Empty chairs and hope

Sanctity of Human Life Act legally makes embryos ‘people’. Destroying unused embryos will render parents 'murderers'.

For years, my wife and I would sit around our kitchenette table that sits four, having our meals — the weight of two empty chairs, bearing down on both of us. The empty chairs were a stark reminder of what was missing in our otherwise fulfilling lives. We had been trying, for the better part of a decade to conceive using various forms of assisted reproductive technologies including in vitro fertilisation (IVF). It took us eight years to have our first; a son. Our daughter was created at the same time but then she, along with six other embryos, was frozen. She was successfully implanted a year and a half later. The chairs are now happily filled, elevated with the raucous of two impressible children.

The empty chair is a powerful symbol. At the recent Republican Party Convention, Clint Eastwood held a mock interview with an empty chair by seating an imaginary President Barack Obama. Eastwood’s rambling conversation with an empty chair harshly admonished Obama for all his presidential shortcomings. Chris Rock, an American comedian, put it well when he said, “The empty chair was a metaphor for the entire Republican platform. There’s nothing there, but blind hatred for a man that doesn’t exist.” This blind hatred polarises the electoral vote. Speaking at the Democratic Party Convention a week later, Bill Clinton remarked how he often disagrees with his Republican peers but has “never learned to hate them”. The Republican Party platform is based on a deep-rooted American conservatism. Their ideologies reject the liberal ideals of the Democratic Party. For instance, a majority of Republicans are pro-life and oppose elective abortion because of their religious and moral convictions, whereas Democrats believe women should have the ability to decide whether or not to abort. Democrats advocate that each and every woman has the right to choose for herself whether abortion is morally correct without any government interference. The liberalism that Democrats espouse is an attitude rather than an ideological opinion. Giving people the opportunity to question allows them to make choices. Choice is important because it offers hope.

In the three decades since the first test-tube baby was born, IVF has become a standard procedure providing hope to many infertile couples. The Sanctity of Human Life Act, which has been co-sponsored by Paul Ryan, should it ever pass, would ensure that life begins at fertilisation. This Bill would dash the hopes of thousands by criminalising the destruction of day-old embryos. Clinical IVF protocols would have to change, making the procedure more invasive and prohibitively more expensive. Currently, during IVF, doctors create multiple embryos and implant the healthiest ones in the woman. Embryos that are not implanted are either frozen for use later or destroyed. The Sanctity of Human Life Act would legally declare embryos as ‘people’, so unused embryos that are destroyed or are strategically aborted after implantation, would technically render doctors and parents charged with murder.

A conservative rhetoric is about control, while a liberal attitude is about hope. There are many Democrats who are pushing to have infertility treatments included as a core benefit in many health insurance plans, providing hope to thousands. President Obama was elected on a wave of hope some four years ago. He defined hope as being understood, “by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled”. Humans, whether Republican or Democrat, can live weeks without food, days without water, minutes without air, but only seconds without hope. In vitro fertilisation does not promise children; much like hope cannot promise the fulfilment of dreams. But hope can cherish desire with anticipation, ensuring dreams are never abandoned.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2012.