GENE 105N: The Baby Wars: who should control our ability to reproduce – the mother, the state, the fetus?
General Education Requirements
Not currently certified for a requirement. Courses are typically considered for Ways certification a quarter in advance.
Course Description
We will use science, from both a historical and modern perspective, as a lens to investigate the ongoing legal decisions and ethical debates surrounding fetal life: Should an embryo in a dish have the same rights as a child? When does life begin or when does a fetus become a person? How does abortion save lives? Is birth control abortion? Should we genetically engineer our children? What is an extrauterine child? In this course you will be tasked with thinking deeply about these, and many other, questions and will gain two critically important skills: 1. A deep understanding of reproductive biology and 2. The ability to use science to guide legal, ethical and moral dilemmas. These two skills are critical toward framing your own perspective of reproductive justice and will allow you to fully engage in the modern discourse.
We will also discuss the consequences when laws governing reproduction are enacted based on false interpretations of science. For example, the Supreme court case “Buck v Bell” used horribly flawed genetic arguments to justify the sterilization of people. As a result, an estimated 80,000 United States citizens were forcibly sterilized, most of these women of color and indigenous people. With this as a backdrop, we will examine the 50 years of scientific achievements including birth control, In vitro fertilization, fetal embryology and fetal genetic diagnostics, that have occurred since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. We will put this knowledge into use by developing our own ethical and personal guidelines surrounding reproductive rights. We will evaluate recent and emerging case examples based upon our own guidelines, for example the Alabama ruling that gave IVF embryos the same rights as children or the Idaho ruling that would prohibit emergency abortions.
As a part of the course, we will learn strategies that train us how to hear and evaluate the opinions of others, even those of which we strongly disagree. We will work towards understanding how to separate emotion and rational thought, facilitating discourse in all aspects of life. Students will have weekly assignments evaluating current events, a chance to write and submit an OpEd to the New York Times, and a final creative project. We will use contract grading, which will help to eliminate judgment from the course.
Meet the Instructor: Julie Baker
"I am a single mother with two children – both now in college! One is a freshman this year so I am excited to be teaching a Frosh IntroSem! I grew up in Minnesota, went to a small local college, and then became a graduate student at Columbia University in NYC. I might as well have gone to Mars. I was way behind my classmates, felt overwhelmed by the city, and when my best friend left after the first year to be a ski instructor in Idaho, I almost followed. While it was hard transition, I hung in there and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. It turns out my grades didn’t really matter, and I was pretty good in the lab. I then went to UC Berkeley as a Postdoc and got a position at Stanford as an Assistant Professor, where I have been for 20 years. My laboratory is focused on understanding the placenta and the maternal fetal interface during pregnancy. Pregnancy is really hard on the mother and its fraught with lots of diseases. The biology is also extremely intricate and transient and misunderstood (which is why I am teaching this course!). In the meantime, I spent years and years rock climbing in Yosemite and Joshua Tree and did month-long backpacking trips in the Sierra and the Himalaya. I love to cross country ski, trail run, and hang out with my two dogs (Erza and Lucy) and two cats (Loki and Casper)."
