Monette Vacquin, psychoanalyst and member of the Respect for Persons Collective (CoRP), has responded to the latest MPA and surrogacy findings to coincide with the publication of her book, Frankenstein aujourd’hui:égarements et délires de la science moderne.
As far as Monette Vacquin is concerned, the Council of State’s decision to allow, “under exceptional circumstances”, a woman to collect her deceased husband’s frozen sperm from Francefor post-mortem insemination in Spain shows that“boundaries are being crossed in succession, usually in the context of meaning well, which is a sign of the times, and love, which allegedly justifies everything”. The family and friends of women requesting post-mortem insemination “think that this is a great idea”. But “love is a living relationship, which gives meaning to life, not a law,” she responded. In fact, “this kind of authorisation will lead to other requests”. “Those in charge of procreation are constantly creating unprecedented situations in terms of parenting and the law is presented with a fait accompli”.
Examining the issue in greater depth, this decision begs the question as to “What is meant by externalisation of the human embryo, desexualisation of origin and hitherto unprecedented empowerment in the history of humanity?”.
Children are voluntarily being created without fathers in a kind of “compassionate mess”. The “question of responsibility is not the same when history creates an orphan and when science creates an orphan”. The anthropological consequences are immense. We are crossing boundaries that were recognised by everyone “in the name of an ideology where ‘I have rights to everything’”.
Regarding surrogacy, Monette Vacquin doubts that a ban will be “possible and tenable”, but “this is not a reason to forget that parenting is viewed as a commodity or an industry”, she explained. Furthermore, “if countries refuse, it sets a precedent for the others and gives people food for thought – a child is not an object to be bought and sold”.
In this field, the anthropological consequences are also “vast”: no differentiation between a person and an object and rejection of the principle of unavailability of the human body are coated in “flowery” language. She calls a spade a spade, referring to things in black and white: “‘contract to hire out a uterus’ – it’s a stronger and more realistic statement than “surrogacy”.
All of these issues bear testimony to “a lack of thought” and “a break-down in philosophical and religious discussion”: science is gripped by birth, death and the “transmission of genomes programmed to tell us who we are”, i.e. “key moments in human existence which were once subject to discourse and representation, but no more”. We have reached “an incredible turn-around point: embryos frozen at the start of life and bodies kept warm at the end, for the purposes of organ transplantation”.
Causeur, Vadim Rubinstein (13/06/2016)