Читать книгу Not pregnant yet? You bet! - Римма Ефимкина - Страница 29

Angela, a thirty year old woman, has endometriosis, she has IVF done for free due to the federal program. She has already had two unsuccessful tries, although the third one was made just two days ago she knows in advance that the embryo won’t survive. Of all the eggs they had only one was fertilized and it was underdeveloped: instead of dividing eight times by a certain moment, it divided only three times. Embryo specialist said not to give it much hope.

But Angela came with a different problem. She was highly impressed by a handsome doctor who performed the IVF. When he had his job done, he said: “You’ll spend this night with me”. The ambiguity of his words and his tone caused confusion in her mind.

– Can you imagine? He didn’t say “You will stay in the hospital till tomorrow”, he said “You’ll spend this night with me”! – told Angela excitedly. – If he only asked me, if he only gave me a hint, I would have given it to him without giving it much thought!

Angela looks in front of her as if not seeing anything, rubs her temples and says frustrated:

– But I’m happily married, my husband is such a nice guy, we are so close! Can you explain what is the deal with this obsession?

I have thought about this frequently, as a matter of fact. I mean, about in vitro fertilization. The process that is deeply personal, spiritual and sexual that joins two people as one and makes them parents, becomes distant and impersonal inside a hospital. There is no passion-charged field necessary to conceive new life in the mechanical procedure.

Is it possible that the feelings Angela told me about are normal in an un-normal situation? And she tries to compensate it with her behavior? I don’t know the answer, but nothing prevents me from assuming it. The man who fertilized the egg and put the embryo in is a part of the sacrament now. He becomes very close, but he is still a stranger. How a woman is supposed to overcome this estrangement and resolve the conflict between the two roles he performs: a doctor and a participant of bringing new life into this world? Unconsciously Angela found a way: to fall in love with him to humanize the process of in vitro fertilization.

I totally agree with Jeremy Taylor when he says that each of us is born as a result of a sexual contact, so in this sense sexuality deeply resonates with religious and philosophical problems. So, modern procedures, such as artificial insemination, amniocentesis31, ability to determine the sex of a baby and possible abnormalities, in vitro fertilization, complicated devices for maintaining life that allow to “give birth to an embryo” without growing it in mother’s uterus, have created moral dilemmas that can’t be solved, unless the un-measurable elements of human life are considered as real and important as the devices that make these procedures possible32.

If two people are bound by love and respect for each other, this does good to the future baby, so nothing is impossible.