May 2019 – Article 1:
Not willing to trust God when planning to start a family? A growing number of people are taking the process into their own hands.
Australian couples are spending $20,000 to choose the sex of their designer babies at clinics in the United States.
The Fertility Institutes, which also has clinics in Mexico and India, has helped 370 Australian couples create the child of their dreams.
Aside from gender, they are also choosing eye color, with blue being the most popular.
Originally, the clinic offered to let clients select skin and hair color, but ended the practice after public outcry.
Brisbane geneticist David Coman said eye-color selection is a form of “eugenics” and “grossly inappropriate in the Australian culture.”
In response, Fertility Institutes said critics are “out of line and clearly out of touch,” claiming eye color is important to their clients and that it has a 90 to 95 percent success rate using the process.
The ability to choose a baby’s gender and other traits is made possible by “pre-implantation genetic diagnosis,” where embryos are created in vitro in a laboratory.
The concern for pro-life advocates is that so-called assisted reproductive technology typically involves creating more embryos than can be implanted in a single cycle. Excess embryos are frozen, used for research and ultimately discarded, or simply destroyed.
In addition, if the implantation of multiple embryos results in more babies surviving the process than desired, the unwanted children will be aborted.
The Potential for Abuse and Treating Children as Objects
Another ominous implication is fear the process will result in treating procreation as an expensive assembly line ending in high-priced eugenics. Wealthy parents could create a genetic aristocracy that would rule over the less fortunate.
Governments may also find uses for the procedure. China is suspected of exploring the possibility of creating “super soldiers” with increased muscle mass, expanded cardiovascular capacity and even improved night vision.
Writing in The Washington Post back in 2008, Richard Hayes raised a red flag about the technology: “If misapplied, they would exacerbate existing inequalities and reinforce existing modes of discrimination. If more widely abused, they would undermine the foundations of civil and human rights. In the worst case, they could undermine our experience of being part of a single human community with a common human future.”
Dr. Ryan T. Anderson, writing for The Heritage Foundation said: “There is a great danger in creating children in the laboratory, a process that treats human subjects as if objects of technological mastery. Societies can come to view human life—all life, modified or not—as something that can easily be toyed with and discarded.”
He added: “We forget the fact that children should be begotten, not made, at our peril…human beings are to be welcomed as gifts, not manufactured as products.”
Global Moratorium Called For
Last month, top scientists and ethicists from seven countries—including the United States—called for a global moratorium on gene editing of human eggs, sperm or embryos that would produce genetically modified babies.
The announcement came in response to a rogue Chinese researcher’s announcement last year that he created the world’s first birth of gene-edited twins.
The group said they were not seeking to ban the process, but want to create an international framework in which nations would voluntarily commit not to approve any use of clinical germline editing unless certain conditions are met.”
The National Institutes of Health called for an immediate ban on the practice to remain in effect until nations can commit to international rules to determine “whether and under what conditions such research should proceed.”
What may well be lost in this debate is the concept of Personhood, where government recognizes the sanctity and dignity all human life. Without that recognition, ungodly researchers will feel free to cook up any type of children they think will sell.
Pro-life supporters are encouraged to be prepared to discuss this dangerous and ungodly trend.
Sources: phys.org; reuters.com; ft.com; washingtonpost.com; heritage.org; dailymail.com; nature.com.
By Wayne DuBois
Georgia Right to Life
Media Relations Advisor