When Facebook and Apple announced that their fresh health plans include an option to immobilise the bollock of distaff employees , the news was recognize with a mix of cheers and scandal . But freezing charwoman ’s egg is just a starting item . The time to come necessitate more than that .
persona via Batman and Robin
It pisses me off that we ’re supposed to think it ’s astonishing that company are offering women basic health benefits like fecundity treatments . Really ? Because ladypart crap is suppose to be supererogatory , as if serve your build - in womb is the same as ordering redundant bacon on your hamburger ? Freezing eggs is the very least a company could do to acknowledge that its female employees might take a different healthcare software system than its male employees .
Maybe company should also consider thing like hereditary counsel and testing for cleaning woman who could have heritable descriptor of breast cancer . Or hey , how about specialised health care and internal secretion renewal therapy for women going through menopause ? The list could go on and on .
But it ’s not just about what wellness care design should pay for . It ’s about what science and technical school companies are unforced to fund as part of their overall missions to innovate . Large companies like Google , for example , are assign money into things like alternative energy and longevity enquiry . Tech billionaire Elon Musk is funding galvanizing car and distance geographic expedition . Microsoft ’s brotherly love are trying to end world hungriness .
These are great investments that could exchange the world . So why is n’t anyone investing in build an artificial uterus ?
We Don’t Fund That
An hokey womb — now there is a engineering science that could transform everything . No more paying for those stock-still egg or expensive fertility rate intervention . No more potentially disastrous pregnancy and births . No more women terrified that their “ biological clocks ” are ticking ; no more of the painfulness and discomfort of pregnancy . Women and man would be liberated from bear to expend ( and often abuse ) women ’s bodies to make cunning fiddling mankind .
If you look back at the twentieth 100 , it ’s undeniable that one of the most authoritative technologies to emerge — one that changed societal relationships , house , and our agreement of biota — was the nascency control pill . As Jonathan Eig indicate ina riveting new book on the theme , the Pill was the culmination of decades of inquiry . It was a major scientific breakthrough . And it transformed the lives of everyone , male and distaff alike . cleaning lady could enjoy sex the room military personnel always had , without fear that one second of pleasure would have lifetime - altering consequence .
If the Pill take us into the future , imagine where an contrived womb would take us .
So why are we freezing women ’s eggs , but not investing in the applied science that would take us beyond this primitive and unsatisfying resolution to the underlying problem ? And by “ underlying problem , ” I mean the way we still require that women select between work and children .
As Nitasha Tiku has already point out , there are a lot of disturbing aspects to the “ freezing eggs ” thing . It ’s clear an bonus to make women turn through their biologic child - bearing years , which would be ok if they would be guaranteed that their stock-still eggs could flower into babies after their stock enthrone . But the whole process of harvesting , freeze out and implanting egg is still really chancy . A adult female might give her life to Apple , delay that infant , and find out in her mid-40s that her eggs are n’t going to turn anyway .
http://valleywag.gawker.com/facebook-and-apple-offer-egg-freezing-perk-so-women-nev-1646097607
So freezing eggs does n’t really figure out the problem . stilted womb would be a better technical fix , and probably lead to many awesome find during the development phase angle . But even the iWomb will leave us with the same damn brain-teaser . Because really , the issue is n’t gestation at all . It ’s child care .
What Women Really Want
They call childbirth “ parturiency , ” but really the terminus should be applied to everything that comes after .
Despite all evidence to the obstinate , few culture in the humankind admit that child care is a problem . A demanding , soul - crushing , time - consuming business that cleaning woman are supposed to do without compensation or bread and butter from their workplace . I ’m not saying it is n’t also a complete joy to see children growing up — there are many rewards to childrearing , just as there are rewards at any job . But without support at work , it ’s hard to be a great parent and a great software package developer at the same meter .
That ’s why I think women should be demanding something more than wintry egg and unreal wombs . We should be demand that our workplaces offer child care during working hours . I ’m not talking about Google ’s top-notch - elite , first-rate - expensive on - site preschool Irish bull . I ’m talking about baby CARE FOR EVERY WOMAN AT EVERY COMPANY . good-for-nothing to go caps shut up on you , but this solution to the workplace / child problem is so wide-eyed and so effective that I ’d wish to see it emblazon across the sky .
I know it sounds right smart too low - technical school to be futuristic , but I ’m certain we can write some apps to carry out it , if that makes you feel better . It ’s meter we clear that women are struggling to choose between oeuvre and motherhood because maternity is a line of work . And if companies require to retain their female worker , they need to commit in the ultimate innovation : child care in the workplace .
If you look at it from this perspective , Apple and Facebook ’s egg - suspend policy starts to sound a hatful like a guy who just wants to get laid at a party . It ’s weirdly focused on the fertilization part , and not the part that matters . Helping womanhood get fraught is gracious , but how about sticking around for the truly difficult clobber ? How about creating a wellness care plan that helps woman rear their child too ?
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