morphy@truebalt.cco.caltech.EDU (Jones Maxime Murphy) (10/30/90)
falk@peregrine.Eng.Sun.COM (Ed Falk) writes: >Ok, so who was the mother in the Anna Johnson vs. the Calverts case? >Anna Johnson, who gave birth to the baby, or Crispina Calvert who >conceived it with her husband? That's easy. Ask me a tougher question. >Currently, men have the legal right to be sperm donors, even for >money. They sign away all rights to any child that might result. >Is there something so magical about reproduction that women cannot be >considered competent to sign similar contracts? Is the maternal >instinct so strong that women literally don't know their own minds >when reproduction is concerned? Gestation and birth are as magical as any human activity can possibly be. I asked my mother, who bore 6 of us in eight years, what she thought of all this. She insists that the feeling after giving birth is one of the greatest feelings that a woman can experience that is peculiarly feminine. I was frankly surprised at this opinion from my erudite mother, a strong advocate of women's issues. She said that while she is strongly pro-choice, she feels that birth is a mystical bonding experience. In my mother's words "when you look at a 20-inch long newborn, who you know will outlive you, it makes you feel even tinier than her/him. This creature, as yet purely instinctive, will grow into an adult as you are, with wonderful virtues and terrible vices." We are much more than intellect. Emotions and animal forces like lust are stronger than our rational faculties. I think we should make the same leap made for human rights and extend them to gestation by only allowing surrogacy for non-profit motives, and giving gestation mothers liberal access to their children if they want. >Anyone over 21 is competent to sign a contract to buy a car or >something. Noone is competent to sign themselves into slavery. Are >there some things which men are competent to contract, but not women? Yes, like artificial insemination. There is a major qualitative distinction between ejaculation and gestation. > -ed falk, sun microsystems > sun!falk, falk@sun.com > card-carrying ACLU member. Jones Murphy Physics Department California Institute of Technology card-carrying USCF(US Chess Federation) member.