Entertainment at the Expense of Children
A new graphic novel, Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag, chronicles the pregnancy journey of a lesbian named Teek and her partner, Vee. While the novel is fiction, it’s based on the author’s own experience parenting her son.
It’s a humorous take on the subject of lesbian pregnancies with one reviewer noting “This comic’s strength is its ability not to devolve into the oversentimentality or overseriousness that marks many pregnancy narratives.” For a teaser, you can view an excerpt from the book that the New York Times recently published here.
Despite praise for being groundbreaking and bold in its exploration of modern parenting, once again we’re offered another example of entertainment at the expense of children created through sperm donation.
As per usual, the focus of this book is on the desires of the same-sex parents who seek to defy biological limitations and create a child for their own benefit. Will the child know his or her sperm donor and be privy to half of his or her heritage? Will the child know his or her medical history? These questions remain unanswered.
While Pregnant Butch is a tale of fiction representing the increasingly daring and often destructive form of family creation through reproductive technologies, it’s a reality that we’re getting to know all too well.
Critics may praise its author for her comic genius, but when her child grows up and learns that his conception became the basis for mass entertainment, we’ll see who is laughing then.
Reprinted with permission from The Center for Bioethics and Culture.
