil law. He proposes that by accomplishing a sort of "moral calculus" we will find our best weapon against reproductive nightmares in "nuance" (21). Thus, Krauthammer joins his more moderate Protestant counterparts in finding that some reproductive practices should be accepted. The last feature of the mythical representation of reproductive technologies presented by the women's magazine is the "gift" baby who represents every woman's dream. Naturally, the babies discussed in the pages of the commentary magazine are a bit more problematic; and they present these problems even before the first diaper change. The commentators take up two main issues created by reproductive services. First, children created through contractual motherhood become commodities that can be bought and sold. Second, because in-vitro technologies create not only nascent life, but a host of things that can be done with it and to it, the rights and status of these potent little cell groups is debated. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 171 The women's magazine focuses on the baby as the cherished goal which makes all the suffering worthwhile. The underlying assumption is that these babies will be loved all the more because they were wanted so terribly. But is it possible for a baby to be wanted too much? Many of the commentators believe that the extensive measures to which some would-be parents will go are by their nature harmful to the child produced, bought and sold. Instead of entering the world as someone's responsibility, these children are responsible for the happiness of those who fought so hard to create them. Regardless of which interests they represent— sacred, secular, liberal, or conservative— the commentators agree that being bought and sold is not healthy for the child at the heart of the transaction. "Do we sense . . . some lingering suspicion that baby deals are not quite like pork belly deals? Oh well, give it time" ("Infentrepreneurs" 228). Is contractual motherhood the equivalent of trading pork bellies? The comparison seems rather harsh and since this remark was printed in a Commonweal editorial, one could attribute it to a Catholic "hypersensitivity" to the potential commodification of life that is inherent in contractual motherhood. The editors of Commonweal Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 172 are not alone, however, in their condemnation of a practice that they feel makes commodities out of children, or in their pork belly comparison for that matter. Secular critic Katha Pollitt makes a similar quip in reference to the Baby M case: "You'd think she had signed a contract to trade sow bellies at $5 . . (685). Commentators who are not caught up in being vitriolic about the practice explain their objections to contractual motherhood a bit more rationally. Representing the lay Catholic community, Sidney Callahan explains her disapproval in religious terms: "When one is begotten not made, then one shares equally with one's parents in the ongoing transmission of the gift of life ..." (emphasis added 237). Since Callahan approves of the limited use of in-vitro for married couples, her objection is to the introduction into the marital relationship of third party genes. This introduction constitutes the deliberate manipulation of life— she calls it "drafting"— to which she objects (237). Feminist Mary Kay Blakely focuses on the expectations that contract parents would inevitably have for a purchased child: "Even a surrogate baby, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. carefully gened and legally guaranteed, cannot live up to such fantastic expectations" (20). Writing for the moderate Christian Century. Linda Delloff is also concerned about parental expectations, though in a slightly different context. Her piece is a response to the birth of the first baby born from donated Nobel prize-winning sperm. She believes such parents would compromise the quality of their offsprings' lives regardless of the outcome of their genetic experiment— "[p]ity such babies whose lives are planned for them before they emerge from the womb" (749). She also believes these parents have wandered into God's territory. "When Christ commanded, 'Suffer little children to come unto me, . . .' he wasn't just referring to those with IQs of 130" (750). Maggie Gallagher's piece in the conservative National Review sums up the problem of responsibility nicely. "The child cannot obligate her [the birth mother], she obligates it: It is a product, conceived for sale and use" (30). The second of the two impediments to the "happy ending" of the women's magazine fairy tale is one which excites a great deal of moral and ethical debate. The religious critics, already deeply concerned with the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 174 question of when life begins, shudder at the thought of petri dishes full of disposable embryos. It makes perfect sense that the Catholic team Hellegers and McCormick reject in-vitro in part because of "the disturbing question of zygote loss" (76). They add a concern for potential birth defects that could result from the procedures. "Here we have an experimental procedure undertaken to benefit prospective parents with the risks being borne by the child and without its consent or any possibility of consent" (76). The second of the two articles printed in America examines a legal decision that also happens to support Catholic tenets about the definition of life. This discussion, by law professor Joseph Allegretti, addresses one of the more interesting cases caused by in-vitro practices. In a 1989 divorce suit, custody of seven frozen embryos was awarded to the wife based on the judge's decision that they were human beings. Though the custody decision was overturned after Allegretti's article was published, his discussion of the law involved in the case is very reasonable and persuasive. He explains that the judge had to choose between classifying the embryos as property or children. Allegretti recognizes that embryos are not children, but he makes his case that they are "more Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 175 like children than they are like a chair" (305). He never invokes theology in this discussion, basing his reasoning entirely on the legal dilemma. The editors of Commonweal address the problem of aborting nascent life in an editorial that was published immediately after the birth of Louise Joy Brown. They acknowledge that ending the life of a fertilized egg may not be considered abortion by some, but very practically point out that "there is little reason to think that the manufacturing principles of quality control can halt there" since Leslie Brown agreed in writing that she would abort a defective fetus ("Test-Tube Babies" 548). A Christian Century editor also responded to Louise Brown's birth by pointing out the moral problems inherent in in-vitro. Remarking on how "placid" the discussion of test-tube technology has been, James Sellers reminds the reader that in-vitro invites the same question being argued in the debate over abortion: when human life begins. He takes an incremental position on the problem, arguing that the embryo does not have full rights at conception, "but it begins to accumulate rights as it develops toward humanness" (757). Based on Sellers' 1978 position, an interesting legal problem would now be posed by the latest technology: determining at just ■ ------------ - ■ - ■ .. ....... - I ■ ....I. . - .. . W I ■ ■ ■ r l i M » .- _ ,'n iP - jT u iiiin , - _ ’I.fss = s q e Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 176 what stage those rights would be frozen when an embryo is preserved for banking. Janet McDowell, writing in 1983, takes a position that also illustrates how quickly our technological capabilities surpass our moral proclamations. Her approval of IVF procedures is based on the clinics' practice of implanting all embryos created. If clinics were to retain embryos, she argues, this practice would come under a different moral heading and would not reflect on the acceptability of IVF itself (937). It is interesting to note how far McDowell's position is from the Roman Catholic's "package deal" view of reproductive technologies. Another religious commentator does regard these medical advances as an all-or-nothing proposition. Richard Neuhaus, the author of Commentary's sole discussion of reproductive technologies, views them as a vehicle for a new eugenics. His objection is not to the technological advances themselves, but to the practices they enable. For him the "real growth areas in the synthetic-child business" (16) include genetic engineering and fetal experimentation. Acknowledging that the creation of life in the laboratory also allows for the destruction of life in the laboratory, Neuhaus explains that he is far more concerned that our Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. technological capabilities will allow us to create a socially-engineered society (17). To illustrate how offended he is by the experimental use of fetal tissue, he presents a morally repugnant example. A California woman proposed that she be artificially inseminated with her father's sperm so she could abort the subsequent fetus and have it used in an attempt to cure the father's Alzheimer's disease (18). In a society that has no clear moral guidelines for such medical possibilities, Neuhaus speculates sardonically that her "act of love . . . would no doubt meet with overwhelming support on the Phil Donahue show ..." (18) . Religious proclamations about the status of embryonic life are not necessarily unique to the religious journals. Malachi Martin's condemnation of in-vitro technology contains more references to Christian morality than do the articles written by many of his religious counterparts. In his National Review article "Test-Tube Morality," Martin rails at a society which easily accepts a whole menu of scientific innovations that Aquinas and Augustine could never have foreseen, and which sets policies while consciously excluding "all considerations of a religious nature" (1285). Martin considers the destruction of embryonic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. life to be "multiple infanticide" (1285). He shudders on the page at the morals that allow some "non- Christians" to endorse or engage in actions that create an atmosphere of " [e]very embryo for itself, and the trash-can take the hindmost!" (1285) He expresses his moral horror over fetal experimentation by making use of language that is both graphic and vitriolic: Non- Christians endorse the use of a drug that "permits the abortion of the fetus alive and ready to have its head cut off and its body cut up by the medical researchers" (1285). Apparently he believes that his own charged language is necessary compensation for the use of what he calls "Easyspeak": euphemisms like "pregnancy termination" that make certain technological practices more palatable (1285). For a secular view that rejects both religious and feminist concerns about reproductive technologies, we can turn to The New Republic and William Tucker's version of "In Vitro Veritas." Tucker counters concerns about embryos being "'flushed down the toilet,'" (out of the bottle into the bowl?) by explaining that "human females produce eggs at a rate of one per month" (15). This article was printed in 1981, before it became common practice to superovulate women undergoing in-vitro procedures. It seems Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179 unlikely though that even with this new twist, Tucker would change his mind about endorsing in-vitro because he views any argument over its value as a cover for the anti-abortion movement's agenda. "The gaggle of opposition to in vitro fertilization has one thing in common: religious fundamentalism, whether sacred or secular" (16). Tucker's "gaggle" is made up of several groups, all of whom he considers to be extremists: they include a "robust cross-fertilization between right-to- lifers and some of the anti-technological extremists on the fringes of the environmental movement," and "some of the radical factions of the women's movement" (16). Whatever its composition, it is clear that to Tucker the noisy opposition to in-vitro should be considered just as seriously as one would a swarming flock of geese. In his version of "In Vitro Veritas," Robert Bazell addresses the problem of selective abortion that was raised by the birth of quintuplets in 1988. Though these particular quintuplets survived and were healthy, their birth made public the dilemma posed by the multiple pregnancies that current in-vitro practices often create. Bazell calls for an end to the secrecy that surrounds what the medical profession calls "'embryo reduction procedure'" (12). To illustrate the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 180 problem, Bazell quotes Dr. David Navot, an IVF expert: "It's like hearsay. . . . People who are dealing with IVF and occasionally get into multiple pregnancies know where to go. But there are no statistics, no numbers'" (12). Pregnancy reduction is not a moral problem for Bazell, however, instead he is concerned that we set public policy. He explains that he understands the secrecy. The doctors are saving one or two fetuses and possibly the mother by terminating the others. "People whose main work is helping couples have babies certainly do not want anti-abortion demonstrators at their door" (12). Because the future holds the possibility of new procedures such as cloning and what is now known as "gestational surrogacy," Tucker wants a public discussion. He believes that we should decide as a society which of these technologies we want to use and which we do not before "someone gets enough signatures on a petition to put a stop to all of it" (13). For Tucker, the danger seems to be not that technology will inappropriately legislate morality, but that morality will inappropriately legislate technology. I would like to lock him in a room with Malachi Martin and see who emerges with a moral black eye. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. By responding mainly to the cases that Gordon characterizes as "arrangements gone wrong," those who debate reproductive technologies in the commentary journals often miss the opportunity to examine some of the practices that go unquestioned in the courts. The "happy endings" that populate the fantasy case histories in the women's magazines offer some interesting moral and ethical dilemmas that have not been addressed here. Some examples from the cases presented in Chapter Three include: the posthumous creation of children who will never know one genetic parent; the use of IVF and AI to create children for parents with serious medical conditions; children created out of wedlock by single parents; and the technologically incestuous practice of a grandmother carrying fetuses for her daughter. If the writers of the commentary journals would pick up a women's magazine from time to time, they would find some very good fuel for their discussion. They may also discover how powerful the fairy tale representation can be, and perhaps this discovery would convince them of the need for further debate of reproductive technologies. Still, the discussion we have examined here attacks the women's magazine fantasy on all levels. If the reader of the women's magazine were to pick up a commentary Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 182 journal from time to time, she would find it impossible to read her next issue of Good Housekeeping with the same eyes. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 183 Notes 1. Raymond's figures represent "traditional" IVF procedures. At least one clinic using the newest GIFT and ZIFT procedures under optimal conditions reports success rates as high as 40-50 percent (Elmer-DeWitt "Making Babies" 61). Still, the norm is probably much lower than this. 2. Since the female reproductive system shuts down when all of its egg follicles have produced eggs, superovulation undoubtedly means that women who go through these procedures will experience menopause earlier than they would otherwise. Earlier onset of menopause will mean that the hormonal levels will be changed earlier, increasing the risk of breast cancer. Some women will use estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) to counteract this possibility, but ERT poses alternative risks— endometrial cancer (Seaman and Seaman 331). While these risks may be acceptable to the woman who has fertility problems and weighs them next to her desire to have a child, the otherwise healthy woman who "volunteers" to donate eggs will experience the same risks. