Kedo Peseyie
Hi, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. The problem is that I don’t even know myself right now. I don’t have a name or a voice yet, and I am not even sure whether one day I will have a name you can use and a voice to speak for myself. I am not alone here. There are many others cramped in with me inside this glass wall. All of them look like me and I am sure they are feeling exactly the same as I do right now—like Jonah stuck inside the belly of the fish. You may have figured it out by now; we are all inside this test-tube in a place called Fate Hospital. The sad fact is that only one of us will survive. We don’t know which one. You see, when they put the likes of us in the laboratory for fertilising, they make sure they have enough samples so that they can choose the best from among us. And when the best is selected, they usually discard the rest.
(Actually, “discard” is a convenient and mild euphemism) They treat us like commodities to choose or discard. They don’t understand that right after fertilisation, this tiny cell that we are becomes a complete and totally new male or female human. Nothing is added to this new human from this point on after fertilising. Nothing except nutrition and oxygen. We live and die with this knowledge that someday we could have been a person like you reading this story.
Alas, we are all labelled with a price like in the supermarket. We don’t know which one of us will be given a name and a voice and which one will be frozen and discarded. We are scared. We wonder if there is any consolation for us anywhere. We hear that when Fate Hospital was inaugurated, some Reverends came to pray. They say they prayed for our fates and then left us to our fates. There is hardly any consolation there. But perhaps they were ignorant. But you see, wrong is wrong. Black is still black even if you don’t see it. Ignorance is not an excuse. Nor is ignorance a justification for a wrong overlooked.
I heard a politician was there too. But he was talking about more irrelevant things. It seems he said something about peace that he created making it possible for unworthy people to select and determine the fate of helpless people like me. Then they say the Reverend talked about Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 21, comparing it to something called In Vitro Fertilisation. But I feel the better example would be Abraham and Hagar in Genesis 16 where they tried to bring about the promised “baby” by their own human efforts and evoked God’s displeasure.
Ah! I am angry. There isn’t much I can do. But there is a lot I can see from this side of the world. They say before you open your eyes and see the world, you actually see more of the world and the people in it from the other side. I think they are right because I have already seen a lot. And I don’t like what I see. Before you actually see the world, you even see the absolute reality, truth, law and ethics that existed even before the creation of time. When you are born and you see the world, you forget about them. When you die, you come face to face with them again. Only then you regret over why you didn’t try to remember even a little of that absolute reality, law and ethics while you were alive.
But now I am still in a test tube. My dilemma started when a filthy rich couple decided to come to Fate Hospital for IVF. They were supposed to be my parents. Now I am not sure what I should call them. There were two of them and then there were three of them. The man gave his sperm to fertilise the egg of the third person. Then after a few days they will put me in the womb of a fourth person. After all of these are done and if I am finally selected to be born, I will call a woman, who had no role to play in all of these my mother. I am sure she will learn to love me and adopt me. But gosh, it sure is going to be one confusing and psychologically damaging journey. You see, I am not the only one fertilised. There are many of us here and I am pained at the cruelty of how my friends in the tube will be “discarded” in the process if I am selected.
Although the act of adultery was not committed, I am not going to be the fruit of the union between my father and my mother. People will call me “artificially reproduced”. And that’s exactly how I feel—artificial. That is the technology of my spirit and the technology of my soul. There is nothing beyond that technology. There can be nothing. After all, I am the product of a laboratory experiment. But God is merciful and I just pray that I will not grow up to be like Abraham and Hagar’s son Ishmael who was “…a wild donkey of a man, his hand was against everyone, and everyone’s hand was against him, and he lived in hostility toward all his brothers”. I pray that my descendants will not be like his descendants terrorising the world.
But it is not just this issue. There is one crucial issue I am still confused about. What about the sanctity and the integrity of a marriage between one man and one woman? What about the covenant of marriage relationship where God expects Godly offspring within His will, purpose and plan? The bringing together of the two as “one flesh” and the deeper unity of two spirits is missing altogether.
Sure! If I am born, I will be very happy to be alive. But some of these questions bother me. People often say that the individual or the concerned couple should be aloud to decide for themselves what acceptable behaviour is and what is right or wrong. But if the individual is left on his own to decide what is right and wrong in society, there would be chaos. As I told you earlier, I have seen that there is an absolute reality and truth which should decide what is right or wrong, what acceptable behaviour is, and what sin is. Absolutes may not change the choices we make, but it can influence and inform the decisions and choices we make. I wouldn’t like to grow up in a world where decisions and choices are based on situations and convenience rather than on absolute standards.
Sigh! I guess life is not always easy and simple. There will be question and we will not find answers to all of them now. Not everyone will accept you and love you. We may look back into our past and miss certain moments. We may look forward to our future and dread certain moments. And even before I am born, I am not really looking forward to growing up and saying to my friends, “My parents adopted me”. So I am not even sure whether I want to be born. But if God allows me to live, don’t despise me. Just love me. I may not be your child, but I am certainly a child of God bearing His image. That is enough reason for me to desire to live. That is enough reason for all of us in this tube to desire to live. I hope that is enough reason for you too.
