Just as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World invited us to imagine test-tube babies and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale invites us to imagine fertile women enslaved as breeders, Ava: A Novel by Victoria Dillon opens us to the possibility that in a post-Roe world, human birth might evolve into something entirely different. I mean, entirely different.
The politically charged atmosphere described in the novel already exists today, so it’s not such a stretch to imagine legislators banning contraception equating it with abortion. (Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life riffed on this theme with great success.)
In Ava: A Novel, twenty-two-year-old biologist Larkin and Spencer are excited to learn they are expecting a child—until they learn the fetus has a fatal condition—anencephaly. With abortion outlawed, Larkin is forced to carry the baby to term knowing it cannot survive more than a few days; each moment the baby survives it will experience horrible pain. Far-fetched? Hardly. I have personally known two women who faced such losses, one knowing the fetus she carried was already dead, the other having to watch her baby die shortly after it was born, just as Larkin does. Small wonder, then, that after her baby’s death, Larkin opts for an IUD just before they become illegal rather face another devastating loss.
Larkin is a researcher in Dr. Davis’s lab, where they study avian embryos. But having lost his wife to complications from pregnancy, Dr. Davis is using his own money to see if it is possible to extract avian DNA and insert it into mammals so they can reproduce by laying eggs instead of gestating a baby inside a woman’s body. When Larkin learns of her mentor’s private research, she and Spencer volunteer to be the first humans to participate in the experiment. Their child Ava is the result.
The experiment creates enormous controversy and provides intriguing plot twists. What, for example, is Ava going to think about being so different from other girls? If others learn of her differences, will she be shunned or ridiculed?
When the first in vitro babies were born, some religious groups rejected them as bodies without souls. Similarly, will the world accept Ava as fully human?
The novel offers much to think about, especially considering how many women suffer serious complications during pregnancy.
Dillon reminds us that each statistic about infant mortality, maternal death, and birth defects has real humans behind it—people whose loss or suffering ripples out and affects everyone else in their path.
Victoria Dillon is a former research scientist who studied avian embryos. She is currently a pediatrician and writer with a passion for exploring the intersections of politics and science. She has a unique ability to blend speculative fiction with thought-provoking social commentary, creating prose that speaks to both the heart and the mind. She has lived in the South throughout her childhood and career and loves naps with her cat, Americana music, and hunting for her next read at Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN. She currently resides in Middle Tennessee.
Leave a Reply