Changes

Oh, I certainly think there is morality medicine today. Homophobia is not gone. The belief that children are best cared for full-time by their mothers is not gone. One of the bloggers for Nursing Clio recently wrote about how a Canadian fertility clinic refused to inseminate a woman with sperm from a donor of a different racial background than hers. Infertility, pregnancy loss, abortion, STIs, multiple partners… I probably have enough anecdotes of comments made by health care professionals to patients during pelvic exams and other visits to fill another book. And how about obesity, cholesterol, diets, exercise? All of those discussions are loaded with moral assumptions. And those assumptions are further coded by class, race, and other stereotypes.

Hmm. I’m not sure that they are non-controversial. I mean, how many people broadcast the fact that their children were conceived with donor sperm – especially if it is a married, heterosexual couple? Why is that if not because it is controversial in some way? IVF is definitely more common, but I suspect that people who experience the world of assisted reproduction would say that there are all sorts of assumptions, insults, and fears that they hear from others. Assisted reproduction is non-controversial in the sense that most of us accept that it occurs (and probably all know someone who has used some form of it), but that doesn’t mean that we don’t imbue it with all sorts of moral judgments. And the fact that assisted reproduction is expensive, and not always fully covered by medical plans, means that we are gate-keeping who can and cannot reproduce.