As the crescendo of conflict between Elton John and Dolce and Gabbana has risen this week, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the fashion moguls’ original, offending statement that procreation should be “an act of love.” In vitro fertilization (IVF) doesn’t count in their books.
I’m having trouble understanding this. IVF isn’t just for gay couples or unmarried women and their anonymous sperm donating partners. It’s for straight couples too. It’s the great fertility equalizer. The only thing unfair about IVF is that, like most innovative health services in this country, it’s only for couples with the health insurance or private funds to pay for it.
Then there’s the physically, emotionally, and financially grueling process. Women who opt for IVF have to deal with daily crazy-making hormone pills, painful injections, frequent blood tests, invasive uterine examinations, anesthetized egg extraction, stressful embryo implantation, and uncertain genetic testing; then they wait for a positive pregnancy test, handle all the usual risks that come with pregnancy including miscarriage and birth defects and the near-certain risk of low birth weight that is characteristic of IVF babies; meanwhile she has to go to work, exercise, eat right, not allow the hormones and the stress to alienate everyone around her, and manage all of life’s other daily challenges. Her partner (if she’s chosen wisely) frets over how to pay for all this, deals with the crazy-making insurance process, goes to work, makes sure she has enough ice cream, walks the dog, listens to her shouting, dries her tears, and handles everything else she can’t handle. If that’s not an act of love, I don’t know what is.
As an act of love, it beats the pants off of two teenagers fumbling around in the back seat of a car. According to the CDC, in 2012, 305,388 babies were born to girls who were 15–19 years old. The organization RAINN reports that in 2012 an additional 17,342 pregnancies were the result of rape. These are just the ones they know about, and these are just the ones reported in the United States in 2012.
The Huffington Post designed an infographic last year that illustrates unplanned pregnancies (not the same as unwanted, but profoundly compelling) across the US. Apparently 49% of pregnancies are unplanned; and just as you’d expect, women at or below the poverty line are five times more likely (that’s 500% more likely) to experience an unwanted pregnancy. These are the same women who are least likely to have access to healthcare or abortions. PBS says that, of the 1,500,000 children adopted in the US in 2001, 50% were from the child welfare system.
All this makes me wonder about Dolce and Gabbana’s hypocritical insistence that adoption is better than IVF. Where do they think all those unwanted babies come from? Yes, those children need and deserve loving homes. But did D&G stop to think about why?
They did get one thing right: procreation should be an act of love. If that was the measure we used to make choices about access to healthcare, a lot more women would get the care they need, and there would be a lot fewer babies available for adoption. The children would all be in loving homes with healthy parents. And that would be a better world indeed.
Visualizing Shakespeare 