Snowflakes and Lactivists

I am so behind on my reading. Today I caught up with my usual round of blogs. If you don't regularly do so, I encourage you to check out Dynamic Doula today. She writes about a fantastic hospital birth and compares doctors who breach their patients' trust with physical/sexual abusers who "groom" victims for abuse. You might also read Navelgazing Midwife's post about a woman whose unassisted childbirth (UC) ended with a dead child and police questioning.

The past few days' New York Times have had plenty to keep my blood boiling.

First, this article about conservative Christians who are "rescuing" leftover IVF embryos (snowflakes) by "adopting" them.

The adoption terminology irritates the fertility industry, abortion rights advocates and supporters of embryonic stem cell research, who believe that the language suggests - erroneously, they maintain - that an embryo has the same status as a child.

But for some conservative Christians, that is precisely the point.

"I think appearing with Snowflakes kids is a potent symbol, and I think it illustrates the truth, which is that the embryo is just that child at an earlier stage of development," said Bill Saunders, director of the Family Research Council's Center for Human Life and Bioethics.

My friends, this is eight slippery cells away from treating sperm and eggs as nascent humans. You thought Monty Python was joking when they sang "Every Sperm is Sacred?" Soon there will be volunteers from the radical right to "receive" sperm that would otherwise get wiped on a towel or washed down the shower drain, lest those children "at an earlier stage of development" be denied their opportunity to live. Women, watch that you don't deny each month's ovulated egg its chance at fertilization.

"We really felt like the Lord was calling us to try to give one of these embryos, these children, a chance to live," Ms. McClure said.

Mr. McClure, though, disliked the fertility business, which he felt created extra embryos that were often destroyed or aborted. He feared that paying fees to receive the embryos would be helping an industry "that I have real problems with."

He consulted a Southern Baptist church elder, who advised him, " 'If you want to free the slaves, sometimes you have to deal with the slave trader,' " Mr. McClure said.

If you want to free innocent babies from their involuntary status as a political prop and lifelong indoctrination by religious crazies whom do you deal with?

Then I got irritated seeing that Barbara Walters was made uncomfortable by seeing a woman breastfeeding a baby. Now it's hard to get whipped up over Barbara Walters. Probably nothing could be more alien to someone of her generation, class and status than using one's breasts for nourishment. But still, I was pleased to see that mothers held a nurse-in at Walters' ABC studios.

That these women were called "Lactivists" amuses me to no end. How creative. Makes me wish I was still nursing so I could be a lactivist, too. Though that would be making a political prop of my baby, too, now wouldn't it?