The Coming Dystopia?– Impregnating Bodies of People in Permanent Vegetative States

University of Oslo’s Anna Smajdor’s article “Whole body gestational donation” published in the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, suggests some interesting ideas for the future of reproductive science.

She discusses Rosalie Ber’s idea of using women’s bodies (or men’s, to avoid feminist objections) who are in a permanent vegetative state, in order to help those who cannot or will not gestate their own babies. This concept would use the organ donation framework of either opting out or being automatically listed as consenting to such procedures.

Smajdor notes that if a person accepts organ donation, about which they likely do not know enough, might even change their minds if they knew more, then they necessarily need to accept the idea of whole body gestational donation. She adds that the fact that this has not been implemented anywhere so far is “surprising, given the degree to which surrogacy continues to provoke moral and legal controversy.”

Well, if gestating a child for another person has caused controversy, how much more controversial would using the body of a person in a permanent vegetative state for such purposes be? You are adding more variables and breaking additional moral barriers, therefore this would automatically result in more, not less controversy.

She believes that “at least one factor here relates to the discomfort that arises from the liminal state between life and death, that brain-dead patients occupy.” Indeed! There is an instinct that tells us when we are dealing with things we do not understand or are about to walk all over something sacred such as life or the respect owed to the dead. And here, terrifyingly, the line is not even clear.- READ MORE