NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9654

Text File | 1992-12-29 | 6.8 KB | 142 lines

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Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
From: Hank Roth <[e-mail]>
Subject: I'm for Frankenstein's Baby
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{From LIVING MARXISM, December 1992}
I'M FOR FRANKENSTEIN'S BABY
by Ann Bradley

A brain-dead pregnant woman placed on a life-support system until
her child can be born alive has caused a political storm, which
has united feminists and religious bigots and left anti-abortion
groups not knowing which way to turn.

Marion Ploch, aged 18, was killed on her way to work in a car
crash in October. Her death certificate has already been filled
out. But the 13-week old fetus survived the crash unharmed and
doctors at University clinic in Erlangen, Germany, are intending
to keep Marion's corpse functioning artifically until it is
sufficiently developed to survive outside the womb. At this
point, expected to be next March, the baby will be born by
Caesarian and its mother's live-support will be turned off.

  It's not the first case where a woman has been kept alive to
have a child, but it's the first time it's been tried from so
early in the pregnancy. In Finland in 1984, Marko Ylitalo's
mother was kept alive artificially for 10 weeks before he was
born. In Britain, too, Deborah Bell was on a life support system
for five weeks in 1986 before her daughter Nicola was born, but
doctors avoided controversy by postponing tests to confirm that
she was dead, so they could avoid the completion of the death
certificate.

Doctors say it's technically not too difficult. As long as blood
circulation through the womb is adequate, oxygen and carbon
dioxide levels controlled and nutrients maintained, the pregnancy
should progress--but util it's been tired, they'll never really
know.

The case has provoked outrage, uniting oppositon across the
political and social specturm. Nobody except the doctors seems to
be in favour of the `heroic intervention'. Opinion polls in
the German yellow press showed that 80 percent of readers thought
that the life-support should be turned off. There have been
abusive phone calls and letters ot the clinic, accusing doctors
of `Nazi-style' experiements to produce `Frankenstein's baby',
and the clinic walls have been daubed with graffiti.

Senior figures in the Free Democrats, members of Germany's ruling
coalition, have described the procedure as an `intolerable
perversion of humanity'. The president of the Catholic doctors'
association in Germany has concemned the use of the woman as a
`breeding machine' and the Social Democrats have called for an
emergency parliamentary debate on `post-human motherhood'.
Women's rights groups argue that the decision to sustain the
pregnancy has reduced women to the status of mere `baby
machines', and that Marion's right to a dignified and peaceful
death has been denied.

Personally, I'm on the side of the doctors. I'm sure critics are
right when they claim that the doctors are motivated by a desire
to experiment rather than by compassion---but so what? Medical
science still has a lot to learn about fetal development, and if
this can provide some answers that will be of benefit to pregnant
women, so much the better: Marion is beyond caring what happens
to her body.

My only reservation about the `Erlangen Baby Case' is the
consequences it may have for LIVING pregnant women.

Professor Scheele, the responsible consultant, has justified his
actions with the argument that the fetus, `was life. We couln't
and simply shouldn't have pulled the plug'. It remains to be seen
what consquences this approach will have, as the German
parliament braces itself this month to review its abortion law
yet again.

If it is accepted that Marion's baby has a RIGHT TO LIFE, then
the argument that women have the right to end unwanted
pregnancies will be serverely denied.

Fortunately, perhaps, the anti-abortionists, have been loath to
take this approach. In both Germany and britain, the supposedly
absolute moral principles about the `right to life of the unborn'
are less than absolute when they conflict with other traditional
values. Those who argue that abortion is unnatural, a sin against
God and a medical aberration, are somewhat flummoxed by the fact
that in this case the maintenance of fetal life depends on `anti-
natural' intervention.

It's a sign of the anti-abortion campaign's unease that in Britain
the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC)--who
never usually miss the chance of a headline---has declined to
comment on Marion Ploch. It seems rather sick that SPUC is so coy
in this case, where everyone concerned wants the outcome to be a
healthy child, when it has no compunction about trying to force
pregnant women to have babies that they don't want.

I find no contradiction between supporting doctors striving to
push back the frontiers of medical science, conceding to the
desire of the prospective grandparents to raise their dead
daughter's wanted child, and supporting the rights of living
women to end unwanted pregnancies. Marion is dead and her body no
longer has any rights. Her fetus will not acquire any rights
until after it is born. No action in respect of either of them
should be allowed to prejudice the situation of living women. But
neither should mystical notions of what constituties life and
motherhood be permitted to interfere with potentially useful
medical developments.
---------------------------------------------
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