Blog Post 12

The idea of "creating a child" has many pros and cons; however the under thought consequences of such an action may be more than society is willing to deal with in the long term. Being able to screen for sex, genetic defects, and other worrying features of to be parents could cause a swaying of decisions, potentially threatening the child's life.  Thinking in the larger picture however, these threats could lead to major changes within the nation's economic and social norms.  As of now, you can find out the sex of your child from between 13-20 weeks into pregnancy, with abortion being done up to 24 weeks along.  This means technically, mothers could abort based on the sex of their child but at this point studies show that most are too far along to terminate then.  By being able to tell the sex of children far earlier in this process, it would be much more likely for society to develop a sexist prejudice as a result.  

New advances in technologies like this however may not be such a bad thing after all.  Is the point of evolution not to breed the strongest, fastest, smartest, etc?    By being able to screen for life threatening diseases, imagine the amount of pain and suffering that would simply vanish if parents chose this as a reason to terminate.  Both of these cases are very equal in my mind as the risks barely nudge out the benefits.  I believe technologies are still too new, as well as societies threat of acting irresponsibly, to justify designer children as being ethical.