Saturday, January 06, 2007

A couple of thoughts

Article about baby selection

Who, besides Althouse and Reynolds, said this is anything about Nazis? Reading a criticism about eugenics and seeing it as a comparison specifically to Nazi policy is evidence that you are uncomfortable with your own position. Eugenics was coined as a neutral term; it is now a pejorative because of what the believers in it have wrought.

Sure, some of the people who object to this clinical selection of genetic material also oppose abortion. But, as Gerry pointed out, it is dishonest to conflate the positions. Argue against the specific objections to the idea. Since you are comfortable with the ride all the way down the slippery slope, are you sanguine with the idea of a woman unable to bear the child being able to recruit a woman with a healthy womb to carry the fertilized egg? Or to paying that woman? Or to allowing the fertility clinic to recruit and pay the women with the healthy wombs to carry the selected eggs? Or to government (federal state or local) subsidizing such an arrangement as a part of Medicare?

I know, I know, farfetched, would never happen, impossible to consider...but then, when I was in high school in the early 80's, so was the idea that gays would be allowed to marry. At this point, I am un-reassureable.

0 comments: