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July 17, 2005
Revenge of the gametes
You practically needed a scalpel and some sort of vision enhancement to get inside Margaret Somerville's piece in Thursday's National Post. I pity anyone who isn't familiar with her anti-SSM arguments, because this piece is written at roughly a 127th grade level — I'm slightly in awe that the Post would even consider printing such a thing.
Somerville's premise here is a slight variation of what it always is: that same-sex marriage is an infringement upon the rights of children:
When limited to the union of a man and a woman, marriage establishes, as the norm, children's right to an identified biological mother and father, and to be reared by them, unless there are good reasons to the contrary. Same-sex marriage, in disconnecting marriage from procreation, compromises this right for all children, not just those brought into same-sex marriages. The new law, Bill C-38, implements that change by redefining parenthood from natural parenthood to legal parenthood — from an institution defined by biology, to one defined solely by law.
Go to the "old" Marriage Act, click Ctrl-F and search for "parent". All you'll find are stipulations about parental consent for minors to marry. Search for "child" and you'll find nothing at all. If the Act was designed as a children-first initiative, then why are children not mentioned in it? That's a serious question. Because if it's just Margaret Somerville's philosophical opinion that pre-SSM marriage was a kids-first deal, then she has an obligation to provide evidence that such is the case. Long-time readers of this blog know that she has never done so.
As for C-38 "redefining parenthood from natural parenthood to legal parenthood," it is important to note that this redefinition will take place in the Canada Business Corporations, Canada Cooperatives, and Income Tax Acts, which already had natural parenthood on par with adoption:
Bill C-38 makes… amendments to the definition of "personal body corporate" in both the Canada Business Corporations Act and the Canada Cooperatives Act (clauses 5 and 6). The amendments make provision for control by individuals connected by a "legal parent-child relationship," as opposed to the existing requirement for connection by blood relationship or adoption.
It is not the sweeping redefinition Somerville makes it out to be, in other words, but a technical consequential amendment that will affect far more opposite-sex couples than same-sex couples. As I pointed out on June 26, most Canadian same-sex couples are (at least theoretically) already entitled to adopt children jointly, and would already have been covered under the pre-existing definition of the "personal body corporate." (Truthfully, I can't quite figure out what this redefinition does, but it's quite clear to me what it doesn't do, namely, weaken the rights of any parents or children.)
From the second paragraph onwards, Somerville's piece has almost nothing to do with marriage:
New reproductive technologies (NRTs) raise difficulties in relation to children's rights. Opposite-sex couples have used these technologies since their inception, but as an exceptional intervention to treat infertility, not as the norm. The focus that same-sex marriage has placed on these technologies has alerted us to previously unrecognized ethical issues — since same-sex couples can be expected to resort to them as a matter of course.
SSM may have placed the focus on these NRTs — in Margaret Somerville's office, at least — but same-sex couples using NRTs has nothing to do with marriage. Nothing in C-38 affords same-sex couples more access to these technologies, and not being married has never been an obstacle to using them.
She continues:
One issue is children's rights to know their parents and, thereby, their own biological identity. Legislation establishing the right of adopted children to know the identity of their biological parents is becoming common in Canada; internationally, the same right is increasingly being accorded to children born through gamete donation (sperm or egg). But in Canada, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act 2004 (AHR Act) prohibits disclosure without the donor's consent. In Quebec, where the province's Civil Code recognizes same-sex couples' "projects involving assisted procreation," and two women can be the parents listed on a birth certificate, the identity of the biological father is not even recorded.
This, too, has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage.
She continues:
A second issue is children's rights to be born from the union of one natural, unmodified ovum and one natural, unmodified sperm. Technological possibilities on the horizon include making embryos from two ova or two sperm and making gametes from adult stem cells, thus allowing a same-sex couple to have their own "shared baby" — and even to further fiddle with the genetic makeup of that baby.
This, too, has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage. And her concluding paragraph, which mentions neither same-sex couples nor same-sex marriage, seems altogether out of place in a column entitled "Gay rights, children's rights":
Knowing the identity of one's close biological relatives is central to forming our individual human identity, developing our capacity to relate to others, and the quest to find meaning in life. Children have the right to know "where they came from" genetically and to come from natural, untampered with biological origins. Ignorance of one's natural family is painful enough. We can only imagine how much damage would be done to children born from artificial gametes constructed through biotechnology.
So... gays shouldn't get married? Huh? The extremely vague implication seems ultimately to be that same-sex marriage will encourage such "unnatural" forms of procreation, thus threatening children's rights. But this relies on the unproven premise that marriage is "about children." Somerville quite reasonably believes that children have "the right to be conceived from a natural sperm from one identified man and a natural ovum from one identified woman," but this principle is violated all the time by opposite-sex couples both married and unmarried. As such, the most logical step towards implementing Somerville's children's rights goals cannot possibly involve same-sex marriage. Indeed, the leglislative changes Somerville advocates have nothing to do with same-sex marriage at all.
Posted by Chris Selley at July 17, 2005 04:44 PM
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Comments
Seems strange to me that both sides in this debate delve into the dark mists of the history of marriage, and come away with opposing meanings for marriage. The pro SSM side positively swoon at the romantic notion of true love conquering all barriers of class, ethnicity, and now gender. A romantic rite of passage into rose-tinted adulthood. For the anti crowd, a sacrament. An acceptance of one's place in the imposed order; for the little ones, don't ya know.
I'd like to see what happens to their arguments if they confined themselves to the history of marriage reform. From no fault divorce to the abolition of marriage as a defense in rape, the effect of all recent marriage reforms has been to raise the status of women. But more importantly, who would want to argue for unreformed marriage from our not too distant past?
Posted by: propatria ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tartcider.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 18, 2005 10:46 AM
Thanks for this analysis, Chris. One comment of yours arouses my curiosity: "Somerville quite reasonably believes that children have the right to be conceived 'from a natural sperm from one identified man and a natural ovum from one identified woman.'" Why do you think this belief is reasonable? I definitely don't like the idea of children being conceived in any other way, but I'm wondering on what principle you would argue for such a right to be conceived through traditional conception rather than, say, conception from two ova or two sperm. Haven't yet thought the issue through myself, but would be interested in your thoughts.
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