An explanation of reproduction "ought"s

What is "sanctity" and how "ought" we live?

Back during World War II, physicist Richard Feynman was called on to give a little lecture, as the Los Alamos scientists did regularly for entertainment. He began with an explanation of arithmetic, counting numbers, addition, subtraction and the like, ending with a brilliant derivation of Euler’s formula. This lecture was later incorporated into Feynman’s Lectures on Physics, one of the most relatable and important series you’ll ever find on the topic. Feynman was lecturing the nation’s top mathematicians and physicists on basic math: you’d think he was insulting their intelligence, but in fact they enjoyed his talk immensely. It’s always refreshing to be reminded of first principles.

This is what I intend to do here, but much less brilliantly than a mind like Feynman’s, and on a completely different topic. We tend to spend a lot of digital ink arguing about policy, and who’s body is whose, and what rights exist, and who has authority to grant them, and who defends whose rights, especially against those who can deprive another of their own. It’s exhausting. Let me not insult your intelligence, but refresh us all on first principles of what is and what ought.

What is

Since humans first walked the earth, there has only been one known method of reproducing more humans. Mating is, of course, causally necessary to both provide the location and the materials for conception. We might have other terms for that act, but we all know what it is. There are now other, clinical, ways of introducing sperm to egg, but they all end in the same way: a fertilized egg, a zygote, making its way to implant in the walls of a uterus.

Only humans with female anatomy have a working uterus. As of today, there are zero cases of a human who has been surgically equipped with one of those. Therefore, one hundred percent of humans living on our world have been grown in utero.

In fiction, Aldous Huxley posited a world where birth, through a person known as a mother, was considered by the ruling society to be crude, the work of savages. In this Brave New World, sensible people were “decanted,” literally poured out of a bottle, a synthetic uterus, in which they began their journey in life. These little fertilized eggs were subjected to some genetic alterations, and radiation, to determine which caste they would inhabit. Some would be proud Alphas, the ruling caste. Other would be in varying degree subservient, down to the lowly Deltas, who are barely sentient. This world does not exist in reality—and in fact was constructed to show the utter dysfunction of such a society.

In our world, the only world we know, babies are the result of fertilization of a human egg by human sperm, grown in a mother’s uterus. To date, I know of no successful cross-breeding of humans with other higher primates, some of which we share a shockingly high percentage of our DNA software. Now, this doesn’t mean people have not tried it—the nature of humanity is to try everything. I didn’t take the time to Google search for it, because I’m sure I’d find something I’d rather not see.

There is also cloning, which is the physical duplication of a living cell which can grow into a fully developed human. To date, there are no known human clones, though cloning has produced other species, notably sheep. This does not mean it’s impossible to clone humans; it is simply not being (publicly) done because of the implications of such research. In any case, a cloned human cell would have to be of the type and ability of a zygote, in order that it can implant into the uterus of a woman to grow and become a baby.

Humans enter the world through a uterus. Some are born vaginally, others are removed surgically. I have one of each, now teenagers, and their method of entry into the world does not seem to have affected their ability to grow, spend money, or play video games.

What is, part two

Since mating has been a thing, and humans have organized into society, beginning with the family, arranged around mating partners, there have been ingenious methods for preventing pregnancy.

Men, being the hormonal animals we are, many times follow the temptation to seek out new partners. However, the existing partner tends to take such acts in a negative way. This has led, historically, to a variety of methods for men to both have their other woman and hide the evidence, so to speak. Sheepskin was a popular prophylactic for centuries after humans domesticated that animal and took to agriculture. And of course, the oldest method is simply to quit before the ultimate end of every act, but that tends to be difficult and unpredictable given men’s lack of control of that part of their body (which tends to do the thinking at such times).

For tribal leaders and kings, having a number of wives was no problem—it was a status symbol and an assurance of producing a male heir. Harems and concubines existed more for the purpose of the continuation of dynasty than the pleasure of the king, though they gave the king both things. Polygamy was for the rich, as who else can support such a family?

Today, the “nuclear family” is more of an ideal in the U.S. than a description of how everyone lives. About 71 percent of children in America live with two parents, according to 2023 data from the WEA Children’s Network, originally published by the Institute for Family Studies. The modern family of father, mother, and children is still the measure of how babies and children are raised to reproduce and advance society.

Falling birthrates is a continuing issue, as some countries, notably Japan, Korea, and many European nations, are below “replacement rate,” indicating, if extrapolated, population collapse. Of course, migrations and other factors affect these numbers, as empty places on the earth, when coupled with wealth, tend to fill up regardless of how people decide to fill them.

At nation scale, fertility declines create problems, especially in nations that have well developed healthcare systems for older people. Older people tend to run things, and therefore extending the lives of the wealthiest class of individuals (older people have accumulated their wealth) tends to be a higher priority for those nations than, say, affordable housing for young families. This puts pressure on the younger tranche of humans to support their elders.

At planet scale, the population of humans is growing. It’s just growing in places other than large, developed nations, or in large nations such as India, which is quickly moving up the development curve. In certain areas of India, it is very difficult to raise a large family, being desperately poor, and societally limited by a harsh caste system that tends to keep the poor, poor.

