Posted on 04/02/2009 5:09:32 PM PDT by wagglebee
Note: Since recording this script, the fertility clinic in Los Angeles, which announced in February that it would be allowing couples to pre-select embryos based on gender, hair, and eye color, has retracted the hair and eye color pre-selection option due to public outcry. While BreakPoint is encouraged to hear that the company has changed these practices, the issue addressed in this commentary still remains a very real threatone that Christians should speak out on.
For more information you can read the FoxNews article on the retraction and view the clinic's website.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones want a baby. They visit a fertility clinic and announce: We want a boyblond hair and blue eyes, please. We want him to be at least six feet tall, good at sports and have great musical ability.
No sweat, the doctor says. Nine months later, baby Logan is born.
But for Logans parents, things dont work out quite the way they expected. Despite his outstanding physique, Logan has no interest in sports. He likes to write poetry instead. As for musicyes, hes good at it, his genes have seen to thatbut hed much rather spend his time designing model airplanes.
Logans parents are furious. They paid good money for a son who would make them proud on the athletic field and in the concert hall! Plusthe final insultLogan dyed his blonde hair purple.
While this is not a true story, of coursebut it could be soon enough. A Los Angeles fertility clinic now offers testing for cosmetic selection. The procedure is known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. It involves removing a cell from an embryo and testing it for desired physical traits.
According to Dr. Jeff Steinberg, who runs the clinic, parents can choose the sex of their baby, and also pick out juniors hair and eye color. The babies will, of course, be free of inherited diseases. Dr. FrankensteinI mean, Dr. Steinbergchecks for those, as well.
Dr. Gillian Lockwood, a British fertility expert, has a question for Steinberg. What, she wants to know, are you going to do with all those other embryos that turn out like me to be ginger [haired] with green eyes?
The answer is that embryos who dont make the grade are destroyedor sold to medical researchers.
Its the ultimate in consumerismshopping for a baby the way you would for a car, choosing exactly the right color and accessories.
Its also the ultimate discriminationrefusing to allow those people (the sick, the unattractive, the short, the blind) to be born.
Inevitably, parents will begin to see their children not as precious gifts to be loved no matter what, but as consumer items to be coldly evaluated for any flaws.
Dr. Steinberg, says hes not traveling down a dangerous road, merely an uncharted one. Hes wrong. The idea of designing a master race has been tried in the pastwith horrific results.
Parents of Down Syndrome babies already report that doctors pressure them to abort. Given the cost of health care, how long will it be before all parents are required to have their embryos testedand to kill the ones who dont quite measure up?
Christianity teaches that we are made in Gods image, and that all human life has great worth, from the moment of conception until natural death. Remember, Jesus spent much of his earthly ministry curing the sicknot ignoring them, and certainly not killing them.
We need to press for regulations in this field. And we need to explain to our neighbors that by choosing which embryos will live and which will die, we are attempting to play God: vainly seeking to create life in OUR image, the ultimate affront to God.
And in the end, we will not be selecting perfect babies, but rather a horrifying future.
Was my comment too difficult for you to understand?
I understood you to mean that you think I should have been aborted by my parents.
I simply did not find it germane to the topic at hand.
Are you in favor or more retarded kids?
I never mentioned abortion, how strange that you misunderstood it that way.
I note that you fail to answer the question, twice posed.
Some people have comprehension skills that are far more remedial than they would care to believe.
Are you in favor or more retarded kids?
Am I in favor or more ... gee, and you make fun of grammar and typing on here all the time.
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