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter Five Gynecology at the Breakfast Table Ben Bradlee, managing editor of The Washington Post, is credited with saying that the "news is the first rough draft of history" (Andrews 632). Indeed, our news publications have many of the qualities of a rough draft. Reporting the news is very different from carefully thinking through and revising a text for clarity and complexity. As a result, the news text is rarely as penetrating as one would expect a revised version to be. Rather than representing one consistent point of view, the news reporter compiles a story out of the facts, testimonials, and diverse opinions he or she gathers together on the topic in question. Depending on his or her level of expertise and impartiality, the reporter will be more or less capable of orchestrating the disparate voices called together in the article. This group agent differs from the diverse agents of the commentary journal in that the commentators, while representing a variety of opinions, remain consistent within their particular ideologies and discourse communities. The news writer, however, brings together and tries to manage the representatives of many different discourse communities. The result is often more like a cacophony of voices than an organized Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 185 debate. Because of this blend of voices, the gynecological case history that appears in the news media is a hybrid, with the elements of the fairy tale coexisting with the critical debate of the commentator. The news writer's purpose also differs from that of the commentator or the author of the women's magazine piece. The reporter attempts to act as an impartial informant, notifying the reader of important events, dangerous practices, and unethical behavior. The reader's assumption that the reporter is impartial means that the press is awarded a great deal of credibility and more objectivity that it can possibly achieve. The readership of the news media is quite varied. This large group can easily include the audiences of both the women's magazine and the commentary journal, though those who read both will award them different positions in the home. The women's magazine will probably go from the check-out stand to the night stand, while the commentary journal will remain proudly displayed on the coffee table. The news media may travel about the house a bit more, but for this chapter I have located them at the breakfast table because one of the first places one finds the newspaper is folded neatly beside the morning toast and coffee. The news Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 186 magazine may or may not be found there as well, but locating gynecology at the breakfast table will provoke less blushes than locating it at the commode.1 The nation's two most popular news magazines are Time and Newsweek. These two magazines have been in publication for most of the twentieth century; Time was founded in 1923 and Newsweek in 1933. They have circulations of 4.5 million and 3 million respectively (Katz and Katz 819, 821). Together they cannot even challenge the total readership of the women's service magazines, but they do account for a much larger audience than the commentary journal. Often running the same headlines each week, these two news magazines are remarkably similar. Katz and Katz describe Time's viewpoint as that of the "conservative, middle-of-the- road American" (821). They distinguish Newsweek's approach from Time's by defining it as more liberal and socially conscious; they characterize its target reader as more affluent and compassionate, and as endowed with an intellectual appreciation (819). Published weekly, these two periodicals are responsible for more than half of the news magazines' 112 articles covering reproductive technology between 1977 and 1994. Time printed thirty-four articles and Newsweek printed thirty. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 187 A sampling of the daily news media's coverage of reproductive technology will be taken from the New York Times. founded in 1851 and with a paid circulation of 1.2 million (Ulrich's 54), the Los Angeles Times, founded in 1881 and with a paid circulation of 1.1 million (7), and the Houston Chronicle, founded in 1901 and with a paid circulation of 419,759 (79). The East Coast's New York Times is the authoritative newspaper, considered to "set the standard by which all other newspapers are measured" (Katz and Katz 825). On the West Coast, the Los Angeles Times, by virtue of its location in California, the "surrogate state," has the advantage of being on the spot for many of the breaking stories in this area. The Gulf Coast Houston Chronicle represents a southern metropolitan point of view. As rough drafts, the news media are the sources for much of the information used to generate the articles that appear later in the woman's magazine and the commentary journal. So as may be expected, the news media profile their share of women who qualify as fairy tale heroines, willing to try anything to achieve their goal of motherhood. We read in a Newsweek article titled "Five Years of Hard Labor" about Loretta McDonagh who pursued motherhood through a "grueling round of tests, meticulous temperature charts and sex Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 188 by the calendar" (Seligmann 108). Her "hard labor" resulted in twins born in 1981. Carol Plotnick, because of her "intense desire to have a baby" (Clark 102), refuses to have a hysterectomy in spite of tremendous pain from pelvic inflammation. Debbie Hungerford thought that her insurance should have covered the IVF procedure that she "'didn't think twice about . . .'" (Clark 106). More recent technological developments are making it possible for women to continue the motherhood guest for quite a bit longer than previously. In 1991 Time reported on a fifty-three year old woman who became pregnant after using a donated egg and hormone treatments. Her doctor explained in an interview that "'[s]he had given up hope of ever having a child, and came to me hoping for a miracle, . . .'" (Sauer qtd. in Gorman 62) . The Houston Chronicle is a bit more glib about the same technology, offering the following 1994 headline: Mama mia! Italian Woman, 62, becomes oldest to give birth" (D'Emilio 12A). In spite of the humorous approach to what have been called "granny pregnancies," the newspaper reporter does acknowledge that enabling a sixty-two year old woman to become pregnant is not accepted by everyone as a good thing. The reporter Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 189 tells us that the physician who created the pregnancy, Dr. Severino Antinori, has colleagues who believe that it is "irresponsible to help a woman become pregnant who would be elderly while the child was growing up" (12A) . This, however, is the extent of the criticism reported. There is no mention of any physical danger to the women who undergo this treatment. No authority is quoted questioning this particular woman's psychological fitness to raise the child, despite the fact that she was having him as a replacement for a dead son. (She even named the new baby with the dead child's name.) Christine Gorman's Time coverage of the fifty- three year old woman's pregnancy does offer a somewhat more in-depth critique. Dr. Georgeanna Jones, one of the co-founders of the Jones Institute in Norfolk (the oldest fertility clinic in the United States), says she is concerned that this application of IVF technology will entice women to delay pregnancy even longer (Gorman 62). She believes there is a time and place for everything and that youth is the time for childbearing. She explains that such late pregnancies pose increased medical risks to the fetus and to the mother in the form of diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure (62). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. On the same topic, a 1990 New York Times article titled "Giving Older Women a Shot at Motherhood" does cover some of the ethical issues involved in late-in- life pregnancies. The author, Gina Kolata, who writes often on reproductive technology, quotes experts who are concerned about the physical stresses an older woman going through such a pregnancy will endure. The experts also point out the potential for exploitation of childless women by those who, by offering these services, are pushing back natural time limits (IV, 4). Kolata relates two cases histories, one of a forty- three year old woman who has been trying unsuccessfully for ten years to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilization, and the other of a forty year old woman, who, after trying for nineteen years, finally gave birth to twins (IV, 4). Provided with the expert testimony and both a success story and a failure, the reader of this article will be able to arrive at a more informed view of this application of reproductive technology. For a slightly cynical take on the woman with an overwhelming desire to be a mother, Newsweekfs coverage of the Doris Del Zio case presents her as believing, with "a confidence bordering on obsession, that the contents of that test tube, . . . would have produced Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the child that she and her husband so desperately wanted" (Footlick 70) . The article also reports the same story she told in Good Housekeeping about her shopping expedition and black-out in the baby department. This time, rather than evoking sympathy, the story reinforces the view created of her as an obsessive woman (70). While most reporters take great pains to explain all of the technology behind in-vitro, they do not report much about the physical pain such procedures cause. One account describes the IVF procedure, including egg removal, with no reference to pain. Then the reporter tells his reader that the embryos are put into a teflon catheter and inserted into the uterus "usually with no discomfort" (Clark 106). It is odd that the reporter felt it necessary to explain that the implantation procedure is usually pain-free, while omitting any mention of the other more painful practices involved. A Time profile of Arlette Schweitzer, who we will recall carried twins for her daughter, also minimizes the amount of physical pain she endured. Her comments about having to inject herself with fertility drugs for eighty-nine days are colored by her motives: she is a mother making a sacrifice for her daughter's happiness. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 192 She explains that while she still has scars on her hips from the hormone injections, "'[f]or 89 days I think you could even walk on coals if you had to'" (qtd. in Nash 58). The news media can be counted on for profiles of contractual mothers— the nature of their "service" makes for good news stories. Arlette Schweitzer is a perfect example of the totally altruistic woman who is a great mother in her own right. Schweitzer is characterized in Time as a "gutsy South Dakota grandma" (Nash 58). She is gutsy because at forty-two she became the country's first "gestational surrogate," but more importantly, she did it for her daughter. Calling her a grandma emphasizes her genetic relationship to the twins she carried rather than her biological relationship to them, reminding us that these relationships are now often separate and distinct. The title of grandma also highlights Schweitzer's relationship with her daughter, making it a more important biological tie than the one between her and the two babies she nurtured for nine months. In a rather roundabout way, Schweitzer is also characterized as saintly: when she speaks her voice is "as clear and as strong as a church bell" (58). Though her actions violate her church's official position on Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 193 artificial reproduction, Schweitzer's rationale is presented as a logical outcome of her faith: "With refreshing, down-to-earth pragmatism, Arlette, a devout Roman Catholic, says she had no doubts about her decision. 'If medical science affords that opportunity, why not take it?'" (58) Another case, heralded in the Houston Chronicle by the headline "53-year-old gives birth to grandson" marks a similar act of motherly love. Because her daughter-in-law was unable to bear children, a fifty- three year-old woman underwent hormone treatments to jump-start her reproductive system and carry her son's child. Though the article quotes a representative from the American Fertility Society as having "serious reservations about any attempt to produce pregnancy beyond the ordinary childbearing age" ("53-year-old" 5A), the story glosses over a powerful potential controversy raised by both this and the Schweitzer case: the ethical implications of a woman carrying her son's or daughter's child. The Oedipal connection is more apparent in the case where the mother is carrying her son's child, but it seems this aspect of reproductive technology has simply been avoided. The use of eggs and sperm from the sponsoring parents seems to create a situation of technological purity for the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 194 woman who allows her uterus to be used in this fashion. Instead of being considered impure for her actions, the woman who gestates the fetus[es] is actually treated in much the same way as the Virgin Mary was. God is simply acting through her, facilitated by technology. A Newsweek profile of several women who have acted as surrogates makes this same comparison with the virgin birth. When challenged by a fellow church member about the morality of her actions, one woman's retort was that 11'Mary was a surrogate for God'" (Cassem qtd. in Kantrowitz 46). By equating her actions with the virgin birth, the woman is able to retain her purity and piety without question. Another woman profiled in the Newsweek piece exemplifies the altruism attributed to these women. She explains that she became a contract mother because she worked with three fertility doctors and saw the anguish the infertile women experienced (46). Finally, a third was so determined to carry someone else's child that she persisted despite a war with her in-laws. Though they threatened to disown her husband and take her children away, she went ahead with the procedure and became pregnant (48). In the news piece she explains that the experience has made her marriage stronger. For all of these women, the drive to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 195 motherhood— albeit contractual— overpowers any obstacles standing in their paths. Newsweek editor Barbara Kantrowitz, the author of the piece, does acknowledge that women who contract to be mothers do not always do so for the purist of motives. She cites a study that describes three main reasons women become contractual mothers: "money, a desire to be pregnant and an interest in reconciling some past birth-related trauma" (47). After profiling the typical contract mother, the author explains that this portrait matches Mary Beth Whitehead perfectly (47). Apparently, her application for broker Noel Keane made her seem like the ideal woman for the job. Her motives fit easily into the first and second categories above. By describing Whitehead's surrogacy application as "poignantly naive" (47), the author uses the case to call into question the definition of the perfect "surrogate." The news media coverage also shows how the relationship between contracting mother and child is downplayed while the relationship with the sponsoring mother is emphasized. One woman, called only by her first name, Denise, explains: "'It wasn't my baby. There was no attachment at all. I knew from the beginning that this was their baby, not mine" (qtd. in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 196 Kantrowitz 48). Whitehead's early relationship with Elizabeth Stern is characterized as very close: "'When I first talked to Mary Beth, it was like talking to my sister'" (Stern qtd. in Kantrowitz 48). Later in this discussion the Anna Johnson case will demonstrate just how detached gestating can become: a woman who nurtures a child made from someone else's genetic material can be determined to be a "genetic stranger" to that child, and therefore of no consequence once the gestation is complete. As in the women's magazine, the egg donor is represented in Newsweek as simply a new type of surrogate, motivated by the same altruistic feelings as she who "donates" her womb for nine months. "Whether she is helping a desperate sister, friend, colleague, or a stranger, the average donor acts out of altruism" (Ames et al 60) . A donor identified only by a pseudonym— Elizabeth— makes an analogy that shows the characteristic detachment requisite for someone in this occupation: "'I may have given the yeast, but the bread isn't mine'" (61). Another donor who has made eleven egg donations is depicted as a sort of "super-egg mom." She meets with and pre-approves the couples who receive her eggs. Those who have been successful send annual pictures of the five children that have been born from Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 197 her eggs. Of her role in helping to create these families she says, "'I get sheer enjoyment out of it'" (61). In the women's magazines several women are profiled who sued for custody of the children they created for others. Those that retained the image of the good mother sued for custody for the same sort of altruistic reasons that motivated them to act as contract mothers in the first place. A California case profiled in the Los Angeles Times fits this category. In this situation, a woman who was the genetic mother of the child she conceived for a couple sued for custody because the couple split up. The series of articles covering the case begins with an introduction to the three "parents" debating custody. The sponsoring mother, Cynthia Moschetta, is presented as a victim; she has been left by her husband and now stands to lose the six-month-old daughter she took maternity leave to care for. We can hardly avoid feeling sympathy for her, especially after this quote; "He offered me money to leave," Cynthia Moschetta said, breaking into tears. "He would tell me that I don't have any rights, because I'm not the mother. I told him that there was no amount of money in the world that he could give Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 198 me that would replace Marissa." (Efron "A 3-Way Fight" A32) After reading this quote, we already have a negative view of Robert Moschetta, the man who told his wife he was moving out and taking the baby with him. In dispute is a document he had the contracting mother, Elvira Jordan, sign giving him sole custody of the child. Jordan's attorneys claimed that she does not read English and she did not read or understand the document. Moschetta's comment about the document is that he was just "wrap[ping] up the paperwork" (A32). This explanation makes him sound like the sort of man who would take advantage of the woman's inability to read English. He appears to be just the type of man the feminist commentators believe this technology was created for. By offering his estranged wife money to leave, he highlights just who was "buying" the child in this case. On the other hand, Jordan is characterized as a caring mother who, like Patty Nowakowski, has been placed in the position of having to protect her child. According to her attorney, she is "'not a surrogate kicking up trouble'" (Kellogg qtd. in Efron A32). As the genetic mother of the child she "wanted her daughter to be raised by a happy, loving couple" (A3). