Manipulating ideas around motherhood
Websites selling assisted reproductive technologies have very different messages depending on who they are speaking to. Genes are important — unless they're not. Ditto the uterine environment. Is this comfort or lies?
Sometimes when I'm nosing around websites, things stick out.
One thing that bugs me is how certain scientific concepts — like "epigenetics" (the way environment and behaviour can affect how certain genes are expressed) and "microchimerism" (how small populations of a person's cells can originate from someone else) — are distorted to help people feel more comfortable with whatever it is they're doing.
Often it's subtle, with a little more emphasis on this and less on that. Sometimes a statement itself is completely accurate. Sometimes it's accurate but oversimplified. Sometimes it's accurate but deliberately misleading. Sometimes it's not accurate at all.
But what I've noticed is that when the website is speaking to people who are carrying their child but using a donor egg, science concepts are invoked to suggest a very strong biological relationship. Genes aren't that important; epigenetics is. The message underscores connectedness, exchange, influence, communication.
When a website is speaking to people who are using a surrogate and their own eggs, any epigenetic connection, any concept of cells passing between mother and fetus, is more grudging, less consequential. The same concepts are couched in ideas of separation, barriers, even reversibility.
The key message? Genes are important when they are yours. Maternal-fetal interaction is important when it's yours.
Needless to say, all of these factors have the same impact whether the person carrying the fetus is an intended parent or a surrogate. It feels deceitful to imply otherwise.
Below, I display fragments of sentences taken from various assisted reproductive technology websites. The fragments are cut and pasted, with only some capitalization and punctuation removed. The first batch were directed at people carrying their own child but using donor eggs. The second batch were for people whose own eggs were being carried by a surrogate.
