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To: KantianBurke; Jagman; Niuhuru; Bigh4u2
Whether you're selecting for perfection or for imperfection, IVF in itself is "pretty obviously" wrong because you're treating babies like products, property, chattel.

The most obvious problem is that IVF "begets" or produces more offspring than will be implanted in your womb. That results in two really inhuman options: (1) killing your "surplus" offspring (or storing them in frozen form until they deteriorate and are ultimately dumped); or (2) using the embryo as a human experimental subject, without any of the safeguards essential to its moral status as a nascent human being.

The third problem is that the entire process of ovum extraction, sperm collection, in vitro fertilization, and so forth, has already reduced human procreation to an laboratory procedure resulting in a product who/which is a commodity in commercial transaction.

The entire distinction between a human being, a lab animal, and a bit of biological property is in smithereens.

So we (Americans) are right back where we were at the time of the Dred Scott decision of 1857, with the law unable to distinguish between a human being and a piece of property. Except at a potentially worse degree of complexity, since the human genome can now be altered through the introduction of heterologous genes, and the embryo manipulated into forms of abnormal development, so that distinguishing between "human" and "not-human" becomes almost impossible.

When Aldous Huxley wrote "Brave New World," he assumed --- didn't he? --- that people would want to prevent this from happening. There must be somebody out there who is thinking strategically about how to stop this whole race to total depersonalization.

Passing laws against IVF is the only practical way to stop this dehumanizing human children. I think it should be banned.

8 posted on 01/20/2007 10:00:13 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o (Thinking out loud...)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
>> Whether you're selecting for perfection or for imperfection,

There you go, that was my reaction too. The very manipulation of procreative process is what is immoral -- not whether the choice is for eugenic or dysgenic offspring.

And yes, we are back to Dred Scott. The youngest and most helpless among us are denied the protections of the fifth and fourteenth amendments. Terri Schiavo was likewise treated as disposable chattel with the active approval of the entire U.S. judiciary all the way to SCOTUS. I'm not trying to switch the subject here, but if you're interested, here is a link to a thoughtful essay: "Dred Scott and Terri Schiavo: the long and tortured death of the 14th amendment at the hands of the federal judiciary"

23 posted on 01/22/2007 5:00:32 AM PST by T'wit (Visitors: the good news is, lots of people have agreed with you. The bad news is, they were Nazis.)
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