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 199 If the Moschettas had remained married, she would have obediently handed the child over to them. Their separation and ensuing divorce made the usual surrogate-style compliance impossible. The reporter on this story, Sonni Efron, explains that the judge's decision will affect the definition of parenthood, having "implications for gay parents, stepparents and others who rear children in non- traditional families" (A3). She cites experts in surrogacy arrangements and reproductive law: James Boskey of Seton Hall University Law School; Nina F. Kellogg, a Los Angeles psychologist and surrogacy broker; Marjorie M. Schultz, a UC Berkeley law professor; and Martha Field, A Harvard Law School professor. Each has a different view of the case and its potential for changing contractual motherhood in California. A follow-up story by Efron tells the reader about the legal decision: In a ruling that could bolster the rights of surrogate mothers in California, a Superior Court judge in Orange County ruled Thursday that a surrogate mother is the legal parent of the baby girl she bore for a couple who are now divorcing. ("Surrogate" A30) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Legal expert Martha A. Field is quoted registering her surprise that Jordan won the case. She explains that contractual mothers often lack the resources for fighting such battles against the more financially stable adoptive couples. The judge's decision in this case is something of a surprise to another legal expert, James Boskey, because ruling the surrogacy contract unenforceable jeopardizes such contracts in the already burgeoning California surrogacy industry (A31). The judge's disapproval of contractual motherhood is unmistakable; she declares invalid any contract that requires "'irreversible pre-conception relinquishment of parental rights without consideration of the best interests of the child'" (Weiben Stock qtd. in Efron A30). The final article in the series reports that Jordan has been given joint custody with the child's father. This reporter calls Jordan the "surrogate mother" (Lait "Judge" A3). His use of this term so late in the case is evidence of the strength of the euphemism. Jordan has already been declared the child's legal mother. She is indeed the child's biological mother; yet she still wears the surrogate label. The reporter also points out that the judge, by giving Jordan joint custody, has gone against the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 201 court's expert recommendation. We read Jordan's reaction and then the father's. She "collapsed with emotion," (A3) and he "strongly denounced the ruling" (A27). The Los Angeles Times ran two more articles on the Jordan case the following day. One reports the critical reaction of family experts to Judge Weiben Stock's decision. James Boskey, the family law professor who is quoted in the previous article, characterizes the decision as unhealthy for the child (Lait "Family" A31). Dr. Stephen Herman, a psychiatrist from Yale, says that joint custody is a panacea that rarely works (A31), and Dr. Justin Call, the head of UC Irvine's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department, calls the joint custody arrangement "doomed for failure" (A31). To counter these opinions, the reporter gives us a different kind of expert— Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould. Introduced as the "surrogate mother in the watershed 'Baby M' case," she says "I wish I had gotten joint custody. ... I think it is the best situation for the child" (A31). Placed next to the authoritative opinions of the psychiatrists and lawyers, hers sounds rather self-serving and naive. The final article is an editorial calling for government regulation of the surrogacy industry. The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. editor characterizes the outcome of the case as "ultimately disappointing . . . [with] no rights for the sponsoring mother, day-care-provider status for the surrogate, and certain confusion for child and father" ("Tangled" B5). The writer seems to find the "elevated status of a surrogate" most disturbing (B5). Elvira Jordan is referred to as the "surrogate," never even the "surrogate mother" and, according to the author, a surrogate is "a person whose womb was let for rent . . ." (B5). The message of the editorial is that government must regulate this industry— called "this brave new world of surrogacy" in a reference to Aldous Huxley's novel— before more women acting as surrogates are allowed to become "important longterm player[s] in a child's upbringing" (B5). If the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the Elvira Jordan case shows a somewhat mixed attitude toward her custody suit, the Time and Newsweek coverage of the Mary Beth Whitehead case is more sympathetic than might be expected for the woman who has come to represent the wicked witch of surrogacy. In a commentary essay in Time, senior writer Roger Rosenblatt takes a strong stand against contractual motherhood, using the Baby M case as the focal point of his discussion. His interpretation of the arrangement between Whitehead and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 203 Stem is that "she was paid to experience maternal love, the forced cessation of that love, and a whole range of feelings in the process that are not ordinarily put up for sale" (88). Rosenblatt likens the deal struck between Whitehead and Stem to the one that Faust made with the Devil: "In a way, neither Stem nor Whitehead had a claim to the service they were dealing with, any more than Faust had a claim to the soul he dealt the Devil" (88). In two Time news pieces about the case, Richard Lacayo allows a variety of experts to give opinions on the Whitehead case. In the first piece, he quotes Whitehead's anguished cry as she turned her daughter over to the Sterns: "Oh God, what have I done?" ("Whose Child" 56) Lacayo uses the case to pose two contradictory questions: If society allows such arrangements, "[h]as it imperiled its most venerable notions of kinship and the bond between mother and child?" (56) If the practice is prohibited, "has a promising way for childless couples to have families been denied them?" (56) Instead of answering these questions himself, Lacayo presents an array of expert opinions denouncing the practice of contractual motherhood. The New Jersey Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church believe that the practice "'exploits a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 204 child as a commodity and exploits a woman as a babymaker'" (qtd. in Lacayo 58). Rabbi Moses Tendler worries that contract motherhood will allow people to practice a sort of piecemeal slavery, buying the use of specific organs (58). Bioethicist Arthur Caplan does not think people should be gestating babies for money (58). Norman Robbins, family law attorney, says children are not goods or property (58), and Elizabeth Kane, the much publicized "first surrogate" who later changed her mind about the practice, explains that the woman acting as surrogate is not granted any rights (58). In this coverage, the weight of such negative expert opinion denounces the practice. The Newsweek coverage of the Whitehead case is also sympathetic, although author Kantrowitz surrounds her explanation of Whitehead's circumstances with profiles of women who have acted as surrogates without incident. She balances their positive experiences by quoting Elizabeth Kane's most well known line: "'All you're doing is transferring the pain from one woman to another, from a woman who is in pain from her infertility to a woman who has to give up her baby'" (46). An effective means of bringing Whitehead's point of view home to the reader is the description of her emotional reaction to giving the baby up. "But her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 205 first night without the baby was agony" (49) . Even better is Tuesday Whitehead's account of the day her little sister was snatched sleeping from her crib. Screaming "No," Tuesday chased after the men, an FBI agent and a private investigator, and helplessly tried to stop them by beating one of them on the back with the only weapon she had at hand, her hairbrush (49). The wicked surrogate "kicking up trouble" who has probably received the worst publicity is Anna Johnson, the woman who acted as a gestational surrogate and then sued for custody of the child. In a Los Angeles Times Magazine article she is characterized as manipulative, dishonest, and selfish, suing for custody "out of complex motivations that seemed dominated by pure spite toward the better-fixed couple who she believed was neglecting her" (Kasindorf 12). Johnson's was the first custody case in which the birth mother was not the genetic mother of the child in dispute. The Calverts had to argue that the genetic material they supplied to create the child gestated in Anna Johnson's womb was indeed their property. Their lawyer is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying that "'the genetic parents have more right to the baby. . . . Genetics are the property of the parents who provided them'" (Van Deusen qtd. in Gewertz A22). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 206 In the Davis case debated in America by Joseph Allegretti, just the opposite argument was made; the embryos were determined to be human beings and not property. A follow-up article covering the birth of the baby boy depicts the event as a "legal and emotional firestorm" (Gewertz A35). The lawyers were in a "frenzy of activity," "rushing" and "racing" to the hospital to make sure that Johnson did not bring the baby home before custody was determined. In contrast to all of this activity around Johnson, Cris Calvert is depicted as sitting quietly at home, waiting to see if she can visit the baby. She is the meek and submissive mother, just waiting to see if she will be allowed to raise her child. She tells the reporter "'I'm still so shaky, .... I'm real excited, but I'm also worried. I know in my heart that he's our baby, but there's still the question, what if we don't win? What if we don't get him?'" (A35) Calvert and her husband began decorating a room for the baby, but stopped because it became too painful when Johnson began threatening to sue for custody. Now Calvert wants to "buy a changing table and finish wallpapering the room with bright Disney characters" (A35). This information makes the Calverts sound like Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 207 stable, loving parents who have indeed been harmed by the legal battle over the baby created with their genetic material. In contrast, the most important piece of information provided about Johnson is that she has no genetic link to the child, a biological fact that the judge used to deny her any custody rights. The coverage of the same case presented in the New York Times gives greater context to the issues raised by the Johnson case. By comparing the Johnson case to another in which a woman past menopause gave birth to a child using a donated egg, reporter Seth Mydans shows us the same contradictory legal situation that feminist commentator Katha Pollitt points out in The Nation. Mydans quotes attorney Lori Andrews, author of two books on contract motherhood, "In these two instances we have exactly the same biological situation, yet we want different legal results" (emphasis added IV, 6). Because of the Johnson case, Mydans tells us, the definition of "mother" has been challenged. He then allows another expert to articulate the problem when he quotes James Nelson of the Hastings Center, a medical ethics research institution. Nelson explains that Judge Parslow's decision, and his comparison of Anna Johnson to a foster parent, "'offers an image of women as interchangeable fetal containers, and [suggests] Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 208 that when it comes down to it, any womb will do'" (IV, 6). Mydans also raises the potential for exploitation when he tells the reader that Ramona Ripston, of the American Civil Liberties Union, is concerned about "the possible creation of a breeder class of poor women who 'rent out their wombs' to more affluent women who may seek to avoid a nine-month interruption in their careers" (IV, 6). Mydans does allow the administrator of the Center for Surrogate Parenting to rebut this criticism. Polly Craig claims that the "$10,000 fee is too low to serve as the motive for most surrogate mothers," though they may be doing so out of guilt over an abortion (IV, 6). The article closes with Craig claiming that in her program the contract mother bonds with the childless couple rather than the baby. Again we see reference to the characteristic displacement created by these arrangements: the mother-child bond is said to be replaced with the surrogate-sister-in-need bond. If a contract mother were really seen as simply "a person whose womb was let for rent," then a billboard erected over a Houston freeway in 1993 would not have received the coverage that it did in the Houston Chronicle. Advertising herself with the lines "Womb Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 209 for Rent! Educated, Healthy, Loving Surrogate Mother Available," an anonymous woman declared through an attorney that she wished to finance her Ph.D. by renting out her womb (Warren "Sign" 1A). The incident received front page coverage as a rather humorous affair with a headline that read "Sign gives pregnant pause" (1A). The woman is characterized by her attorney as "'substantial, well-educated, . . . with a nice personality and a stable personality profile— not a nut case in any way, shape or form'" (Broach qtd. in Warren 12A). She describes herself as having a healthy "'environment of the womb'" (qtd. in Lenhart 17A) and both she and her attorney believe that she deserves a special premium in her compensation because of her unique approach (Warren "Sign" 12A). Several days after the billboard went up, the identity of the woman was discovered, and this discovery put an entirely different twist on the story. In a follow-up article, the reader learns that "[t]he woman who advertised her womb for rent on a roadside billboard has been indicted on federal charges of mail fraud and money laundering and is fighting felony charges of writing hot checks in Louisiana" (Warren and Sablatura 1A). The woman was also arrested in 1983 after shooting her first husband (16A). (The charges Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 210 were dropped and she collected $2 million in life insurance (Warren "Womb" 11A).) Her second husband turns out to be Roger Broach, the attorney handling her womb rental campaign (Warren "Surrogate" 1A). The writer reports that the woman lives "from scam to scam," and these scams are usually of a medical nature (Warren and Sablatura 1A). Once these discoveries were made, the woman's criminal past became the main focus of the story; the ethical problem raised by her advertisement of a body part for rent is never questioned in any way. The final treatment of this case shows that while reproductive capacities may be becoming compartmentalized, our expectation that women should be pure, pious, and submissive has not changed. After painting the womb renter as a brazen cheat, who enjoys taking advantage of others, the reporter ends the story with a quote from the attorney who was representing her first husband in divorce proceedings against her (before she killed him). "That's probably one of the last wombs you want to use" (Sloan qtd. in Warren "Womb" 11A). Apparently we do believe that women like Anna Johnson do more than just provide a biological form of foster care. The implication is that the quality of the womb has a direct bearing on the quality Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211 of the child produced therein. Will we read news articles in the future reporting that parents are suing their contract mothers because their children turned out to be criminals? All of the above images of women— as yearning for motherhood: the ultimate expression of domesticity, as pious and pure in their technologically-assisted pregnancies, and as submissive in their willingness to give up their children— are the rough material for the depictions we saw in the other periodicals. The news media provide the same raw characterizations of the fertility specialists as well. Time magazine's publisher may have initiated the media representation of "the-gynecologist-as-the-right-hand-of-God" when in 1978 he called Steptoe the "cloistered doctor" (Meyers 2). In the cover story printed on Louise Joy Brown before she was born, the doctor is described as "a highly respected gynecologist" ("The First" 59), a fine organist, and an "impeccable dresser" who also likes cricket (62). A colleague interviewed for the piece says he is "'a man of character and determination'" (62). Similarly, the reader discovers that Edwards is father to five daughters, "no less accomplished in his own field, . . . and just as dedicated" (62). