The Eggs

Read the text of the commentary. Try to fill in the missing words in the text as you remember them. Use your knowledge of text structure, vocabulary and grammar to help you. The listen again to the commentary to check your answers.

Listening for Details

Listening for the Main Idea

Listen to the commentary. Check the statement that summarizes the commentator’s viepoint.

· We need to define when life begins.

· Mr. and Mrs. Davis should not make their custody battle a public one.

· Our laws are not prepared to deal with new ethical questions.

Read the following questions and answers. Listen to the commentary and circle the best answer. Then compare your answers with those of another student. Listen again if necessary.

1. What concern does the commentator have about the Tennessee case?

a. The medical and legal issues should be separated.

b. The case is too complex for Tennessee’s court.

c. The case is not limited to the Tennessee couple’s case.

2. How do the couple’s attorneys view the frozen embryos?

a. One sees them as matter, the other as life.

b. One sees them as belonging to the wife, the other as belonging to the husband.

c. One sees them as eggs that should been thrown away, the other as eggs that should hatch.

3. What is interesting about Louisiana’s state law?

a. Lawmakers haven’t yet defined when a human being becomes a human being.

b. The legal definition of conception is unclear.

c. Fertilization in a Petri dish is not permitted.

4. Which opinion is not mentioned as a human’s beginning?

a. Life begins when a fetus moves.

b. Life begins when a baby is born.

c. Life begins when a citizen proves he is worthy.

5. What ironic comment does the commentator make?

a. Lawyers can’t agree on the definition of life.

b. Each embryo represents a different personality with its own rights.

c. We need to test our laws through the different ways we define these embryos.

6. What conclusion does the commentator reach?

a. Mr. and Mrs. Davis should not have gotten a divorce.

b. Life must begin at conception.

c. The Davises’ custody battle raises larger issues than the future of their embryos.

3) Text Completion and Discrete Listening

Introduction

In this country, the1) _______________ of medical and legal issues is being spotlighted this summer in the case of the Tennessee couple and their frozen embryos. As with many other things he reads about these days, commentator Andrei Codrescu finds the case complicated by 2) ______________.

Commentary

The husband, Junior Lewis Davis, wants the fertilized eggs 3) ____________ of. The wife, Mary Sue Davis, is infertile and wants the eggs to 4) ______________. The husband’s lawyer calls the eggs “a group of undifferentiated 5) _________”, while the wife’s attorney has labeled them “preborn children”. Between these two definitions lies the entire range of current 6) ____________ as to when exactly does a human being become one.

Here in Louisiana, life begins at 7) ________. But, the law’s unclear whether what goes on in a 8) _________ dish can possibly be called “conception”. Other laws envision a human as beginning either from the minute it loses its flippers or from the time it does its first uterine 9) ___________. Other opinions maintain that there are no human beings until they complete a scouting program or even pass an SAT test. I’ve heard an advocate for the 10) __________ that human beings aren’t human beings until they prove it themselves, in a court of law.

Clearly, there are seven 11) _________ for seven embryos, in every case. The seven frozen embryos in the Tennessee case could be used as tests for the various laws. One embryo could be a group of undifferentiated cells; that one would be 12) ____________. Another could testify to the validity of Petri dish conception; that one could stay. Another could be raised into a fine Boy Scout and sent out to fight drugs for the President; that one can prove it’s a human being in a White House 13) _____________.

One shouldn’t look at these embryos as merely frozen 14) __________, contending for definition. They are seeds of the very laws they might 15) ___________.

Mr. and Mrs. Davis should not fight for these eggs as if they were a private matter between themselves and their Petri dish. They are sitting on the very basis of our future definition of human beings. Their divorce 16) ___________ the divorce of the diverse philosophies at work here. They should work out a 17) ______________ arrangement for these eggs that requires a constitutional lawyer to babysit.

1) Read the article. Choose the statement that summarizes the author's viewpoint.

1. We must recognize the fact that life begins at conception.

2. We should consider the negative consequences of medical technology.

3. Couples must think more seriously about their custody agreements before divorce.

(opinion reading)

Frozen fertilized eggs provide as telling an example as one could And of how our ingenious technology, far from solving problems, keeps creating them—problems we humans cannot even begin to unsnarl.

Mary Sue and Junior Lewis Davis, in the course of their nine-year marriage, found themselves unable to have the babies they had hoped for. Desperate, they resorted to the complicated, painful, costly procedures involved in in vitro fertilization. Nine embryos and two failed implantations later, the marriage fell apart.

The seven remaining eggs continued in frozen limbo while lawyers and judges grappled with questions which have no clear or easy answers. One, of course, is when life begins. But one can no more determine the precise instant life begins than the precise instant an infant becomes a toddler, a toddler a child, a child an adolescent, an adolescent an adult, and so on. There is no precise instant of transition from one stage of life to the next. Life is a continuum—an ever-changing, ever-developing process of growth and development until eventual old age and death. One might as well try to determine the precise instant a surge of sea water becomes a wave.

However, on September 21, 1989, Tennessee Circuit Judge ~W. Dale Young ruled that life begins at conception and therefore the seven remaining eggs deserve consideration as potential children. He then awarded temporary custody of the eggs to Mary Sue Davis, ruling that she would better serve the interests of those children. This case is believed to be the first of its type in the United States.

