Two years after the tragic death of her father, a child is born with assisted reproduction

Francesca Polli posted on social networks the photo of the pregnancy, taken two years after the death of her husband, the basketball player Vittorio Pierini, victim of an accident

The man’s semen had been deposited for an assisted procreation process. Then, he died and his wife decided to proceed with the implant anyway. Her daughter was born two years after the accident that killed her father, as if she were the result of a very long pregnancy. But if the father were still alive, could we talk about a traditional pregnancy? I wouldn’t say, since part of the process would have taken place outside the woman’s body anyway, a procedure made possible by technology. Giving life is the most powerful exercise of power, no wonder there is so much attention in devising replacement techniques. It is said that it will soon lead to completely extrauterine pregnancies, or you will be able to get Ys from Xs, and then women will not even need males to produce males. We could have children with selected somatic characteristics, genetically predisposed to beauty, intelligence and who knows what goal we will want to prepare for them even before they are born. Science works in the direction of our desire. Look for what we ask him to find. What are we looking for? Fertility, first of all. The certainty that whoever wishes can be a mother, regardless of the shortcomings of her body. We have therefore developed a technology that allows rare eggs and limp sperm to meet in a small paradise where things are simpler. In vitro. Where they can join without difficulty. Once the interlocking has taken place, we carefully put the embryo back into the uterus and cross our fingers. But in order for this seemingly simple process to take place, the woman is subjected to ferocious and painful hormonal treatments, which bear no resemblance to the traditional practice that leads to conception. There is the same difference between sex and IVF as there is between a Mont blanc and an insulin injection. But if things go as planned, in the end there is still the prize, the son.

Medicine always operates on borders, especially that between life and death. Further on, further back. One hundred and twenty years is a reasonable goal, according to Elon Musk. On what is legitimate to do, as far as life is worthy, we have begun to argue. End of life, euthanasia. But how far one can work to obtain a conception is a more delicate matter. Because the stakes are apparently better: life, not death. But in both cases, lawfulness provides the same assumption, namely that nature is better arbiter than science. That there is a natural intelligence, refined over the centuries, which allows only what is most useful and least harmful for the species, the world, the universe. If that woman or that man cannot have children naturally, it is because nature has arranged for it to be better this way. Really? Who feels like subscribing to such a statement now? None, because, thank goodness, we have freed ourselves from the whims of nature for quite a while. Only by remaining in the field of medicine, antibiotics, penicillin, and then hormones, robotic technologies have freed us from the slavery of the natural. Our bodies have changed, and thanks to science we are able to withstand a series of disasters with which nature would claim to annihilate us. Yet every now and then we get scared. It happened with vaccines, it happens with cosmetic surgery. Do you remember when we were horrified at the faces twisted by the scalpel? It was enough for the technique to be refined, for the lips to deflate a little for everyone to forget our reproach. The matter wasn’t that your grandmother looked like your granddaughter, the matter was that she didn’t look like a monster. With all due respect to Anna Magnani, who would not give up removing wrinkles even if it took her forever to get them, in exchange for a nice fresh face? So is motherhood. When you can take a little trip to nature, accelerate where it was comfortable, straighten out some distortion, it is cruel not to allow it. The moral limit is us, our happiness, because this is the world we have built. And on the basis of what do we decide to deny it to those who have chosen differently from how we would have chosen?