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 212 Newsweek's coverage is not much different: "Steptoe, 65, is a flamboyant and somewhat mysterious figure" with "an unquestioned reputation in gynecology" (Gwynne 67) . The Browns are thanking God and Steptoe equally for their child, and attributing her birth to them equally as well: "'The man who deserves all the praise is Mr. Steptoe" says John Brown, who is obviously in awe of the doctor: "'What a man to be able to do such a wonderful thing'" (Brown qtd. in Gwynne 69) . Newsweek also reports on Howard and Georgeanna Jones, of the Norfolk Institute. They are portrayed not only as the preeminent American IVF experts, but as the caring couple who had already "grandparented" eight children into the world as early as 1982 (Keerdoja 110). The atmosphere at their clinic is comforting, like "'group therapy'" says one patient who describes the Joneses as very "'sensitive to the women's anxiety'" (Fleck qtd. in Keerdoja 110). Howard Jones is always available for consultation and Georgeanna Jones "'holds your hand during most procedures'" (Fleck qtd. in Keerdoja 110) . The news magazines do provide some negative images of doctors as well, and these sound remarkably like the nineteenth-century depictions of the medical quack we Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 213 read about in Chapter Two. Newsweek7s coverage of the Del Zio case pits the doctors who destroyed the fertilized egg against Shettles, who conducted the experiment. The "experts" claimed that Shettles was not only unqualified, but the "procedures had been so slipshod that, had the fertilized egg been implanted, Mrs. Del Zio would have contracted peritonitis and perhaps died" (Footlick 70). Shettles is characterized as "controversial" and though the reporter explains that Shettles is an acknowledged pioneer in the field, he also informs the reader that the doctor was demoted to the admissions desk (70). Time editor Philip Elmer-DeWitt explains that there are horror stories about the "poorly trained physician" who schedules fertility treatments and invasive surgery on women without first checking their partners' sperm counts ("Making Babies" 63). This is the technological equivalent of prescribing "oil of savin." In the same article, Dr. Richard Marrs, defined as an infertility expert, scoffs at those who do fertility work for selfish reasons: "'They pick up infertility because it's easier than delivering babies at 3 a.m.'" (63). In another article, Elmer-DeWitt profiles Dr. Cecil Jacobson who was accused of using his own sperm Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 214 to inseminate patients. This quack is also portrayed as an egotist: "'God doesn't give you babies, I do/M ("The Cruelest" 27). Elmer-DeWitt points out: The disturbing case of Dr. Jacobson underscores a problem that has plagued the booming field of infertility medicine. Doctors can claim to be experts on the basis of scant experience or training. There is no board certification and little regulation. (27) By separating the "true" expert from the quack, this news coverage succeeds at legitimizing fertility practices, so long as they are performed by a recognized authority. This is precisely the function of the medical case history we saw working to establish basic gynecological practice in the nineteenth century. If technology can be harmful in the hands of a medical quack and beneficial in the hands of an expert, then the technology itself can be presented as having neutral value. Some of the news coverage aims at this type of presentation. Other coverage reflects contradictory perceptions of the morality of artificial insemination, as in the following early example of the nation's reaction to a legal dilemma caused by this practice. In December 1954, both Time and Newsweek covered the story of George and Mary Doornbos, who, while going Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 215 through a divorce and custody battle, raised questions about the legitimacy of babies created with the help of artificial insemination (AI). In two articles, both headlined with the words "Test-Tube," (AI was high-tech in the 50s) the reader learns that the wife asked for sole custody because the child was not her husband's. The Newsweek reporter makes his position quite clear when he tells his readers that "50,000 test-tube babies have been born in the United States. ... It was done simply and scientifically, .... The doctors chose the donors for their superior health, intelligence, and good family background" ("Test-Tube Babies" 48-49). The judge, however, ruled that artificial insemination using a donor's sperm is "contrary to good morals and constitutes adultery on the part of the wife" (48). He directed the husband's attorney to add the charge of adultery to his divorce proceedings (48). The Time coverage adds an interesting statement indicating the doctors' understanding of their slippery moral and legal position: [B]ecause they were in a legal no man's land, doctors talked little about their work; many have taken the added precaution of mixing the husband's subfertile semen with the donor's, so that nobody could ever be sure that the husband was not in fact the father. ("Test-Tube Test Case" 52) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Time's cover story on Louise Joy Brown indicates that while some thought the claim of a test-tube birth was a hoax, others "heralded the coming birth as a miracle of modern medicine" ("The First" 58). The miracle metaphor, combined with the following characterization of the birth as a "scientifically assisted blessed event" (58), reinforces the association of science with God's purposes. Matt Clark, writing for Newsweek makes the same linguistic association: "Today they are blessed with a broad new array of medical possibilities, ..." (emphasis added 102). He adds the magical allusion as well when he describes "the magic of microsurgery" (103) and announces that "[i]n vitro fertilization is the most spectacular development of all" (103) . Both Time and Newsweek also include a good share of criticism for IVF-related procedures. Time's line up includes Dr. John Marshall, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Los Angeles County's Harbor General Hospital who says that "'[t]he potential for misadventure is unlimited,'" (59) and James Watson, Nobel Laureate, who predicts bad scenarios with what is now known as gestational surrogacy (61). Newsweek includes comments from Father William Smith who "fear[s] that we may be slipping away from doctoring Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the patient to doctoring the race" (qtd. in Gwynne 67), and biochemist Dr. Leon Kass: "'Perhaps a wise society would say to infertile couples: 'We understand your sorrow, but it might be better not to go ahead and do this'" (qtd. in Gwynne 71). For balance, science writer Isaac Asimov is quoted taking the neutral stance, and claiming that governments and people are responsible for how we use the technology that scientists develop (71). Even if the experts perceive the technology as neutral, they critique it for its potential role in enabling women to misuse it in immoral— or at least unfeminine ways. A New York Times article tells of the birth of four babies within a ten-day period, all created from the genetic material of a Venezuelan couple (Lawson 1:1). In this article medical ethicists express their concern that women will abuse reproductive services by hiring surrogates simply to avoid the inconvenience of pregnancy. To counter this concern, fertility experts say they will not perform the procedure unless it is medically necessary (1:24). This view implies that women place very little value on pregnancy, when the evidence suggests just the opposite. The women who volunteer for these procedures do so to achieve pregnancy first and foremost. They Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 218 usually resort to contractual arrangements only after they have exhausted all other avenues— including exhausting their own physical pain and endurance thresholds. Another example of this distrust, not of the technology but of women's motivations for using it, appears in a Newsweek article about the Nobel Sperm Bank. In this small profile, the mother of the first baby born from Nobel prize winning sperm is accused of being a child abuser. She has lost custody of two other children, the writer explains, and she is a convicted felon who was paroled shortly after the sperm bank opened. Apparently, she and her second husband wanted a genius child and were planning to begin their daughter's training as early as possible ("The Sperm 24) . In response to the controversy caused by this woman's background, a spokesman for the sperm bank says they will now ask about the criminal records of women who seek sperm (24) . Another interesting feature of the news media's depiction of reproductive technology is that doctors working with genetic materials tend to anthropomorphize and sexualize the gametes and their functions. In a 1991 article Elmer-DeWitt describes GIFT, one of the latest technologies: "[H]e simply loaded the sperm and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 219 eggs . . . into a fine pipette and inserted them into the Fallopian tube, where he hoped they would take care of business by themselves1 1 (emphasis added "Making Babies" 61) . The implication is that the egg and sperm simply needed to be properly "introduced." Another specialist explains that nutrients are added to eggs after removal because "'[y]ou don't want the eggs to suspect they are out of the body/H (Brackett qtd in "The First" 66). It's nice to know that some doctors think of eggs as brainy, but of course Elmer-DeWitt characterizes them as sexy as well: "only eggs that emitted the 'come hither' message were successfully fertilized" ("Making Babies" 61) . The news coverage also includes specific reporting of religious positions on reproductive technologies. Lesley Brown's by-now-familiar rationale takes on the linguistic features of prayer when she says "'we just had to pray to God to give our thanks. It seemed right and natural'" ("To Fool" 69). This sentence closely resembles a prayer in the Catholic church service: "It is right to give him thanks and praise." A Jewish authority who disagrees with the rabbi quoted earlier explains his approval of reproductive technologies: "'When nature does not permit conception, it is desirable to try to outwit nature. The Talmud teaches Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 220 that God desires man's cooperation'" (Siegel qtd. in "To Fool" 69). The Roman Catholic Church, however, presents an consistent point of view: "'[I]nterference with nature is not acceptable' in any form" ("To Fool" 69). The Houston Chronicle coverage of the sixty-three year old Italian woman who gave birth recently also included the Catholic Church's response. In a follow- up to the "Mama mia" story, the author explains that Dr. Antinori's creation of "granny pregnancies [has] unleashed an ethical storm in Roman Catholic Italy, where a lack of legislation has made the country a magnet for post-menopausal women who want to have children" ("Vatican" 16A). The Church's position on the event is that the woman has committed a "morally reprehensible act" (16A). The status of the end product of all of this technology— the embryo— is the subject of a great deal of discussion and debate in the news media. Because of events like Doris Del Zio's lost egg in 1973 and Jerry Hall's cloning of an embryo in 1993, the news has turned its attention to questions like the following: "Do embryos, frozen or thawed, have a constitutional right to life? How much manipulation of genetic material will society be willing to permit?" (Elmer- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 221 DeWitt "Making Babies" 58) A situation in which a couple with frozen embryos died in an airplane crash provoked the question: "Does an orphaned embryo have a right to a womb?" (Press 54) In anticipation of future cases, Harvard lawyer William Curran speculates that children with deformities caused by reproductive technology will file malpractice suits against their parents (Gwynne 72). The case that did bring the status of the embryo into court, and which provided the impetus for Allegretti's comments in America, was argued in Tennessee in 1989. Junior and Mary Sue Davis, sued each other for custody of the seven frozen embryos they had on reserve. She wanted to implant them and he wanted to stop her from having his child. She argued that the embryos were alive and that she should have the right to carry them and he argued that the embryos were property. The judge awarded custody to the woman based on the premise that human life begins at conception and that implantation would serve the "best interest of these children" (May 1A). By determining that the embryos were children, the judge added another kink to the ongoing debate over abortion. This is the first issue covered in a Los Angeles Times article on the case. Kate Michelman, of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 222 the National Abortion Rights Action League, is quoted as saying that the judge's decision is "ludicrous" and has "dangerous implications for reproductive freedom in America" (Al, A19). Additional issues addressed in the article include whether the husband would be required to pay child support should his ex-wife succeed in carrying any of the embryos to term, and what would happen to the rest of them should she decide to stop trying. The author also quotes a biomedical ethicist from USC, Alexander M. Capron, who claims that the ruling poses a contradiction. If the embryos are to be treated as human beings, then how do we determine that each receives fair treatment? If one is picked over another for implantation, how is that decision to be made (A19)? The case was appealed by Junior Davis and the appeals court overturned the lower court's decision ("Divorced" A20). By giving the Davises joint custody, the court made a Solomon-like decision that essentially said to the couple "You created the problem, now you resolve it." Mary Sue Davis tried to donate the embryos to a fertility clinic, but that attempt was also blocked by her ex-husband. In October of 1993, an event occurred that crystallized concerns about the status of the embryo Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. created by in-vitro technologies when a scientist in Washington successfully cloned a human embryo in his laboratory. Many of the ethical issues related to in- vitro that have lain dormant till now were provoked by the idea of cloning. Because it could be used to reproduce identical twins, triplets