During the trial, Mary Sue Davis argued that she has gone through a great deal to have the baby she longs for and claimed that the eggs represented her only chance. Junior Davis argued that he is a product of ^broken home arid cannot bear to inflict what he endured on a child of his. He does not feel that the eggs are human beings. He says that Young's decision infringes upon his rights by forcing him to become a father against his wishes and that he will seek a "stay of implantation" pending appeal in higher state courts.

Both parties invite sympathy. Both deserve credit for recognizing that bringing a child into the world is a serious, long-term responsibility. A baby becomes human through prolonged, intensive social interaction. This is why Judge Young and the anti-abortionists who assert that life begins at conception are talking arrant nonsense. Life was in the egg and sperm before fertilization; life exists in every genetically coded egg and sperm, most of which are never fertilized at all. Whatever these seven infinitesimal blobs may be potentially, they are not now fully human. They cannot become so without successful implantation into a woman's womb—an iffy undertaking—and then years of loving nurture.

Nor is the question of when life begins the only thorny one this case raises. Now that the law has concluded that each egg is a human being, what happens if implantation fails again? Is the doctor who implanted it guilty of murder? Is Mary Sue Davis guilty because she allowed it?

These are all unanswerable questions, suggesting yet another: As our galloping technology outstrips our capacity to handle it wisely, shouldn't we assess its limitations rather than encourage its unbridled expansion?

Technology cannot care for the babies we already have—millions of whom die every year of starvation before the age of five. It cannot purify the water and air it has polluted. It cannot prevent disastrous oil spills caused by human stupidity and greed or deal with the consequences. For that matter, it cannot control human stupidity and greed.

The highest human qualities are and always have been the capacity to love, cooperate, imagine, envision, transmit values, and provide a secure environment for the young. These qualities worked for our hunter-gatherer forebears and bestowed on our species humanity. Technology cannot create or substitute for these qualities. On the contrary, it often works against them.

Medical technology has made it possible for these eggs to be fertilized. But it cannot mend a broken marriage or guarantee a fulfilling family life for the children who would develop from them.

by Betty McCollister

2) Translate into English using the vocabulary of the article below: хитроумный, распутывать, экстракорпоральное оплодотворение, эмбрион, бороться с чем-либо, точный момент времени, яйцеклетка, зачатие, предоставить право опеки, служить интересам, пройти через многое, распавшаяся семья, навлечь на кого-то (гнев, беду и т.д.), выносить, терпеть, нарушать права, ожидающий, заслуживать сочувствия, длительный,/долгосрочный, противник легализации абортов, молоть полную чепуху, сперма, крошечный, бесконечно малый, чрево женщины, сомнительное предприятие, уход/ забота, опережать, справляться с чем-либо, безудержное распространение, голод, предки, даровать кому-либо (устар.)

4) Match the synonyms: to envision, to outstrip, to endure, pending, to grapple with, infinitesimal, forebears, waiting, ancestors, to dream, to wrestle, tiny, to undergo, to exceed

5) Explain the meaning in your own words:

A toddler, an iffy undertaking, to inflict on sb, to nurture, in vitro fertilization, to award custody, a broken home, to invite sympathy, to grapple with, an unbridled expansion, long-term.

6) Fill in the gaps with the words and expressions from the text:

Ingenious, in vitro fertilization, long-term, to grapple with, to inflict upon, to outstrip, a broken home, to go through a great deal, long-term, sperm, custody, talking arrant nonsense.

1) _________________________ is a process by which an egg is fertilized by _________________________ outside the body: in vitro. It is a major treatment for infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed.

2) Children from __________________ are nearly five times more likely to suffer damaging mental troubles than those whose parents stay together.

3) The government continued to _____________________ the issue of public transport.

4) Jobs are limited and supply of potential workforce vastly __________________ demand.

5) In most situations, ______________ is awarded to one parent with whom the child will live most of the time.

6) It is a frequent observation that persons who _______________________ of trouble or pain to get something tend to value it more highly than persons who get the same thing with a minimum of effort.

7) I have problems with speaking in public: every time I see people waiting for me to say something, I start jabbering and ________________________.

8) Human _______________________ memory is, obviously enough, intended for storage of information over a long period.

9) Heavy rains have _____________ a lot of damage ________ people in this region.

10) This fellow is ________________; he fixed a problem I didn't even know I had with my car.

7) Answer the questions:

1) What problem have the Davises had to face with once their marriage fell apart?

2) Why is this case considered to be ambiguous in terms of the legal system of the USA?

3) Which of the spouses was awarded the custody of the eggs? Why?

4) What reason did Mr. Davis give to the court?

5) Which of the spouses invites your sympathy? Why?

6) What solution would you offer to their problem?

8) Work in groups. Read the statements below. Discuss whether Codrescu and/or McCollister would agree with them. Discuss how and why the two opinions are the same or different.

Life may not begin at conception.

Mrs. Davis had the right to keep her embryos.

Embryos should be viewed more as people than as property.

Mr. Davis should not be expected to be a parent to any of the seven embryos.

Our current laws are insufficient in solving ethical issues.

We need to define what constitutes a human being.

Technology has gone too far.

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