The Ethics of Reproduction

The dystopian genre surfaced during the middle of the eighteenth century with the coming of the Industrial Revolution. While utopian works told the story of an ideal world, dystopic writings would portray utopian worlds that failed. While trying to reach a state of perfection and order, these depicted dystopian societies tend to get corrupted and the purpose of creating such a world gets lost along the way as the people in charge choose to look the other way when it comes to flaws in their governmental system. Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World is an excellent example of a dystopian society. Although the world Huxley presents to the reader looks like the epitome of a world without flaws; once the reader passes through the exterior and faces the reality behind this picture-perfect city, it becomes evident that no society is without its flaws as it is possible to read even the seemingly wonderful utopian societies as a dystopia. In Huxley’s case, one of the fixes to the world’s problems is genetic engineering. With growing children in jars, they are eliminating the family factor in society. By deciding these genetically manufactured children’s rank at birth, they all grow up to serve a purpose instead of searching for one all their lives. In Brave New World there is a caste system with these children. The highest rank being the alphas and the lowest being epsilons, these people cannot rise in ranks like people can do these days. They all must conform to their rank’s norms as they cannot change them. Even though this system seems like it helps the world become a better place, it is quite flawed.  

This system in many ways mirrors Hitler’s ideology. To create a better world, there must be a ranking system. For society to be content with themselves, they must start putting these ideas in their minds from a young age for they cannot long for a rank they are not made for. John H. Evans explains this in his article “Brave New World? How Genetic Technology Could Change Us” by saying:

While in theory, this caste system is deemed trivial for an orderly society, it demolishes people’s rights to change their class for they cannot work their way up no matter how hardworking they might be. They could never reach that status if they were born an epsilon, even if they worked a thousand times harder than an alpha. It is unjust for these people to be stuck with their labels all their lives. 

Although this system is vital to monitor the population, there are other ways of doing so. While this society is very vocal and open about sexual relations and desires; a system like this could seem like a must to control the birth rates but by completely getting rid of birth as a form of reproduction system, the people of this society lose a part of their individuality. It is not ethical to doom people to a social class for the rest of their lives even if there are happy pills they can take to make everything better. They might not see this instance as a tragedy because of soma, but the way they lead their lives becomes very robot-like. Every person starts to feel like a copy of the others as they have no different hobbies from one another; they lose a sense of their humanity. “The operation has undergone voluntarily for the good of Society…” The operation is presented as something good for the society. While yes, it is true that their egg can reproduce faster than a normal human being; the conditions these labs made babies work under are not ethical. The question that needs to be answered is “Is one baby born who can work to build a name for themselves a better idea or is having 68 babies that will later on be confined to their social class a better idea for the greater good of society?” In short, the ethical path is completely banning this system for society to function like normal humans rather than robots built to just do one job and never enjoy life.  

To conclude Huxley’s Brave New World functions perfectly as an example of a utopian society gone wrong. With birth eliminated as a form of reproduction, scientists take the matter into their own hands by making kids through scientific ways without needing a man and a woman to procreate. While this system works for most of the tenants, it is flawed at its core. These labs made children must live with the rank assigned to them at birth forever meaning they have to do what their rank is told to do for the rest of their lives. They cannot have hobbies if it is not somehow associated with their rank or the lifestyle that they are supposed to lead. Though it is an effective way of population control, it is not morally correct.