Woke Frankenstein; Or, The Post-Modern Prometheus

Terrifying comparisons arise between Mary Shelley's Gothic classic and the modern IVF landscape

Mary Shelley’s magnum opus Frankenstein may be over 200 years old, but the message resonates as strongly today as it did centuries ago; humans shouldn’t try to play God. 

A disturbing article from Slate Magazine demonstrates that America has failed to take Shelley’s lesson to heart. The piece highlights how with advances in reproductive technology, American women conceiving through IVF are selectively aborting viable children based on sex. 

From the article,

Sex selection was once controversial in the U.S. and is banned in almost every other country. Many Americans unaware of the process still assume that it’s that way. In reality, it has now become a standard part of IVF here. For some, the option to sex select is a perk of an otherwise exacting process. For others, it’s the whole point of doing IVF in the first place.

The screening process requires a fertilized egg to conduct, meaning that each baby rejected simply on the basis of sex could very well have survived in the womb. 

It’s not entirely clear how frequently IVF is performed specifically for sex selection. One ghoul, founder Jeffrey Steinberg of the Fertility Institutes clinic in Los Angeles, estimated sex selection oriented IVF procedures accounted for $500 million annually, or about 5%, of an $8 billion industry. He macabrely added “its growth potential is unlimited, the market is the size of the human race.”

We’re very quickly moving into god-complex territory, but it wouldn’t be modern America without a case of liberated feminist ideology.

Many of those involved in the industry have said that without the ability to selectively abort babies based on their sex, women could never be truly free. Consider a 2009 study in the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s journal Fertility and Sterility. 

In the results section of the text, researchers note “sex-selection technology providers argued that sex selection was an expression of reproductive rights, was initiated and pursued by women, and was a sign of female empowerment.” 

An alarming amount of the women interviewed for the Slate article seem to reinforce this feminist logic for terminating male babies. “What’s so bad about boys” the author asks? “‘Toxic masculinity,’ said many women I spoke to, even those who were, sadly, already boy moms. For many, going through all the trouble to ensure a girl feels like a social good.”

One parent, Lexi, puts it bluntly, “‘Boy children tend to be less caring towards their parents. It doesn’t really matter if it’s socialized or biological. It’s probably socialized, but I can’t change all of society.”

It’s eugenics but with a new woke coat of paint and the Frankenstein story for the modern era. It was not through a sense of magnanimity or love of humanity that Victor Frankenstein began to craft his monster, but through a sense of ego. Frankenstein himself notes this saying “More, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

This is what we see with the untamed frontiers of IVF, a desire to steal the thunder of creation from God and replace it with our own mortal desires. 

As the Slate article notes, “it is fueled in part by consumer whims. You can have a baby when it suits your career, thanks to egg freezing (or at least you can try). You can sequence your embryos’ genomes for $2,500 a pop and attempt to maximize your future child’s health (or intelligence, attractiveness, or height). At Steinberg’s clinic, you can even select eye color.”

We are rapidly entering a terrifying new era, where science will ask us to abandon our morals and hijack the tools of creation. Many squirm with gleeful anticipation. But this path leads only to ruin. 

It is only as Victor Frankenstein stares at his creation lift itself from the slab that he realizes, too late, the terrible mistake he has made. 

“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature,” he says. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”

We still have time to turn back. We are not God. We should not pretend we are.