ON THE FACE of it, maternal desire seems a wholly good thing. The powerful drive to bear and nurture children is basic to our collective survival and elevates the individual above common self-interest. How much good has been accomplished by the loving mother? The sum is incalculable.

But, on closer scrutiny, especially in light of recent developments, maternal desire is like other human desires, such as the drive for sex or money or love. It can be good but it can also be greedy and promiscuous. A woman who wants a child no matter what – even if that child will never know his father and even if she is not married – takes maternal desire to an unreasonable extreme. She may be a nurturing mother for the children she bears. She may sacrifice herself for years to raise them well and her children may praise her for what she has done, but the egotism and maternal lust remain and this negatively affects them, indeed altering their entire existence.

This is hard news because maternal desire can be an overwhelming psychological reality, as intense and ever present as the desire for sex. It can crush a woman. It can rear its head in the dark hours of the night, like a masked phantom tearing at her soul. If she is approaching the end of her fertile years, if she has had no success with men or if she has entered the close-knit subculture of lesbianism, perhaps before she knew what this awful desire was, it may induce irrational panic and desperation. It takes strength of character for a woman to overcome the unrequited yearning for children.

Given this fact, it’s not surprising that many women are seeking artificial insemination services. Women will always do this if they are permitted to do it. An artificial insemination clinic is to the woman overcome with maternal desire what the brothel is to man who has no occasion for sex. The former, however, is much worse because it results in the birth of a child and wrecks society from within.

The artificial insemination clinic that offers services to the unmarried should be viewed in the eyes of society as similar to the brothel, though much worse. It should be illegal. It should be considered a dangerous temptation. Here is a profit-making institution that threatens to harm future generations and the woman who may be crushed and torn apart by that beautiful longing. It also encourages the flagrant narcissist, the woman with no interest in the higher needs of her offspring.

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