and beyond, cloning threatens our sense of individuality; and certainly the myth of the individual is a unique and important part of American culture. A New York Times article reprinted in the Houston Chronicle focuses on some of the ethical issues. As soon as the reporter tells us what happened and where, she explains that the experiment "opens a range of practical and ethical questions" (Kolata 4A). The example she cites is that while one embryo is allowed to be born, another can be frozen and then used years later to create a younger, identical twin to the first. The doctor who produced the cloned embryo, Dr. Jerry L. Hall, did so to create more embryos for in- vitro fertilization. He declined to comment for the article. Instead the reporter quotes Dr. Arthur Caplan, the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. Caplan says that cloning is Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 224 "morally and legally of concern" because it is fairly easy to do (4A). The New York Times reporter just touches the tip of the controversy, and where she leaves off, both Time and Newsweek take over. In an article titled "Clone Hype," Newsweek author Jerry Adler comments on the newsworthiness of cloning by calling a story that puts "human" and "clone" together "one of the most sought- after coups of 20th century journalism" (60). Adler explains that the New York Times article mistakenly implied that human embryos were being routinely cloned in laboratories. This erroneous report created an hysterical reaction involving bioethicists and demonstrators. Adler downplays the experiment performed by Dr. Jerry Hall when he writes: This [the reaction] was all to the bemusement of Dr. Jerry Hall and his colleagues at George Washington University, who had set out merely to find a more efficient technique for in vitro fertilization, and weren't sure they had achieved even that much. (60) While it is true that a New York Times headline announcing the advent of human cloning would be sure to set off a passionate reaction, Adler's statement depicts the event quite casually. He also interviews Dr. Arthur Caplan, but he selects a quote that implies Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 225 a very different attitude for Caplan than in the previous article: "I've never seen anything like this gut, visceral fear of cloning, .... People are afraid of it because they don't know anything about it" (60). This quote makes it appears as though Caplan approves of the procedure, but if we look closely at his quotes in both articles, it is not apparent how he really feels. The overall impression created by Adler's article is that Dr. Hall's work is not earth-shattering and that any anti-cloning reaction is extreme. He labels one cloning opponent— Jeremy Rifkin— a "biotech gadfly," and explains that Hall's work was done for the "best of reasons": to "improve the chances of success with in-vitro fertilization ..." (61). This statement indicates acceptance of the technology in general, and of the goal of having several identical embryos to implant. Adler does acknowledge that some frightening scenarios are plausible such as using a clone for organ donation, or selling the cloned embryos of sports figures, but finally he says that we should get on with the business of designing some regulations so that "scientists [can] get on with work that may save some lives or bring wanted life into the world" (62) . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 226 Time magazine's coverage of this event demonstrates a more critical attitude. Philip Elmer- DeWitt gives a full view of the problems cloning could create. He reports on several potential abuses suggested by the much-interviewed Arthur Caplan: catalogues of cloned children, couples setting clones aside in case a child dies; women giving birth to their own twins, and finally, clones used for organ donation. Elmer-DeWitt does not stop with the ethical dilemmas suggested by cloning, however, he also acknowledges that in-vitro fertilization has already created dilemmas of its own. He quotes IVF experts who are angry about Hall's experiment because it placed IVF in the public eye. Hall has opened the proverbial "can of worms," forcing the public to pay attention to reproductive technology and the questions it poses (70). Some of these current questions include the status of the some 10,000 embryos that are currently in frozen storage in the United States (69). Clones or not, these embryos can be sold, thawed out, lost in implantation, argued over in custody suits, and used for genetic material, perhaps not for organs, but in one recent case, a couple conceived a child to serve as Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 227 a bone marrow donor for their daughter with leukemia (Dowling 80). Elmer-DeWitt also refers to Jeremy Rifkin, but instead of calling him a gadfly he gives him a title, "founder of the Foundation on Economic Trends, a biotechnology-watchdog group in Washington" (69). Using his title gives Rifkin more credibility and calling him a watchdog makes him much more palatable than a gadfly. Rifkin is concerned about government abuse of cloning, similar to that of the government in the novel Brave New World, but Elmer-DeWitt downplays potential government abuse and instead quotes George Annas, a Boston University medical ethicist: "'But we're in America, where we have the private market. We don't need government to make the nightmare scenario come true'" (69). The inclusion of this comment indicates that Elmer-DeWitt takes the possible repercussions of cloning more seriously than his Newsweek counterparts. On the issue of regulation, he says that establishing a national bioethical policy board "had better be done quickly" (69-70) because Hall claims his cloning technique could be functional within a couple of years. Elmer-DeWitt ends by saying of technology that "[t]he time to discuss whether it is Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 228 right or wrong is before it has been put to use, not after" (70). One player in the drama of reproductive technologies has not been called upon to fill a very strong role in any of the media discussion— possibly because he is difficult to cast. The surrogacy broker is an entrepreneur who acts as technological matchmaker in the production of children. Though Noel Keane was lambasted in one short New Republic article, he was easy to characterize because he arranged the Baby M contract. The only other broker to receive attention has been William Handel, head of the Beverly Hills' Center for Surrogate Parenting Inc., the same center referred to in many of the case histories presented in the women's magazines. As a rule, the broker has been ignored by the media in spite of the fact that "[a]t least 23 court complaints across the country have accused brokers of defrauding couples and intimidating or negligently screening surrogate mothers" (Kasindorf 14). In a Los Angeles Times Magazine article discussing the Anna Johnson case, reporter Martin Kasindorf takes a brief look at Handel. Kasindorf explains that for $47,000 Handel screens potential contract mothers for medical and psychological problems and provides a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 229 contract for the parties to sign. One of Handel's selling points, and perhaps the reason he can command such a large fee is that he sells "peace of mind" to the couples who come to him. So far, not one of the women who work for him has sued for custody. Why does he have such a good track record? "'I scare the hell out of them'" Handel told the Detroit News (16). This depiction of Handel's business practices brings to mind another type of business in which a man provides women for others to use. He sounds like a new age panderer, a techno-pimp if you will. It is no wonder that he does not fit into the happy ending scenario of the fairy tale. The news media coverage of reproductive technology is important because it provides its reader with a first glance at these practices. When a reporter uses language like "scientifically assisted blessed event" and calls in-vitro births miracles, he or she introduces the miracle metaphor into the cultural text. The metaphor can then be appropriated by other periodical media. The analysis of the women's magazine coverage of reproductive technology shows how such practices can be portrayed through the framework provided by this type of metaphor. When a reporter interviews and quotes experts who denounce IVF-related Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 230 practices, he or she also introduces the critical view into the cultural text. The newspaper critique motivates the more penetrating debate over reproductive technology found in the commentary journal. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 231 Notes 1. I recognize that locating gynecology at the breakfast table may also call up images of the pre-Roe v. Wade gynecological kitchen table. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter Six Gynecology in Dystopia "Literature is news that stays." (Ezra Pound)1 If the newspaper is the first draft of history, then the novel represents history in one of its most revised drafts. Because of the genre in which he or she works, the novelist is able to refine a representation of reality in a text that can both delight and instruct at the same time. With complete control over the "facts" of the case, the novelist can manipulate events and characters to convey social messages and create emotional reactions. The reader expects the novelist to create a consistent and predictable world within the boundaries set by the novel, recognizing that while the novelistic world is fictitious it is drawn from the real one. The novelist working with the gynecological case history can combine the same elements of fantasy and commentary we saw pulled together in the news media, but this combination is a homogenous one, used to present a consistent point of view. In Abortion. Choice, and Contemporary Fiction. Judith Wilt begins her discussion of the novelistic treatment of abortion with case histories: "For lives, actual experiences, are surely the basis of art; and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the fact is that the reality and multiplicity of experience are always in danger of being overwhelmed by, hyperordered by art" (xii). The three novelists presented in this coda to the discussion of the periodical media have been chosen precisely because their art has not overwhelmed the reality and multiplicity of experience. Novelists Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood, and Sarah Bird use their fictitious gynecological case histories to point out problems and to reintroduce that which has been left out of previous accounts. Because Brave New World. The Handmaid/s Tale, and The Mommy Club hold our cultural attitudes and their resulting scientific technologies up to scrutiny, their fictions are in a sense more realistic than those supposedly "real life" accounts we encounter in the news media and their fantasies are very different from the ones crafted for the women's magazines. Writing about horror and fantasy, Rosemary Jackson explains that literary fantasy exposes that which has been repressed to the unconscious: Un-doing those unifying structures and significations upon which social order depends, fantasy functions to subvert and undermine cultural stability. It proposes what Cixous calls 'a subtle invitation to transgression' [sic] by exposing the relative and arbitrary Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 234 nature of those 'responses' [which men make] to death: ideological institutions, religion, politics.' (69-70) The (bordering on) fantastic worlds created by Huxley and Atwood and the distinctly real world created by Bird expose the ideologies that make both scientific reproduction and the exploitation of women in the service of this technology possible. The rigidly stratified society that has been genetically engineered in Huxley's Brave New World parodies the socio-economic boundaries that already structure our culture, and the "two-legged womb" (146) status of Offred and her peers in The Handmaid's Tale illuminates the attitude toward women that underlies the popularity of the surrogacy industry. The stifling control that Hillary Goettler tries to exercise over Trudy, her contract mother, in The Mommy Club is an example of the business-like attitude that existing surrogacy arrangements attempt to apply to the complex emotional and physical phenomenon of conception and birth. These authors have created societies that come, not from the range of the remotely possible, but from the range of the probable, based on social structures and attitudes that are already in play. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 235 In a discussion of modem satirists, Stephen Jay Greenblatt explains that Huxley's novel reflects his concern about the social conditions of the 1920s: Brave New World, like Orwell's 1984. is primarily concerned not with what will happen in the future but what is happening to mankind now. A futuristic detail like the hatching of babies from bottles, for example, is less an interesting scientific speculation than an ironic comment on the dissociation of sexuality and childbirth and on the ultimate artificiality of the inhabitants of our brave new world. (96) The last sentence of this quote from Greenblatt's 1965 essay is somewhat ironic. The technologies of in-vitro fertilization and contractual motherhood had not yet been realized, and the factory production of children did seem only a futuristic detail. Today, barely 30 years later, these technologies are real. By the turn of the century, if the artificial womb has been perfected, Huxley's "Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre" could cease to be a thing of fiction. But Greenblatt is absolutely correct in pointing out that Huxley is commenting on the dissociation of sexuality and childbirth and the artificiality which were characteristic of the 1920s and 30s. These characteristics made the medical technology not only possible, but acceptable. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Atwood is also concerned that the present will shape the future in ways we have not examined. "By envisioning an appalling future already implicit in the contemporary world, Atwood condemns just those present propensities that make a Gilead possible ..." (Davidson 113). All of the elements of Gilead exist today, and Atwood is commenting on the attitudes and belief systems that allow women to be exploited as walking wombs or as Offred describes herself, as "national resource[s]" (85). These are the attitudes that make the practice of contract motherhood acceptable, even attractive for some. By drawing on recent contract motherhood situations, Sarah Bird creates a couple that is representative of the stereotypical consumer of the surrogacy industry. Trudy has been drafted into service as an incubator by a pair of wealthy, attractive "yuppies" who have decided that it is time to reproduce. Hillary, the wife, manifests all the concerns of the commentators who believe that women will misuse the service provided by contract mothers. She is visibly relieved to find out that she is infertile because just the thought of what pregnancy would do to her body makes her cringe. Victor, the husband, is along for the ride, though he finds the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 237 human part of the equation distinctly uncomfortable. "He treats me as if I might be carrying a thermonuclear device instead of his child" (67). Together, the Goettlers try to control every moment of Trudy's pregnancy. They move her into their house and monitor every morsel she puts in her mouth: "Just think," Hillary slides my napkin out and pulls it across my lap. "The baby is going to get double nutritional benefits from this meal." . . . "Well, dig in." Hillary stands behind me and waits. I fiddle with my fork and take deep breaths through my mouth so that none of the liver smell will reach my stomach. (18) By painting a much less than flattering picture of these two, Bird presents a strong critique of the attitudes that many of the couples who pursue contractual motherhood hold. Trudy is also everything a contract mother should not be and is therefore extremely susceptible to exploitation. She is too old, flighty, emotionally unbalanced, and acting as a surrogate for all the wrong reasons, but she is also convenient for Hillary and Victor, who have a strong (and ultimately unfounded) faith in their ability to control the situation. In previous chapters we have seen how language can be pressed into the service of science and technology. In this chapter, we will see the authors depict worlds Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 238 in which this function of language is carried out, and at the same time called into question. The purpose of these novels is to subvert that relationship with language, using