A recent article on Slate chronicles one woman’s quest to become a “girl-mommy” using preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Ms. Simpson (a pseudonym) already had three sons, and after almost four years and $40,000, she was able to use PGD to give birth to a girl. Said Ms. Simpson, “She was worth every cent. Better than a new car, or a kitchen reno.”
“Preimplantation genetic diagnosis” was originally designed to identify genetic diseases or chromosomal disorders, such as cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia, in embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) before they are implanted in the woman’s uterus. IVF is designed to initiate a pregnancy, while PGD is used to sort and choose preferable embryos before pregnancy.
Now, though, enterprising fertility doctors have found a way to maximize the utility of this technology by marketing it to individuals seeking to determine the sex of their child. The use of PGD for gender selection has become a lucrative practice for American physicians, as it is illegal to use it for that reason in Australia, the U.K., and Canada.
Technological advancements in science are sprinting past our laws and cultural norms. The appeal of PGD is that it subjugates reality to humanity’s desires, striving to eliminate the chronological distance between want and satisfaction. Gender selection of your child is reduced to just another consumer decision, similar to selecting a car or choosing the color of the living room carpet. Genetic engineering is merely convenient “family balancing.”
As science sprints past law, few stop to consider whether PGD is “good.” To the secular mind, science’s ability to determine gender is a testament to individual freedom. After all, more choices must intuitively mean more freedom. But as our choices have multiplied, the ethical, societal, and religious guardrails have been destroyed. We are where the Israelites were in Judges when “everyone did as he saw fit.” Limitless freedom, however, is unsustainable, as the book of Proverbs forewarns that the eyes of man are never satisfied, and Machiavelli instructs that men desire everything but cannot attain everything.
One woman in the Slate piece describes her reason for wanting a girl by saying, “I’m not into sports. I’m not into violent games. I’m not into a lot of things boys represent and do.” Would she be disappointed if her daughter exhibited behavior generally associated with a tomboy? After a child is born there is no return policy (as of yet) should Ms. Simpson be subject to the personal inconvenience of having to raise a daughter who does want to play sports. In buying a daughter she thought she was purchasing traditional gender-identified experiences.
Another issue that progressives fail to consider with PGD is that each generation’s attempts at genetic engineering constitute the forced exercise of that generation’s view of what is good upon the succeeding generation. One generation’s abuse of freedom severely constrains the freedom of the next. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, “For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means . . . the power of some men to make other men what they please.”
The real problem with PGD is found at a deeper root than even selfishness, consumerism, or man’s attempt to conquer nature. It is found in the concept of image. Man once saw himself reflecting the image of God: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him.”
A proper concept of man looks outward and views him as reflecting the eternal. The secular mind has turned its gaze inward to consider humanity as a malleable product. Man created in the image of man has significantly less inherent value than man created in God’s image.
As technology advances, our desire to be like gods will not abate. Eden should have taught us that while we thought we were laying hands on the forbidden fruit, it was really laying hands on us.
Joseph A. Kohm, Jr. is an attorney residing in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
RESOURCES
Jasmeet Sidhu, “How To Buy a Daughter”
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Comments:
1) The old religious argument against airplanes, was that "if God had meant us to fly, he would have given us wings." Parts of this sound rather like that.
2) Is limitless power or freedom, really too much to ask? Jesus promised us that if we followed him, we would get "all the wonders" that he worked, and "greater things than these." Even "whatever" we "ask."
That's not fair. I have a "secular mind" and think that it's bad public policy to allow individual freedom to create people. Creating people is not a right, it takes energy and money, leads to big government and invasions of privacy, it is unfair, and it undermines the principle of equality to select and/or design the genes of people. It puts people at risk.
The only ethical way to create people is through married sexual intercourse, because there is a right to create people that way, and that right makes it ethical and right. Nothing else does, certainly not science's ability or individual freedom.
See? Maybe you have it backwards!
Again, a secular argument works fine: if airplanes are bad public policy, the public can ban airplanes if we choose to. There is no right to build or fly airplanes.
2) is the same answer: we don't have to let people do whatever they want to, we can scoff at people who expect to have "limitless power and freedom." They are tragically incorrect. There are some things that we consider a basic human right, like marriage and procreation particularly, that we DO have to let people do, but there are very few of those.
The same thing that happens to millions of embryos every month that are fertilized too late in the cycle and fail to implant: they stop dividing and decompose back into proteins and take their place in the great chain of life. They are not yet alive and not yet ensouled, so don't fret about them.
1)"The old religious argument against airplanes, was that "if God had meant us to fly, he would have given us wings." Parts of this sound rather like that."
The argument here is not the same as this "airplane argument." There is a significant difference in that the issue at hand involves. Here, the author makes a case for why this type of consumer reproduction is wrong. It is because consumer reproduction necessarily involves the buying and selling of human life, and the manipulation of that human life to our own personal satisfaction. In this scenario, children become objects to be bought and sold, whose purpose is the parents' personal fulfillment. I think it's clear that the argument against this type of behavior does not rest only on the fact that we believe God says no to gender selection.
Comparing this article's argument to the "airplane argument" is absurd.
2) Is limitless power or freedom, really too much to ask? Jesus promised us that if we followed him, we would get "all the wonders" that he worked, and "greater things than these." Even "whatever" we "ask."
I am going to assume your being sarcastic.
You conveniently assume they are not yet ensouled and simultaneously assume that intentional human acts are the moral equivalent of accidents based solely on the similarity of the outcome.
This eventually leads to the logic that lots of people in their 80s die on their own anyway so it's no big deal to help the process along for poor, sickly grandma, especially because of the way she's suffering.
Playing God indeed.
That's not saying that intentional human acts to create embryos are the equivalent of those natural embryos failing to implant, and it is not saying that euthanasia is acceptable either. Creating embryos intentionally is wrong even though it doesn't kill a living ensouled embryo, and when an embryo fails to implant is not like helping along a person to die.
Is limitless power or freedom, really too much to ask? Jesus promised us that if we followed him, we would get "all the wonders" that he worked, and "greater things than these." Even "whatever" we "ask."
While it is true that God gave mankind free will, that freedom is (and should be) limited by Good and Evil. I capitalize these to differentiate them from the easily changed or dismissed notions of these two concepts based on moral relativism or convenience. Just because we want to do something, and are capable of it, doesn't mean that we should.
If we blindly pursue every scientific advance to its farthest point, without any thought of the moral consequences, we become just another animal governed by base desires. One with a reasoning brain, an idea of self, and opposable thumbs, but an animal none the less.
And before those of you who are ready to counter this thought with the time worn myth of the Church being against science, remember that it was the belief in a created universe that prompted the exploration of the natural laws that have resulted in the scientific and technological advances we have today. Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.
