How science is changing our motherhood journey
Jenni Quilter was 35 years old, single and living in New York when she decided to become a parent. Nothing can stop her from embracing motherhood, achieved by digital and scientific means: web scrolling, sperm donation and in vitro fertilization.
His memoir presents the zigzag nature of her journey. When a nurse called to say the treatment was delayed because she had fewer eggs than expected, Quilter immediately thought of the medicine in her refrigerator. It costs about $8,000 (€7,500).
As IVF plays an increasingly popular role in the pregnancy experience, more and more writers are studying its stresses and pitfalls.
In A great choice, journalist Emma Brokes, who gave birth to twins, recounts her experience choosing to become a single mother. Julia Leigh, an Australian novelist, explored the corrosive impact of unsuccessful treatments on a woman’s mental health. She wrote in Avalanche: A love story.
bloom is a welcome addition to the genre, in which writers – often female – reflect on their experience in an industry largely explored and developed by men.
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Jenni Quilter’s descriptive skills are especially evident in the first half of the book. Photo: Caroline Sinno
As a lecturer at New York University, Quilter writes astutely about this complex and even contradictory road to motherhood. She was never one to possess a strong maternal urge, so she wondered, “Why, if I am such a contradiction, do I stumble across a vast land? So sad?”
It turns out that the fertility industry is rife with unforeseen questions and ethical dilemmas. For example, although the treatment allows gay couples and single women to have children, clinics often assume the presence of a man and a wife, indulging fantasies about family life. family and happiness. Quilter is one of the few women alone at her doctor’s office. She wrote: “What I find remarkable is that IVF has changed very little.
Furthermore, she shows that the triumphs of IVF, first developed by British researchers in the 1980s, build on discoveries that occur in clear gray areas, or worse. Usually, doctors take a woman’s eggs without their consent, or use their own sperm to see what happens. Robert Edwards, considered the father of IVF, tried implanting human eggs and sperm into the fallopian tubes of rabbits.
Quilter’s careful review of this history includes another notable figure, James Marion Sims, a 19th-century physician who spent decades experimenting with new techniques in gynecological surgery. The majority of his early cases were in African-American women, sick slaves
severe internal scars after giving birth, their owners left them in the care of Sims.
In his memoir, detailed by Quilter, Sims discussed his goals and the many surgeries he performed (often repetitive, without anesthesia, time after time. other failed). She points out: “The white middle-class infertility treatment came about only after he specialized in the fertility of enslaved blacks.
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Jenni Quilter’s ‘bloom’ puts IVF in the spotlight
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Beyond this troubled history, reproductive technologies raise new ethical conundrums. For example, more than a million frozen embryos are stored in cold banks across the United States (as well as many parts of Europe), while the parents-to-be decide their fate.
To prevent their annihilation, evangelical Christian groups have promoted the receipt of embryos (which is consistent with the abortion debate). The embryos are called “snowflakes” by an organization called Nightlight Christian Adoptions. “All the souls on ice,” Quilter wrote. “Waiting to be resurrected or sentenced.”
The personal side of the story is expertly told, tense with expectation as we await news of a transplant or failure, though the story loses some momentum as the result of our efforts. Quilter is known.
Her descriptive skill is especially evident in the first half of the book, evoking the backward aspects of IVF. On online forums, women share a wealth of intimate data, while in face-to-face, at the doctor’s office, they don’t exchange a word. As she puts it: “We are quietly waiting to be harvested.”
Women don’t want to think about their submission, at least while they’re in treatment
No wonder feminists have a strained relationship with reproductive medicine. Over the past four decades, Quilter writes, a group of scholarly works has emerged, criticizing the oppression and inequality of reproductive technologies. But when women search for information about fertility treatment online, these articles rarely come up.
That could be because women don’t want to think about labor, at least while they’re in treatment. When a woman is considering IVF, the concern (at least in the patient-centered literature) is not whether the treatment creates a system of family objectification, she writes. growth lasts centuries or not but whether her odds are good or not.
These tensions are difficult to deal with because technology often gives couples and families the kids they want. IVF for Quilter is the consumer’s final purchase; but also, when it works, is the source of new rituals and meanings. bloom reclaiming the role of women in the IVF industry, but Quilter’s own place in the system – among white, middle-class women – remains ambiguous and deserves close scrutiny.
‘Hatch: Experimenting with motherhood and technology’, Jenni Quilter, Penguin Putnam, €23.99
https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/how-science-is-transforming-our-journey-towards-motherhood-42267941.html How science is changing our motherhood journey