For the past few decades, Oliver O’Donovan Born or made? Until now, they have been hard to find and expensive to purchase, but that has changed thanks to the foresight of the Davenant Institute, an organization dedicated to renewing contemporary Protestant intellectual life.
This new 21st century edition, published some 38 years after the original, is now readily available and affordable on Kindle and in paperback in the U.S. and Canada, and includes a new preface by Matthew Leigh Anderson that clearly highlights the work’s importance, as well as a new afterword by O’Donovan himself.
Reproduction Lectures
Born or made? This is the published version of O’Donovan’s London Lectures on Contemporary Christianity, which he delivered in 1983. As he explains in his 1984 preface, he had been asked to address the topic of bioethics, and since in vitro fertilization was still a new technology, “it was not difficult to settle on the field of artificial human fertilization” (xiii). Importantly, however, he was less interested in dealing with the technology of artificial reproduction than he was in the theology behind it.
Reproductive technology has come a long way since then, but by delving deep into the mechanics of IVF and the ideas that make it possible, O’Donovan has written a theological treatise that remains incredibly relevant today.
Matthew Lee Anderson writes in his introduction that “O’Donovan’s book is both timeless and timely because it delves into the modes of thinking that underlie concrete, practical problems and are embedded in the new technologies that ‘make’ human lives” (iii).
Ethics, Theology, and Technology
In chapter 1, O’Donovan explains and contrasts his use of the terms “becoming” (meaning the natural generation of human-like beings) and “making” (the artificial creation of non-human beings), setting the stage for his later discussion of “certain technological endeavors that promise to transform human becoming into making” (6). This leads to a consideration of the purpose of medicine and medical technologies, which have traditionally been thought of as “curing diseased bodies” rather than “interfering with healthy bodies” (8).
For Christians, recognizing “the limits of the validity of our ‘creation'” is a necessary consequence of “faith in the natural order as God’s good creation” (15). This is important because it helps us distinguish between the process of repairing what God created and attempts to change or overcome God’s design. Many of the technologies involved in artificial reproduction were devised to circumvent nature, not to restore it.
Many of the techniques of artificial propagation were designed to avoid nature, not to restore it.
In chapter 2, “Artificial Sex,” O’Donovan addresses what he calls “sex change surgery” (now called “gender reassignment surgery” or “gender affirmation surgery”), which in his view is another form of technology that aims primarily to disrupt or alter nature, rather than to heal or restore it, and therefore cannot be considered a form of medicine in any meaningful sense.
His discussion of the subject was primarily aimed at showing what would happen if we separated reproduction from sexual intercourse between men and women, and conversely, that “the general project of the artificialization of reproduction is furthered by the artificialization of sex” (22). But O’Donovan’s analysis of the “philosophical decision” to collapse the distinction between a person’s “physical sex and psychological sex” can now be seen as prophetic (27). Forty years later, his treatment of the subject remains one of the clearest and most incisive ever written. Anderson agrees, calling it “the most incisive theological treatment of the subject to date” (iii). This chapter alone makes the book worth reading.
Chapter 3 explains why donor involvement in the reproductive process is inherently unethical. O’Donovan outlines the moral flaws of (potentially) replacing one parent in a family with another.
In developing his case, he carefully addresses potential objections raised by the Old Testament practice of levirate marriage, which he argues is very different from the modern practice of AIDS, or “donor insemination” (37). The analogy with adoption is similarly untenable: “The acceptance of another’s child into one’s family is an act of a totally different kind from the acceptance of another’s gametes into one’s reproductive act” (45).
One aspect of this chapter that needs further development (not because O’Donovan’s theory is flawed, but because the practice is becoming increasingly popular today) is the rental of uteruses through surrogacy, but even here he provides a necessary basis for the ethical assessment (and rejection) of this practice.
Chapter 4 discusses the meaning of personhood (in general) and the personhood of embryos in particular. Contemporary medical ethics require the consent of subjects for experimentation, which embryos obviously cannot consent to. Yet many reproductive technologies, from embryo freezing to genetic modification, are experimental and involve at least some risk of injury or death.
Thus, even if it were concluded (contrary to scientific evidence) that the personhood of the fetus is ambiguous, the logic of Roman Catholic thought should prevail: “We would declare our ignorance as to the beginning of personal existence and then protect the child from conception” (69). Instead, our generation has committed “a new and ingenious crime, by making the baby an ambiguous person, and presenting to us members of our own species as doubtful objects of suitable sympathy and love.”
In O’Donovan’s view, this “is the clearest expression of the principle that when we begin to create human beings, we necessarily cease to love them.” Why is this the case? Because “what is created, not produced, is at our disposal, not with whom we can exchange fraternal love” (79).
Modern medical ethics require the consent of subjects for experiments, but clearly consent cannot be obtained with embryos.
The final chapter concludes the book’s larger argument by using an imaginative yet highly moral fairy tale as an example to make the case for nature and against the artificial.One of the most important aspects of moral reasoning about artificial reproductive technologies that arise from O’Donovan’s argument is that many people who engage with such technologies are likely not to consider the moral implications of their actions.
For example, the clinical nature of IVF eliminates the interaction and cooperation that is usually necessary for natural conception, and IVF seeks to overcome the element of “randomness” that is “one of the factors that most distinguish the act of procreation from the act of technology.”(87) This does not invalidate all uses of IVF technology, but overall, IVF is very different from natural procreation.
Concise and persuasive
Born or made? The book is thin, with five main chapters at just over 100 pages each. It is compact, yet carefully and persuasively argued, though at times it may seem puzzling and difficult to understand to those unfamiliar with O’Donovan’s style of moral reasoning. It is a book to read slowly and think deeply about, but it is well worth the time to read it and, as we would recommend, re-read it.
In publishing a second edition of this increasingly important work, the Davenant Institute has done a valuable service to the institution of Christ. As Carl Trueman states in his recommendation, this is indeed a book “deserving of widespread reading by a new generation of theologians, philosophers, and pastors.”
