From autonomy to responsibility: the desire of motherhood and the possibility of FIVET

Abstract

Up to what extent can the desire of maternity, combined with a sense of frustration due to sterility, make use of the new opportunities offered by FIVET? What is the criterion to distinguish between a responsible and an irresponsible control over nature? Both the reconsideration of the value of our body and person, and Kant’s imperative, according to which one must never consider human nature only as means, can help us finding the lost yardstick. But does Kant’s imperative apply to all of those involved with FIVET? Reading what is stated in the theses of lay bioethics, one can see how not only the parents’ free and informed consent must be safer guarded, but also the right to life and respect for the embryo. Going beyond the distinctions posed, for reasons of exploitation, between pre-embryo and embryo, beyond diversity of opinion on if the embryo is or is not a person, one thing that is not in doubt is the human nature of the embryo, a certainty that calls for respect of its dignity “as one of us”.

Against such an imperative desire for maternity finds a limit which is often forgotten. Being part of the intimate, inviolable sphere of corporeity, this desire seems to be regulated only by the principle of autonomy, which dominates over that sphere. It is necessary, however, to reconsider the principle of autonomy, and the way we look at our own corporeity. Seen as nomos; which identifies itself au autos, that is body/person, the principle of autonomy finds the limits of one’s independence in that law which is part of corporeity itself, that is, the defence of one’s own life, and everybody’s life. It is the very desire of maternity which guides us in this new interpretation of the principle of autonomy: being inscribed in the body, such desire goes beyond one’s own body, opening itself to the corporeity of the other, so that a third may have life. So, against the claim of autonomy in procreation, the voice of responsibility, which has always been rooted in motherhood, speaks up, asking us to protect that life, which we call to this world, since its first apparition, ensuing its fundamental rights to parental identity and family. Taken no longer as a desire to have a child, but as a desire to be a mother, the desire for maternity finds its own rule, the corrective to that indefinite broadening of ends, almost a “feast of desire” to which heterologous FIVET opens itself. This means being able to give certain rhythm to, if not altogether stop, the pace of desire, following the ancient voice of Logos and Cure.