ABSTRACT
The word "reproduction" creates a striking parallel to industrial production and a way of conceptualizing pregnancy: as if it were no longer a process of growth within the female body but a process which starts with raw material plus work and results in a finished product. In this industrial model, the child becomes something which in principle is detached from the mother. Medical research has developed methods of artificially manipulating the human body, a development which has blurred the line between life and death and which has created a moral vacuum. To conservative Christian critics, developments like in in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, same-sex couples, and gender equality are signs that traditional Christian moral standards are under attack. Christian pro life activists pretend that the foetus springs alive in the mother's womb like a miracle: Pro choice activists have no such faith. They believe that the foetus is a product of natural processes and gradual development between conception and birth.
