The World is Mine to Use - On Assisted Reproductive Technology (Part I)

Kenya's Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill would reduce the entire cosmos to an object of use in our lived experience.

(reading time: 7 minutes)

Earlier in 2023, Millie Odhiambo Mabona tabled another reproductive bill in the Kenyan Parliament: the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill. A parliamentary committee is reviewing the proposed legislation after soliciting opinions from the public in May. If passed, the legislation would introduce “assisted reproductive technology” (ART) into Kenyan law and legitimize its practice. There are numerous arguments for and against ART. Many of them lie outside the scope of this article. As the articles in this short series will elaborate, the main theme to be explored here is the tendency of the actions endorsed by such legislation to destroy what Fr. Paul Mimbi has elsewhere suggested to be “the African ontology”.

The ART Bill defines “assisted reproductive technology” as fertilization in a laboratory dish (in vitro fertilization, IVF) of processed sperm with processed eggs that have been obtained from an ovary, whether or not the process of fertilization is completed in the laboratory dish.¹ ART may be accompanied by surrogacy if the fertilized eggs are borne by a woman other than the one who will be recognized as the parent of the child who will later be born.

The professed aim of ART is to enable infertile men or women to procreate and bear children by having recourse to sperm donors, egg donors, or rented wombs. What would otherwise be biologically impossible is to be made possible by biotechnology. However, the technology involved here aims not to extend the capacities of the human body but instead to make the bodies of the woman, man, and child redundant.²

The ovaries and the womb of a woman tend naturally to the generation of a new human being through sexual intercourse. This is the biological purpose of a woman’s reproductive organs. This is not to say that this is the only purpose of her reproductive organs; a woman is infinitely more than just biology. But she is also a biological being, with purposes that she cannot determine any more than a man can determine his biological purposes. Any action that uses her body for a purpose other than what it naturally tends to will reduce her body to a means to an end. Because the woman is her body (though not only her body), any action that makes her body just a means makes her a means to an end.

In both surrogacy and egg donation, the egg of a woman is extracted from her ovary and fertilized outside the womb.³ Sexual intercourse is excluded. And yet, because the woman, like every person, is infinitely more than just biology, sexual intercourse has a purpose that transcends biological reproduction. In sexual intercourse, a man and a woman are called to love the other entirely, as they are, in their bodies and as persons. In vitro fertilization of the egg assumes that the biological aspect of sexual intercourse can be separated from its personal dimension. In other words, it reduces sexual intercourse to a purely biological act, with a purely biological outcome. Reducing sexual intercourse to a purely biological act ignores its personal dimension, reducing the person to reproductive organs, to body parts that can be used to achieve desired outcomes. Indeed, the rapist makes just such a reduction. Both surrogacy and egg donation reduce the woman to a biological machine. Of course, the same can be said of the man, mutatis mutandis.

Moreover, IVF excludes the act of sexual intercourse from the procreation of the child. Treating sexual intercourse as a purely biological mechanism whose outcome can be reproduced technologically, it also views the child as a purely biological mechanism. Regardless of the subjective state of the commissioning parents or the surrogate mother, the child is impliedly seen as the outcome of a biological process, a process that can be manipulated for desirable results. The child, then, is treated as valuable not in himself, but for the gratification he can afford a man and a woman. He is reduced in his body to a means to an end, an object for use.

Since this reduction is a consequence of the inner logic of IVF, this reduction occurs also in the experience of all the parties involved. The man or woman who uses ART (or is a result of ART) will tend to see others as biological machines. Of course, this is not to say that he or she cannot overcome this way of seeing, or never experiences others as persons. But the experience of others as persons, as radiant with worth and dignity, directly contradicts this other way of seeing that ART imposes on the person who has recourse to it.

Another characteristic of this reduction is its radical nature. As we have elsewhere noted, our experience of sexuality is marked strongly by shame, an awareness that we are susceptible to being reduced, in the eyes of the other and through one’s body, into an object for use – or that we can reduce others to objects for use in this way. And yet, at the same time, there is also the possibility of accepting the other as they are, also through their body. There is an awareness that the body can be a path for profound humiliation or affirmation of the person’s worth through how we see the other person in and through their body, and particularly, through his or her sexuality. The person experiences his sexuality as a specific and unparalleled route to his intimate depths. It has even been said that it is specifically sexuality that reveals the meaning of the body, of the person as embodied.⁴ ART enacts a reduction of the man and the woman precisely in their sexuality. For this reason, in the experience of the person who has recourse to it, ART reduces every person fundamentally, and not just incidentally, to objects for use.

In reducing the person to an object for use in our experience, ART tends to reduce the entire cosmos to an object of use. Again, as we have elsewhere noted, we only interact with the world in and through our bodies. Our interaction with the extramental world is, to a greater or lesser degree, an extension of our relationship with our bodies to the world. Indeed, through our bodies, we perceive ourselves as beings in the world, amidst other beings in the world. We experience ourselves as a body among bodies and, as embodied, we experience ourselves as profoundly similar to the rest of the visible world.⁵ Because our relationship with the extramental world is necessarily mediated by the body in this way, then if we relate with ourselves as objects for use in our bodies, such will be our relationship with the cosmos. Our gaze will not be one of contemplation, but avarice or lust; our touch will be violent even when it is a caress.

While the economic, legal, and political consequences of this state of affairs are vast and intriguing, the next part of this article will explore something more fundamental: the relationship between this view and what Fr. Paul Mimbi has called “the African ontology.”

1. Section 2, Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, 2023.

2. It is not true that technology is morally neutral, determined only by the purposes that we use it for. To think of technology in this way is to ignore the ontological considerations that undergird ethics. Technology can, in itself, tend to separate us from the real world, from the actuality of reality; or it can fortify our connection with reality. It can draw out previously unrealized potential that we have or stifle our potential. Guardini’s meditation on sailing a sailboat versus riding on a motorboat is a classic example that illuminates this point. See Taylor, M. D. (2022). “’Riveted with Faith Unto Your Flesh’: Technology’s Flight From Actuality and the Word Made Flesh”, 49 Communio 3, 2022, pp. 527-563.

3. In egg donation, there are also numerous health risks. However, focusing on these health risks as the primary argument against ART would be to fall into the biological reductionism that this article describes. Nevertheless, for an overview of some of the health risks, see The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (2021, July 22). “Eggsploitation”. Link here.

4. See St. John Paul II (2006) (2nd ed.) Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. Pauline Books and Media: Boston, MA. Waldstein, M. (trans.)

5. See St. John Paul II (2006) (2nd ed.) Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. Pauline Books and Media: Boston, MA. Waldstein, M. (trans.)