Raising Daughters in the Brave New World

By Chelsea Zimmerman
Reflections of a Paralytic

The already difficult task of raising daughters and protecting them from a society that seems to degrade them at every turn (or convince them that they aren’t beautiful enough, that their bodies aren’t perfect enough) is not getting any easier.

Remember the good old days when we used to only have to worry about a billion dollar sex industry and horny boys taking advantage of our girls and using them for their bodies? Well, now we also have to contend with a fast-growing biotech industry that is dependent on them putting their bodies on the line in order to obtain the “raw materials” needed for their experimentation.

To help parents, the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network has made a list of Five Things Moms Should Tell Their Daughters About Their Eggs:

1. You are born with all the eggs you will ever have. 

We’re not like the guys, who make new fresh sperm all the time. The eggs you enter this world with on day one are all you get – so use them wisely. Learn more 

2. Every month you normally ovulate one egg…but about 1000 eggs are needed to get that one egg hatched. 

Think of those 1,000 eggs as cheerleaders. 

3. You have no idea where donated eggs will end up. 

Since eggs aren’t tracked in the U.S. (unlike just about anything else that leaves the human body, which gets barcoded, labeled, tracked and monitored and lives forever in some NAS spy secret zone) you really have no idea where your eggs will land. Learn more 

4. There really is a biological clock. 

And it’s ticking. So again, if you want to make babies, use your eggs wisely and on time. And don’t fall for those egg freezing schemes. Learn more 

5. As a result: 

Helping someone else have a baby with YOUR eggs…
…really means helping someone else have YOUR baby.

Third-party reproduction operations and scientific researchers make a lot of money on words like “gift” and “hope” and “miracle,” often ignoring real medical and moral concerns to women. Do your daughters a favor. Teach them about biotechnology. Help them understand how valuable their bodies are so that hopefully they will not fall victim to exploitation in today’s Brave New World.

Chelsea Zimmerman editor-in-chief for Catholic Lane and a managing editor for Ignitum Today and Catholic Stand. She often writes about life issues and Catholic spirituality and has been featured on EWTN's Life on the Rock. Last year she started the pro-life video series BioTalk. Her website, where this originally appeared, is Reflections of a Paralytic. The article is reprinted with the author's permission.