Brown Replies

My goodness. Brown replied to my criticism of her argument to do with IVF and child-objectification. She seems to me, though, to simply reiterate the points she'd made before and makes no real attempt to counter the objections I offer. But she is gracious; if you're curious, it's worth a look.

I sent Brown this reply:

Thank you for the response.

My objection at bottom comes to this: the reason you wish IVF banned concerns at most certain abuses of the practice, abuses which need not occur. Why isn't the appropriate response to the abuses not to call for an end to all IVF but instead to call for its reform?

You think it wrong to test embryos for genetic abnormality. Well, then, let us not do it. But that by itself does not imply that we should put an end to IVF.

You think it wrong to destroy embryos so that we might experiment upon them. Well, then, let us not do it. But as before this does not by itself imply that IVF should be banned. All that it implies instead is that it should be regulated.

Of course you do offer another sort of argument, one religious in nature. You say that infertile couples were chosen by God for a task other than to raise their own children. But does this not imply that, no matter what physical abnormality we find ourselves afflicted with, we should simply accept it as God's will and not attempt to correct or overcome it? Let us say that my daughter's legs are not the same length. It seems that you would have us say that this is something desired by God and thus that we should let her limp. I disagree. We live in a world marred by the Fall, and much in it does not go in accordance with God's design. Disease of all kinds is like this - and this includes the disease of infertility. Unless you would require us to simply accept all disease, I do not see how you can ask infertile couples to simply accept their infertility.