Historically, there have been three ways to deal with growing populations in places that have difficulty supporting that growth. The Romans used to throw unwanted babes in the trash heap. Early Christians would take these babies and raise them. The Romans considered that to be a crazy endeavor, saving unwanted lives. Today, in certain places, female babies are considered less desirable than males, so they are disposed of.

A second way of dealing with excess population growth is for government to make it difficult, penalize it, or make it illegal. China’s “one child policy” dealt out penalties to parents who broke the limit, or simply dealt with the babies the same way the Romans did, though a bit more antiseptically.

"The doctors would inject poison directly into the baby's skull to kill it," [Chen Guangcheng] says, drawing on recordings he made of interviews with hundreds of women and their families in Linyi. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. But some babies were alive when they were born and began crying. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies."

The third way is to abort the pregnancy before the baby is born. In ancient times, this was fraught for the mother, since death in childbirth was a very real and more common thing. Inducing premature birth, especially of a stillborn baby, was risky to the mother’s life. However, it was tried, and there are records dating back to antiquity of various methods to abort pregnancy.

What ought

If we never had any care of how we or other people acted, then there would be no such thing as “ought.” But humans are social animals, and therefore we have constructed a large and enduring body of rules of how things “ought” to be, and many times, we have advocated—even tried to control—the “ought” into the “what is.”

The Code of Hammurabi was a long list of “if/then” conditions describing various situations and how they should be handled by those with authority. Most of these laws described commercial and tort suits, literally dealing with whose ox is gored. There were also family laws, like “If a man takes in adoption a young child at birth and then rears him, that rearling will not be reclaimed.” This protects the institution of parenthood, versus merely as a method of reproduction.

The Law of Moses (the Torah), greatly expanded that list, adding many requirements for both men and women, dealing with sanitation, health, and religious obligations to God. Some of those laws dealt with menstruation, and bodily fluids. Moses granted the right of divorce to men (not women), to satisfy the fact that marriages can end, mostly because the man has found a new partner, or one who can provide him a male heir. The prophet Malachi wrote that God hates divorce.

In the sermon on the mount (Matthew chapter 5), Jesus told the crowd: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Adultery—the act of mating with a woman already in a marriage relationship—and its cousin, fornication—the act of two unmarried people mating—are explicitly prohibited in both the Old and New Testaments. This established the Christian “ought” on the nuclear family. The purpose of the family, one man and one woman joined together for life, is to produce, rear, and teach children in the faith to do the same.

Since murder, the taking of life by anyone other than those in authority in the government, is declared sinful and prohibited, the taking of life of a family’s own children, is also prohibited. That eliminates the first and second ways of dealing with unwanted children as options.

The question is if the Mosaic, and the New Covenant, law also prohibits contraception, and aborting a pregnancy. Is it wrong to selectively birth only children who are desired to raise by a single parent, or two parents?

What ought, part two

In modern Iceland, Down Syndrome, a genetic mutation that causes some mental and physical effects, has been nearly completely eliminated. It is not by a medical miracle or genetic cure that this has happened. It has happened because the government has declared that Downs babies not be born at all.

There is a test for Down Syndrome that can be done in utero. This test is fairly accurate, and if the result is positive, many doctors (even in the U.S.) discuss with the family the option of abortion. In Iceland, it’s not mandatory that expectant mothers take the test, but nearly 100 percent do, and nearly 100 percent choose to abort Down Syndrome babies.

Other debilitating genetic conditions also tend to stress families given the immense amount of care and attention these children need, and some are practically guaranteed not to survive very long. Ashkenazi Jews are more commonly afflicted with Gaucher Disease, Cystic Fibrosis, Tay-Sachs Disease, Familial Dysautonomia, and Spinal Muscular Atrophy. The instance of Sickle Cell Anemia and Multiple Myeloma among Black people is higher than non-Blacks.

Some parents choose to terminate a pregnancy when faced with a life-shortening and difficult diagnosis. However, there is always hope for cures. Late in 2023, the first gene therapies were approved by the FDA to effectively treat Sickle Cell Disease.

The question here emerges: is there anyone who, from birth, would be better off dead? Is there a class of child, who is so unwanted, and profoundly disadvantaged in life, that we should take the additional act of ending their lives at or before birth? In a world with a God in it, ideally only God should decide. But in a world with humans in control (and we do take many lives), then humans do the deciding.

A similar question I touched on is if elderly people with life threatening illness should be terminated given the resources required to keep them alive. Of course, many elderly people can decide for themselves if they want to live. But if they decide to live, who can say their will to pursue certain treatments should be taken away to be given to others?

Should the elderly be prioritized over the unborn?

These are difficult questions for us to answer. It is the essence of the “ought.” How ought we live, how ought we give life to those who are to be born? How ought we take it away? Who among the living deserves to live more than those who are about to be born?

Life is a one-shot deal. We all, who are alive, live once. “Sanctity” loses all meaning for the unborn and the dead. It is the living who deal with the “ought.” But remember, the “what is” does not bend to our will. If there is a God in the world, it is He who owns that realm of existence. We should consider what we believe, what is “sanctity,” before we cast our wills to a particular “ought.”