the language of the novel to pierce through the ideological norms we have come to accept. In his introduction to the 1946 edition of Brave New World. Aldous Huxley writes: The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr. Churchill calls an "iron curtain" between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals. (xii) When the character Helmholtz Watson, whose job it is to write the inane jingles that make up the cultural wisdom of his world, begins to break free from his programming, he says he wants to write words that do more than just sound good. He wants to create "[w]ords [that] can be like X-rays, if you use them properly— they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced" (47). Helmholtz' problem is that he must write about nothing and he can't use his X-ray words on Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 239 nothing. When he does experiment by writing a poem about loneliness, he is immediately reported by his students; the poem is one of the reasons for his subsequent exile. In this brave new world, creative vision is not tolerated because it challenges the stability of the culture. Language is a tool of repression rather than expression. Like Orwell, Huxley understands the great power that words wield. In Orwell's 1984. to eliminate feelings, the words for those feelings have been excised, but in Brave New World, words are used to engineer programmed responses to feelings. The members of this society are first genetically engineered and then "hypnopaedically" programmed in their sleep with "moral" beliefs intended to help them to achieve stability and happiness. "A gramme is always better than a damn" is Lenina's hypnopaedically induced response to Bernard's bad mood (60). A gramme of soma that is, the wonder drug that immediately obliterates any strongly felt emotion. Helmholtz serves as a representative of Huxley in the novel, embodying the choice he must make as an author. He can either parrot the conventional wisdom of his society and remain safely within bounds, or he can look beneath the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 240 surface, and by exposing the problems he sees put himself at risk for exile. Margaret Atwood also sees her role as that of social examiner. In an interview, she explains "the writer may unconsciously reflect the society, he may consciously examine it and project ways of changing it; and the connection between the writer and society will increase in intensity as the society . . . becomes the 'subject' of the writer" (Atwood qtd. in Rigney 121). In The Handmaid's Tale, the refusal to examine and confront reality has resulted in the country of Gilead. Offred, who represents the twenty-first-century version of "True Womanhood" reminisces about her mother, an active protester in her time. To the young Offred, her mother's protests were something to be slightly embarrassed about; they were unnecessary, outdated; You young people don't appreciate things, she'd say. You don't know what we had to go through, just to get to where you are. . . . Don't you now how many woman's lives, how many women's bodies. the tanks had to roll over just to get that far? (156) Offred's response to her mother's complaint is to say "[n]ow, Mother, . . . Let's not get into an argument about nothing" (156). When Offred finds herself stripped of economic power after the government is overthrown, she still refuses to take part in the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 241 rather weak protests that take place at first. She has her husband and daughter to think of. Instead she retreats to her domestic sphere; she bakes more. The result of this inaction is that the tanks are now rolling over her body and her daughter's. Not only is she conscripted into service as a handmaid (as the pious and pure container for the Commander's seed), but a social structure has been created in which her daughter will be trained to value herself solely by her ability to reproduce: To 'pay attention', [sic] to look beneath surfaces, to touch and to tell are also imperatives for Offred of The Handmaid's Tale. Not paying attention, in fact, is the great fault of Offred's entire society, and the price exacted is the loss of freedom. (Rigney 113) Language is a weapon of power in Gilead. It is both used and withheld to repress the women of the society. The ritualistic greetings used by the handmaids control how they relate to each other and reinforce their narrowly defined identities as two- legged wombs. "'Blessed be the fruit,' she says to me, the accepted greeting among us./'May the Lord open,' I answer, the accepted response" (25). The names bestowed upon them rob them of their former identities and create new ones based solely on their function as Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 242 submissive and domestic reproductive chattel: Offred, Of warren, Ofglen: My name isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn't matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I'll come back to dig up, one day. (108) For all women in this society, reading and writing have been completely prohibited. The marketing is carried out with small pictographic cards. Offred finds a cushion in her room, the word "Faith" embroidered in faded thread, and she wonders who has overlooked it. In the bottom of her clothes cupboard she finds the Latin phrase "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum;" she imagines her predecessor in the room scratching the phrase into the wood and it becomes a secret slogan left just for her. Offred does not know what it means until later, but she does not need to have meaning ascribed to the individual words for it to have a greater meaning. She has been part of an illicit communication. It means hope. "I pray silently: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. I don't know what it means, but it sounds right, and it will have to do, because I don't know what else I can say to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 243 God" (117). Later, she asks the Commander for a translation and realizes that he has probably taught it to the former handmaid. The phrase is a man's phrase, an invented Latin expression that school boys wrote in their books. "Don't let the bastards grind you down" translates the Commander (242). It's a joke he tells her, a joke for school boys. It is a cruel joke for the former handmaid whose life has been so conscripted by the patriarchy that her one impotent act of defiance can only be done in the language of her oppressor. She later hangs herself from the chandelier. The Commander has the power to give language to Offred as a part of a bargain, a bribe for her silence about their illegal meetings in his study. He plays Scrabble with her; he offers her Vocrne and Mademoiselle, even an old Ms magazine! She reads them voraciously, these texts she once derided as unworthy of reading. The irony of his offering of these publications can only be fully appreciated after examining the way in which they portray contract motherhood. Offred herself is a composition, a constructed self. From her new name to her every action, she moves through this new world hiding her former identity. "I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something bom" (86) . This act of self-composure is itself an act of writing and an act of detachment. To protect what she has left of herself, Offred creates an outer self that can exist as a handmaid and maintains an inner self waiting for the opportunity to gain its freedom. Offred's true self is preserved in the telling of her story; it is a taped account, but she succeeds in the act of composing. Even this act of defiance is subverted by the "scholarly" discussion that forms the "Historical Notes" section of the novel. This section, which is appended to the tale, is the transcript of the "Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies," held in the year 2195 (379) . Gileadean scholars have gathered together for sessions on interpreting the tale and discovering its significance to the Gileadean period, in between attending the nature walk and the "Outdoor Period-Costume Sing-Song" (379). The speaker at this session, Professor Pieixoto, explains how the tapes have been discovered, catalogued and named. The academics have given Offred's story the title, "The Handmaid's Tale," in deference to Geoffrey Chaucer. Pieixoto explains to his audience: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 245 [A]11 puns were intentional, particularly that having to do with the archaic vulgar signification of the word tail, that being, to some extent, the bone, as it were, of contention, in that phase of Gileadean society of which our saga treats. (Laughter. applause.) (381) Offred has once more been reduced to a "walking womb" in this section that is Atwood's warning to us all about how we choose to make meaning of our history. In The Mommv Club another form of symbolic expression plays a role similar to that of language. Trudy's art is the non-verbal equivalent of the language that is alternately offered to and withheld from Offred. From her gestational chamber at the Goettlers' house, Trudy explains what her art means to her. "I have always had my projects. . . . I've always relied on my art to keep the sand running through the hourglass. That's what I miss the most about living here at the Goettlers, my projects" (10). Her art is her anchor, giving her substance and self definition. Removing her from her studio is one way in which the Goettlers can appropriate and redefine her for their use, just as denying Offred literacy renders her impotent and redefines her as a stand-in for male potency. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 246 Trudy's works of art are visual puns, her way of making a rather hilarious and biting commentary on the world, and of staying connected— to the world and to herself. When Hillary goes to Trudy's studio to inspect it as a potential incubation site for her child, the projects are everywhere. "Missile toads" are Christmas ornaments: toads dressed in elf outfits sitting on the backs of Minutemen missiles decorated with holly (58). Hillary's response to them is "Ee- yeah. Sounds like fun" (58). Trudy dreams of having Hillary arrange an exhibit for her, while Hillary pokes at the small baby Jesus in a manger scene, who, with ants glued to his back has become the "Anty Christ" (62) . Hillary's response to the art is a polite brush- off; her decision about the apartment is that Trudy should move in with her immediately and leave her projects and any identity outside of incubator behind. Both Brave New World and The Mommy Club's use of scientific language to explain reproductive acts imply a critical commentary of the technologies that are at their centers. Huxley's "brave new world" is completely dependent upon the applied sciences of biology, psychology, and sociology. His 1932 vision of reproductive technology comes remarkably close to reality. Human beings are created factory-style; from Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 247 conception to "decanting" (birth) they are socially, intellectually and emotionally engineered. His depiction of baby "bottling" is colored by the same satiric brush as the rest of the novel; the Director of Hatcheries' scientific explanation of the production of humans shows the danger of valorizing the scientific. He describes Bokanovsky's Process: One egg, one embryo, one adult— normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress. (3) The hatchery is science taken to an extreme, every human characteristic is carefully regulated. It is the commentator's nightmare. Mother and Father have become obscene words. Women who have functioning ovaries (most are freemartins), can have "the operation [that is] undergone for the good of Society" (2) . The ovary is then kept alive and functioning. Mr. Foster, a bright young Alpha who works in the Fertilizing room brags that the Centre's record for a single ovary is "sixteen thousand and twelve," (5) but he plans to beat the Mombasa record of seventeen thousand: "Still," he added, with a laugh (but the light of combat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin was challenging), Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "still, we mean to beat them if we can. I'm working on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. We'll beat them yet." (5) This belief in science as progress is what allows the culture to value quantity over quality, and to find in Henry Ford, the inventor of the modern assembly line, a god. Huxley was extremely concerned with the potential evil that science could do. When Bernard and Lenina visit the savage reservation, they find John Savage, the "natural" son of a Beta minus female named Linda who became accidentally pregnant and was left behind some twenty years before their visit. John and his mother accompany them back to London and it doesn't take long for John to get into trouble. After causing a riot by throwing out the soma intended for a group of Bokanovsky twins, one hundred and sixty-two Deltas, John is brought to Mustapha Mond, the area Controller. In their ensuing conversation, the Controller makes a distinction between pure and applied science. "Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as the enemy. Yes, even science" (153) . He explains that he was once Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 249 a physicist and, caught doing "a bit of real science" (153), he had to make a choice between being exiled to an island or giving up his science and becoming a Controller. But it is applied science that worries Huxley; in his introduction he warns that the world will lapse into totalitarianism "unless we choose to decentralize and to use applied science, not as the end to which human beings are to be made the means, but as a means to producing a race of free individuals, . . ." (xiv). Jenni Calder explains Huxley's fear of science in more depth; For Huxley was profoundly worried about the morality of science, about the fact that knowledge could mean power for evil as well as power for good, that science could destroy as well as discover, and about the fact that the more a small body of highly trained men found out about the way human beings function, the more easily could human beings be controlled. Perhaps his greatest fear was that dangers could occur inadvertently, from the best intentions. (12) So Huxley worries about how scientific discoveries are applied. These applications must be examined for their moral nature. This is the same warning being sent by many of the commentators discussed in Chapter Four. It is one we would do well to heed today, as our applications of reproductive technology come dangerously close to Huxley's "brave new world." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 250 The hypnopaedic socialization made possible by the application of psychology gives the Brave New World/s inhabitants phrases such as the following two exchanged by Bernard and Lenina at the savage reservation: "'But cleanliness is next to fordliness,' she insisted./'Yes, and civilization is sterilization,' Bernard went on, concluding on a tone of irony the second hypnopmdic lesson in elementary hygiene" (73). "Civilization is sterilization" is certainly an ironic comment. This society has been sterilized of everything that is essential to humanity: art, passion, pure scientific inquiry. As Greenblatt puts it "[m]an, in using his reason to create the ultimate life of pleasure, has ceased to be man" (97). Is this the logical outcome of trying to manipulate our genetics? The Mommy Club/s depiction of science is no less amusing or sarcastic. Hillary is chosen as the main representative of the reproductive science of our culture, and she is a good choice as she embodies the new lay expert— the woman who, by virtue of her repeated visits to the fertility specialist, has become an authority on conception. The doctors play minor roles: "Tiny, framed portraits of all the tiny babies the doctor had coaxed into the world hung in neat rows" (emphasis added 79). The doctors are caricatures: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 251 "Good Old Tee-Time Teeter," the third nurse says. . . . "Did I tell you about his latest? Induced after three hours at five centimeters so he could make an eight o'clock tee time. Overdid the pitocin. Uterus set up like concrete and he ended up having to do a section." (280) Hillary, however, is the real thing. She asks Trudy to keep a temperature chart so they can predict her ovulation, but soon starts keeping her own, more detailed one. After one failed attempt at insemination in the doctor's office, (Victor balked at the test tube) Hillary decides they can do it at home. "I went home with Hillary that evening and my body became her own personal laboratory" (84). She first tries pouring Victor's sperm into a cervical cap for Trudy to insert: "Cervical cap," she explained. "I got it as a fallback position. I can see now that the do-it-yourself approach is going to work a lot better for us." She carefully poured the semen from the party favor cup into the cap. "Why do we need a middleman? The statistics are just as good without them." (85) When Trudy proves too clumsy with the cervical cap, they resort to a turkey baster; Hillary is both informed and resourceful. After a month of trying the baster method, Hillary gets impatient, she wants to do more tests. Trudy describes the humorous scene that follows: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 252 For most of the month of November daily body temperature readings were enough, then Hillary wanted more. She wanted mucus tests. On the day before Thanksgiving she brought a Bunsen burner, some slides, and counterslips into work. Then, dressed in a Norma Kamali cowl-necked black mini accessorized by amber dowry beads from Ghana, she set up shop. (91) Hillary wants to do more than experiment with Trudy's body; she wants to own the experience. She wants Trudy to have the pain and problems of her pregnancy for her, but she wants the rest for herself. When Hillary discovers that Trudy is thirty-eight and not the twenty-eight she thought her to be, she insists on an amniocentesis. This is just the type of control that Mary Beth Whitehead objected to from the Sterns and which the feminist commentators warn about. Trudy has an ultrasound, and during the procedure Hillary is so intent on seeing "her" baby that Trudy is no longer there in the room. "It startles me when Hillary crowds in to get closer to the screen. She stretches forward even farther and bumps the doctor's hand" (134). In the middle of the procedure, Trudy refuses to have the amnio; she gets up and leaves the doctor's office. Hillary is furious: "She refuses to have the test. We thought we were getting a twenty-eight- maybe twenty-nine-year-old mother. Trudy's almost thirty-nine and she Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 253 won't even test for the greatest age- related risk."