THE SEVEN (DAVIS) ELVES

(Or, The Ins And Outs of Sexism)

Leigh Travis, Ph.D.

In Maryville, Tennessee, seven faceless embryos lie frozen at minus 180 degrees Centigrade in a hospital waiting to learn if they are human or, like cars or tin cans, pieces of property. I can't imagine how they must feel, want to empathize with them; however, I have never seen an embryo and therefore find it difficult to visualize one, much less seven, so what I see, instead, are seven, tiny, microscopic, purple elves: makes at least some visual sense to me that way.

In part, here's how the elves got into their icy predicament: their Mother, Mary Davis, could not conceive elves naturally, and therefore had her eggs fertilized by her husband's (Junior Davis) sperm, in test tubes, to be later implanted in her; but Junior instead sued Mother Mary for divorce. Furthermore, Father Junior did not want elves by Mother Mary and filed suit to prevent her from ever putting any of the frozen seven elves inside her warm body without his consent. From this point of view, the elves are human beings immobilized in a custody dispute. From another point of view - who "owns" or will "own" these little purple elves - the elves are marital property and the dispute is a matter of a property settlement. Or so some lawyers have framed the legal issues governing the future of the seven frozen elves.

But the sexist "ins and outs" befuddling the identities and the destinies of the elves have not yet, I believe, been perceived, much less enumerated. For example: if the elves were residing inside the body of Mother Mary, according to some interpretations of Roe v Wade, Mother Mary would have "privacy" rights to abort them out of her body on the grounds that she has the Constitutional right to make her own decisions about "family planning," the question of the elves' humanity (or lack thereof) aside. However, the elves are not inside Mary, therefore, she has no "right" to them, no "privacy right" to choose to "family plan" them out of existence as they reside outside of her body in test tubes.

Now, Father Junior does not want the elves ever residing inside Mother Mary's body, nor does he wish to pay child support for them outside Mary's body should the Supreme Elves court decide that Mary has the "right" to have the elves put inside her body so that she can "give" them birth, that is, put them outside her body into the cold, cruel human world where, suddenly, against his will, Father Junior becomes Constitutionally responsible for them.

It's a rights standoff: Junior's and Mary's "rights," at this stage, appear absolutely equal since the elves are inside something other than a female body. But in law there must be winners and losers: "in" is not "out," a tie will not do, a home for the lonely, little seven elves must be somehow found.

Law professor John Robertson, University of Texas, has said that the case should be decided in favor of the party hurt most by losing, namely, Father Junior, who would be forced to support the elves and have them raised by a person he wishes to exterminate from the rest of his life by divorcing her. Mother Mary would be less hurt, on the other hand, should she prevail by "giving" birth to the elves, enjoy the rights and privileges of raising them, watch them grow, and get paid for it by a man whom she perhaps wishes to slug around financially for, say, the next eighteen or more years. So long as the elves were "in" her control, Father Junior might be functionally "out" of their lives, hurt the most.

What about the "rights" of the innocent purple elves to get out of this mess, be put in the hands of decent, warmhearted, parents - assuming, that is, that the elves are deemed to be "human"? Ordinarily, that's a custody issue: however, since no elves have, as yet, been born, the elves have no rights, and any custody dispute over them is at best moot, out of the question.

Short of firing squads for Mother Mary and Father Junior, there is, I submit, only one equitable resolution to this fairy tale dilemma, namely, since Mother Mary and Father Junior have, by prior agreement with the test-tube elf program, agreed to release the elves for implantation and adoption, the elves should be adjudicated "human elves" (anyone care to argue that elves are cars or tin cans?), thus Constitutionally the "property" of themselves, and be forthwith released from their cruel and inhumane, cold, imprisonment to freely pursue their lives, liberties, and happiness in the sunlit Land of Oz - after all, of the legion of miserable characters in this hysterical human drama, I believe, it is the suffering seven elves, and them alone, who have richly earned, and solely deserve, such a snug, and just, reward somewhere over the rainbow.