Poor Africans Catch Break on Babies (Cue Questionable Remarks)
It never fails: you leave a little food on your plate and some liberal whines about all the starving children in Africa. Well, thanks to a new, cheap invitro program, there may soon be more hungry mouths to not feed...
Swiss-based Low Cost IVF Foundation plans to open three new clinics on the African continent that will help infertile mothers reproduce for about $300, a mere sliver of the cost rich, spoiled Westerners pay. Meanwhile, another organization's hatching a similar scheme in Egypt.
Not only will the process help child-longing women fulfill their reproductive dreams, but it will help ward off ostracization, for many people in various African counties associate infertility with witchcraft. (That's fair, right?)
Anyway, the article was posted at New Scientist and the reaction has been, well, confusing. Take, for example, this over-the-top feminist remark:
As if the world wasn't already overpopulated, why is there any need to turn women into breeding sows using technology that has such a high rate of problems in the offspring? Come on now, this is beyond insane, this is misogyny at its worst, perpetuating the myth that women are just ambulatory incubators.
You said it, sister! And then there's this, entitled "Just what we need — more people:"
Rather than trying to solve that fertility issue, we should be trying to shift those Sudanese cultural beliefs from 'witchcraft' to having a big heart and having a family there adopt one of the many african orphans.
Hey, buddy: the Sudanese have the smallest tatters of a government, little hope and even less food. Let them have their babies. Sure, it will only compound their woes, but babies are so cute! And, really, no amount of hardship can take that away...
Image via bdinphoenix's flickr.