/Hillary thinks that I am a devious, selfish shit and it suddenly makes not the tiniest bit of difference to me." (137) Hillary can't force Trudy to have the test so she settles into an uncomfortable acceptance of the situation. Later, she reveals the other reason she wanted the test: For the past month Hillary has been obsessed with decorating the room she is turning into a nursery. . . . She just can't decide on a "motif" and makes occasional references to how much easier the whole process would be if they knew the sex. If I'd had amniocentesis. (177) Science at the service of yuppydom. The Handmaid's Tale represents a society that has rejected much of its former scientific ability in favor of a more biblical simplicity. In-vitro fertilization and artificial insemination have been ruled out, as well as amniocentesis and chemical assistance at birth: What will Ofwarren give birth to? A baby, as we all hope? Or something else, an Unbaby, with a pinhead or a snout like a dog's, or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet? There's no telling. They could tell once, with machines, but that is now outlawed. What would be the point of knowing anyway? You can't have them taken out; whatever it is it must be carried to term. (143) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 254 This is a society that could use the machines of science to predict the deformities caused by the nuclear accidents that have occurred. Perhaps this world's rejection of such technologies is partially due to the contribution science has made to the situation. The description of Offred's doctor appointment indicates that the science that is still allowed is the depersonalized, object-producing science of today. "At neck level there's another sheet, suspended from the ceiling. It intersects me so that the doctor will never see my face. He deals with a torso only" (78). The doctor is a parody of today's helpful Wizard whose mission is to help infertile women to usher new life into the world. Offred has been well-indoctrinated in the virtue of purity. She is shocked when the doctor breaks the rules by lifting the sheet and offering to help her become pregnant. He utters a word that is now outlawed— sterile. "There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that's the law" (79). Even in his proposal to her, the doctor continues to see her as an object, a torso to use for his pleasure. Later, when her Commander's wife suggests getting outside "help" to conceive, Offred Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 255 will pick Nick, the chauffeur, over the cold, objective, yet lascivious doctor. Brave New World does not have any birth scenes because there are no mothers; we are not even treated to a "decanting." Linda is the only mother in the novel. Her life and death are a good indication of what Huxley believed would happen to a culture that separated reproduction from sexuality. Ashamed of her motherhood, she is forced to remain on the reservation: "Turned into a savage," she shouted. "Having young ones like an animal. ... If it hadn't been for you, I might have gone to the Inspector, I might have got away. But not with a baby. That would have been too shameful." (85) She becomes an alcoholic to numb the pain, and when she returns to London a social outcast, she becomes a somaholic. "[N]obody had the smallest desire to see Linda. To say one was a mother— that was past a joke; it was an obscenity" (102-103). She goes on a permanent soma holiday and in a very short time the drug kills her. Lenina, on the other hand, is an example of what happens to a woman when her childbearing function is removed. She is a permanent child in a society where everyone owns everyone and all are sexually available to each other. Though she has fallen in love with Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 256 John, she is not emotionally equipped to deal with her feelings. She frets and sighs and finally, after taking some soma, gets up her nerve to go tell him how she feels. To her surprise he is also in love with her, but his definition of love is too different from hers. He rejects the purely sexual, wanting something deeper; he wants to do something to prove his worth to her. The only reaction she knows how to have is sexual. She pulls her clothes off and comes towards him, offering herself. John's reaction is to retreat, quoting Shakespeare. "'The strongest oaths are straw to the fire i' the blood. Be more abstemious, or else . . .'" (131). But the full measure of Linda's emotional depth is represented by the only poetry she knows; "'Hug me till you drug me, . . .'" (131). The love scene she has been anticipating disintegrates into a confrontation, with the Savage resorting to violence to spurn her advances. The other two novels have birth scenes, and in both, the baby is taken from its mother. In both, the child has been created for someone else and the birth mother's role is down-played and devalued. In The Handmaid's Tale. Ofwarren's labor is the beginning of a birth celebration, attended by all of the handmaids and wives in the district. Warren's wife mimics the birth; Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 257 the other wives assist her just as the handmaids assist Ofwarren. "A small thin woman, she lies on the floor, in a white cotton nightgown, her graying hair spreading like mildew over the rug; they massage her tiny belly, just as if she's really about to give birth herself” (150). When Ofwarren is ready to "deliver” the child the wife takes her position on the Birthing Stool. Its double seating arrangement allows the wife to frame the handmaid's body and appropriate her labor; just as she attends the monthly "rape" ceremony as the symbolic wife. Once the baby is born it is the Commander's wife who is tucked into the bed, with the baby in her arms. "The Commander's wife looks down at the baby as if it's a bouquet of flowers: something she's won, a tribute" (163). In a final act of possession, the Commander's wife names the baby. A month or two later, Offred sees Ofwarren at a "Salvaging," the brutal ceremony in which the handmaids are allowed to commit a cathartic murder. She observes that Ofwarren is no longer with the wife of Warren and that she has been re-posted. It is too soon for Ofwarren to have been moved and Offred speculates that something has gone wrong with her breast milk. "That would be the only reason they'd move her, unless Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 258 there's been a fight over the baby; which happens more than you'd think. Once she had it, she may have resisted giving it up. I can see that" (278). Apparently the handmaids are not always perfectly submissive about giving their children away. This comment also acknowledges the grief that the handmaids experience when their babies are taken from them. But Offred's grief over losing her own daughter, which permeates her story, is the best indicator of the emotional cost the handmaid is forced to pay: I would come up through a roaring and confusion, like surf boiling. I can remember feeling quite calm. I can remember screaming, it felt like screaming though it may have been only a whisper, Where is she? What have you done with her? They showed me a picture of her, standing outside on a lawn, her face a closed oval. Her light hair was pulled back tight behind her head. Holding her hand was a woman I didn't know. She was only as tall as the woman's elbow. You've killed her, I said. (51-52) Offred's daughter has been re-possessed and her body has been "commandeered" by a society whose system is set up to separate the functions of childbirth and mothering, except for the very poor— the "Econowives." "These women are not divided into functions. They have to do everything; if they can" (32). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 259 In The Mommy Club. Trudy's pregnancy is also something to be re-possessed. She and Hillary attend childbirth classes together. Hillary mimics her symptoms. Their instructor explains that the skin stretching over her stomach makes Trudy itch and Hillary scratches her own stomach. Then Hillary asks about headaches and insomnia. "Rachel looks at me sympathetically, as if Hillary were asking all these questions on my behalf" (220). This appropriation of her pregnancy irritates Trudy. "I am pregnant. Not Hillary. Me. I am the one having a baby. Not Hillary. Me" (222). But it is Hillary, not Trudy whose symptoms are acknowledged and who is soothed and held by her husband. This lack of human warmth when she needs it the most is what sends Trudy to look for her ex-lover Sinclair. When her daughter is born, Trudy recognizes that the baby has her dreamer's soul and that the Goettlers are not fit parents for her. "I know this child and I know what she needs. ... I see that Hillary and Victor will not know how to protect her dreamer's soul any more than Randi and Gordon did mine" (362). Instead Trudy gives her baby to her old teacher, Sister Theonella, who runs an illegal adoption agency, because she does not believe that she is capable of raising her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 260 herself— a belief that Hillary has been cultivating for the nine months of her pregnancy. She feels the loss immediately: I can't believe how my arms could ache from holding something so light. . . . I start to scream, to stop her, but still my throat doesn't work. I listen to the snuffling, mewling baby sounds recede down the hall, then the ping of the elevator, then the doors shutting and my baby is gone forever. (366-367) Better than any of the "real life" case histories, these stories show the reader the true repercussions of such arrangements. When the Goettlers arrive at the hospital and demand to know where their baby is, they assume from Trudy's pained expression that something is wrong with the baby. It hasn't occurred to them that she would be distressed at having to give up her daughter. Hillary assumes the baby has Down's syndrome, and her reaction confirms Trudy's decision not to allow her to mother the child. "'I told you we shouldn't go ahead without the amnio. I told you the risks.' . . . Worse than death is imperfection" (369). Still, Victor tries weakly to keep their end of the agreement. Trudy's response is similar to the responses contract mothers like Mary Beth Whitehead- Gould have had to their real life situations. "'Yes, but the person you had an agreement with wasn't a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 261 mother. Motherhood makes you another person. I know that now. I didn't know it then'" (370). Partially because of their genre and partially because of their choice of focus, the popular media do not show us what we are allowed to see in the novel— the deep depression Trudy descends into after giving up her child. For days she does nothing but stare at the walls, reliving the birth of her child. She won't eat; she runs a fever. The distraught Sinclair cannot pull her out of it. "it occurs to me that Sinclair is trying to cheer me up. . . . His flowers are lost now in the immensity of the darkness within me, specks of confetti ground into the asphalt" (375). Just as the technology of Brave New World comes uncannily close to that of the real world, the birth situations in The Handmaid's Tale and The Mommy Club could have come from the popular media. Diedre Hall describes herself grabbing the baby boy from the birth mother before the cord was cut. Like the handmaids, Hall's contract mother "came from God with our name on her." The "hovering" girlfriend-type relationship Hall claims to have with Robin is just the type of relationship that Hillary has tried to cultivate with Trudy. Trudy, who has been contemplating keeping her baby since the ultrasound, is reminiscent of Anna Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 262 Johnson, the "gestational surrogate" who lied about her past pregnancies and who changed her mind before the baby was born. Her motivation is also one which has been cited by surrogacy brokers. Guilty over a past abortion (Sinclair's child), she made a deal with the baby that she would find a way to have him later on. In fact, for the sake of a happy ending, the realism of the Mommy Club must be cast aside. Sister Theonella has given the baby to Trudy's former roommate to care for, knowing she will come for her; Trudy reunites with Sinclair after a ten year hiatus; Sinclair happens to have $83,000.00 in savings; and Trudy comes out of her depression and realizes that she must retrieve her baby. She walks away from the Goettlers without even the hint of a custody suit. (Victor is both the biological father and a rich and powerful lawyer so one would expect some trouble from this quarter.) The novel ends with Sinclair singing the lines of a song: Wooo, life could be a dream, sh-boom, If only all my precious plans would come true, If you would let me spend my whole life loving you, Life would be a dream, sweetheart. (389) All three of these novels succeed in calling attention to attitudes underlying technology that most of the popular media have eliminated or avoided. In the name Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 263 of progress, Brave New World's engineered society has edited out all of the pursuits that make life an adventure: art, science, philosophy, religion. When these are lost, a primal ingredient of humanity is lost: passion. The Savage cannot comprehend life without Shakespeare, God, or a reason for chastity. "'What you need,' the Savage went on, 'is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here#" (162) . He claims the right to be unhappy with all of its attendant problems and strongly-felt emotions. The Controller's world is one of comfort and convenience, of stability and certainty, but it is totally devoid of passion and humanity. The Savage's only choice is to commit suicide. The Handmaid's Tale works out the logical conclusion of valuing women for their reproductive capabilities. When Offred describes herself and her colleagues, she says "[w]e are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices" (176). The handmaids are told they are valuable, honored, but they can just as easily be declared "Unwomen" and sent to clean up nuclear waste. It is what is in the chalice that is sacred— male sperm. The handmaids' uteruses are the only valued part of them. "They didn't care what they did to your feet or your hands, even if it Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 264 was permanent. Remember, said Aunt Lydia. For our purposes your feet and your hands are not essential" (118) . At worst, the position the handmaids hold in the houses is extremely uncomfortable; the wives are hostile to them. At best they are well-treated servants, expected to be pure, pious, domestic, and submissive. Offred imagines how a simpering sell-out like Ofwarren might be treated: "Such a, so well behaved, not surly like some of them, do their job and that's that. More like a daughter to you, as you might say. One of the family" (147). Finally, the handmaids are simply functional wombs who, if they fail, will be declared Unwomen, and if they succeed will be moved on to a new "posting," their identities obliterated once more and replaced with a new patronymic. "I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Between other people" (295). Trudy is also a sort of servant. "I listen to the sounds of a house where I am not quite a guest, not quite a servant" (123). Recognizing this, and that she will be monitored constantly as soon as Hillary knows she is pregnant, Trudy manages to avoid telling her until she is in her fourth month. "'Fourth month?" she [Hillary] echoes, looking at me, horrified by my deficiencies in folic acid, iron, and calcium, to say Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 265 nothing of simple record-keeping'" (97). When Trudy meets Victor for the first time, she tries a little humor to break the ice, and jokingly says "So you're the sperm donor" (74). These words echo Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould's characterization of William Stern. The comment clearly inverts and subverts the relationship the Goettler's prefer and Trudy must quickly cover for her gaffe: "'The firm loner," I corrected myself. "You're the firm loner, up here all alone'" (74). Hillary's attitude toward motherhood is also worrisome. "'Parenthood, she likes to tell me, 'is mostly a matter of organization. It's a time management problem'" (24). To "practice" staying home, she has their dinners catered "in." She attends a "Power of Myth class" at the Jung Center so that she can "liberate [herself] from the child within" (27). When she sizes up Trudy as a prospective surrogate, Trudy imagines her deciding that with Victor's genes and an "enriched atmosphere" they can overcome Trudy's genetic handicaps (50). For Hillary, having a child is simply a matter of "good housekeeping," a cross between managing a schedule, cultivating a plant, and practicing psychobabble. Perhaps it has been gleaned from the pages of a women's magazine? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Huxley's 1932 warning is about the potential of science to sever the natural relationship between sexuality and childbearing; it is about the dangers of allowing a small group of people to uncover all of the mysteries— mental and physical— that make us human. His tale is placed far into the future because, from his perspective in the 1930s, it would be a while yet before we developed the technology to carry out these practices. The effect of placing this novel so far into the future is to make its events seem less likely to happen and therefore less threatening. We can label it a dystopia and enjoy the fantastic quality of the events. By the end of the next decade, however, Huxley realized that science was moving at a faster clip than he had anticipated. "Then I projected it six hundred years into the future. Today it seems quite possible that the horror may be upon us in a single century" (xiv). By placing her tale in the very near future, Atwood makes her world and its threats more possible, more frightening. Her Huxley-style warning is closer to home, harder to ignore. But Sarah Bird's tale is today. Trudy's story could have come from a newspaper account (though it would have been the story of the custody fight). This world defines not just the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. possible but the real, and it is now. The brave new world is upon us and we must recognize and deal with the dangers that are already occurring "inadvertently, from the best intentions" (Calder 12). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Notes 1. This quotation was taken from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter Seven Gynecology in the Future The brave new world of reproductive technology has been ushered into the last half of the twentieth century due in part to the very understandable desire of a nineteenth-century doctor to bring practical experience to his readers. To include practical discussions in his textbook, Bard had to break taboos against male intervention into the intensely personal and private relationship that women had with the mysteries of birth. Though the gynecological case history was not born at this time, a new role for it was beginning. Within the context of the gynecology textbook, the case history played an important role in promoting that branch of medical science; once it found its way into the popular media, it began to serve as a representative anecdote that deflects rather than reflects reality. In the women's magazine, the case history paints a rosy fantasy world with "happy endings." In the commentary j ournal, the case history becomes the impetus for a critical debate of the problems posed by technology, and in the news media, the case history is given a cursory examination that allows the introduction of both the miracle metaphor and the critical discussion into the text of our Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 270 culture. Even the literary case histories we explored are not true representative anecdotes, for they highlight only the problems with this technology, leaving out those happy endings we saw so much of in the women's magazines. The case history has helped science to unravel the mysteries of birth by promoting reproductive technology and creating clients for the infertility doctor/gods of the last half of the twentieth century. As we move into the twenty-first century, with the assistance of the case history, the powerful natural role that women have played in regenerating the species is subject to any manner of change. Though it remains to be seen whether motherhood is a relationship that can truly be contracted out, it has already been fragmented by modern reproductive technologies. It is possible now to be a genetic mother, a gestational mother, and/or a social mother. In some cases, a child could have all three. This fragmentation is often supported in the accounts we have read of surrogacy arrangements and it is a fragmentation that will change the definitions of motherhood and parenthood. For the right price, a woman can now become a mother without interrupting her career— or ruining her figure. This would seem to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 271 signal complete liberation for women. However, where there is a social mother waiting in the wings, there is a gestational mother doing the work. The fact that other women must be used for this procedure reifies class distinctions between women; some are still valued for their ability to gestate, a definition feminists have worked very hard— perhaps too hard— to overcome. The case history often edits out the work that the gestational mother performs, leaving us looking at only the smiling faces of the social mothers who profit from their labor. Writing about the full scope of reproductive technologies now available, Gena Corea gives us the real life case history of a sow when she describes her life in what she calls a "reproductive brothel." "It consists of pregnancy, birth, watching her babies being taken from her to be fattened for market, and then, endlessly, a repetition of the cycle: pregnancy, birth, loss of babies, insemination" (41). Comparing this description to human situations sounds harsh, but when Corea reports on the attitudes held by those in control of the industry we can see the potential parallel to contract mothers. She quotes the export development manager for a meat company: "'The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 272 machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine7" (Taylor qtd. in Corea 41). We may believe that women would never be treated this way, but our examination of case histories shows otherwise. Offred7s position as a part of a great rotating reproductive brothel is no different really than the sow7s. She is told repeatedly of her value as a "natural resource." If Atwood7s novel still appears to be too fictitious to be taken seriously, then we must consider the surrogate mothers like Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould who have tried to make their voices heard about how it feels to have their babies taken from them. Or we can pay attention to people like William Handel, who finds the surrogacy industry a compelling place to make a fortune. He treats the women he profits from like a string of prostitutes. "'I scare the hell out of them7" (qtd. in Kasindorf 16). Compare this statement with one that Gena Corea quotes from social commentator Vance Packard: "in South Texas 'pleasant conscientious Mexican-American girls7 might leap at a fee of $5000 for bearing a child and girls [sic] south of the border might leap at half that fee" (43). The stage has already been set for such abuses and the players are already in place, their lines memorized. The small drama that is the case Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 273 history rehearses these scenes for the public in many venues. In some, like the women's magazine, it does so in a way that makes the drama of reproductive technology seem perfectly acceptable. As medical technology "advances" even further we will one day have artificial wombs. At this point, the uterus will no longer be of value, but eggs will. Ovary harvesting will probably be the next step and we can be sure that a practice like this will be presented as a new "service" for women. Case histories like the one profiling Jeniffer will praise the convenience that such a service will offer. This new case history will promote removing ovaries so women can stop worrying about becoming pregnant at an inopportune time. By donating most of their eggs, which they will never use anyway, women will be able to reserve space in an artificial womb for the time when they decide to have their own children. Will any woman then be allowed to gestate her own children or will case histories present this option as an obscene act, as in Brave New World? The gynecological case history is also evolving; it has already entered the medium of television. We are now seeing these "miraculous" stories of birth on the movie of the week, soap operas, and on hourly news magazines. Television coverage is just as likely to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 274 exclude important considerations as that of the print media. We know that the woman who served as Diedre Hall's surrogate used the movie made from Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould's experience to convince her children that she should gestate a child for Hall. Certainly Gould would object to her story being used in this way. A recent "60 Minutes" segment profiled a woman its writers aptly labeled a "go between." She procures egg donors for people and one of the scenes shows her sitting at the kitchen table with two women, one a prospective buyer, the other a prospective donor. They are looking at pictures of the prospective donor's children to get an idea of how the egg will perform. This comfortable little scene enacts the "catalogue of clones" scenario suggested by Elmer-DeWitt in the Time magazine article discussed in Chapter Five. A more telling scene in the "60 Minutes" telecast is an interview with the egg procurer in which she confesses to having had her doubts about the ethics of her profession. She explains that she lost sleep at nights worrying about the egg donors she had located. The doctors were giving them very high doses of the fertility drugs to ensure a bumper crop of eggs. Her brow wrinkles as she explains her concern about working with unscrupulous doctors. By worrying over the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 275 doctor's ethics, the woman has avoided examining the practice of egg donation itself, and her role in this practice. Apparently she has found ethical doctors with whom to work and is again sleeping at night. We will continue to be bombarded by the reprospeak that Robyn Rowland claims softens us up to technologies we might otherwise object to. The only defense against this indoctrination is to understand those messages and their underlying ideologies. The future of reproductive technology is potentially frightening and we owe it to our children to pay attention to the rhetoric of its sales tactics. I would like to conclude this discussion by presenting my reworded version of Burke's "Definition of Man." Mine has been adapted to represent the position woman inhabits in the gynecological case history: Woman is The symbolic surrogate (incubator and inculcator), Negated in her symbolic absence, Detached from her natural function by the tools of technology (made pious and pure by technology), Dominated by her sense of domesticity (or motivated by a sense of altruism), Motherhood in fragmentation Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 276 Works Cited Adler, Jerry, Mary Hager, and Karen Springen. "Clone Hype." Newsweek 8 Nov. 1993: 60-62. Allegretti, Joseph. "Reproductive Technology Invades the Divorce Court." America 27 October 1990: 304- 305. Ames, Katrine. "And Donor Makes Three." Newsweek 30 September, 1991: 60-61. Andrews, Robert. Ed. The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1993. Annan, Mrs. A. M. F. "Baby-Visiting." Godev's Magazine and Ladv/s Book December 1844: 266-273. Arthur, T. B. "I Will!" Godey's Magazine and Lady/s Book May 1844: 213-215. Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. 1985. N.Y.: Fawcett Crest, 1987. Baker, Nancy C. "The Secret of Our Very Special Baby." Ladies/ Home Journal August 1980: 46-54. Bard, Samuel, M.D. A Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery. 1st ed. N.Y., 1807. Bard, Samuel, M.D. A Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery. 5th ed. N.Y., 1819. Bazell, Robert. "In Vitro Veritas." The New Republic 15 February 1988: 11-13. Bird, Sarah. The Mommy Club. N.Y.: Laurel-Dell, 1992. "Birth-Marketing." Commonweal 4 December 1987: 692. Blakely, Mary Kay. "Surrogate Mothers: For Whom Are They Working?" Ms- March 1983: 18-20. Blyth, Myrna. "Editor's Journal." Ladies' Home Journal January 1982: 2. Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ill . A Rhetoric of Motives. 1950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. . Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life. Literature. and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Calder, Jenni. Huxley and Orwell: Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Studies in English Literature 63. Southampton, Great Britain: The Camelot Press, Ltd., 1976. Callahan, Sidney. "Lovemaking & Babymaking: Ethics and the New Reproductive Technology." Commonweal 24 April 1987: 233-239. Chesler, Phyllis. "What Is a Mother?" Ms. May 1988: 36-39. Chomsky, Noam. "The Bounds of Thinkable Thought." The Progressive October 1985: 28-31. Clark, Matt. "Infertility: New Cures, New Hope." Newsweek 6 December, 1982: 102-110. Collins, Linny. "Debby prayed for a miracle— and got four!" Woman's World 22 March, 1994: 54-55. Corea, Gena. Man-Made Women: How New Reproductive Technologies Affect Women. Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1987. Cutter, Irving S. and Henry R. Viets. A Short History of Midwifery. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1964. Davidson, Arnold E. "Future Tense: Making History in The Handmaid's Tale." Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Ed. Kathryne Van Spanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Ad Feminam: Women and Literature. Carbondale: Southern 111. U.P., 1988. deHolguin Cayzer, Bea. "Kim Casali's Miracle Baby." Good Housekeeping November 1977: 90+. Del Zio, Doris and Suzanne Wilding. "I Was Cheated of My Test-Tube Baby." Good Housekeeping March 1979: 135+. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 278 Delepine, Joy. "Good Housekeeping Gave Us Our Son." Good Housekeeping August 1982: 40+. Delloff, Linda Marie. "The Nobelest Baby of Them All." The Christian Century 14 July 1982: 749-750. D'Emilio, Frances. "Mama mia! Italian woman, 62, becomes oldest to give birth." Houston Chronicle 19 July 1994: 12A. "Divorced Couple is Awarded Joint Custody of 7 Embryos." New York Times 14 September 1990: A20. Edmiston, Susan. 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Diepenbrock, Clotilde Mary
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Gynecology and textuality: The conception of a body of discourse
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Doctor of Philosophy
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English Literature
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American studies,health sciences, obstetrics and gynecology,history of science,language, rhetoric and composition,Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest,women's studies
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Diepenbrock, Clotilde Mary
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health sciences, obstetrics and gynecology
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Literature, Modern
women's studies