JDG wrote:
Of course, but your choice has implications that affect others - to say nothing of your child. Are you saying that if the "free choice" of American parents results in a generation that is born 75% female and 25% male, that you would have no problem with that? (And women say that they can't find any good men today!) And that this would not be an appropriate area for public intervention?
Massive straw man, unworthy of reply. See Charlie's posts on the subject.
It also raises the question of what rights do unborn children have. Are you o.k. with parents aborting children that will have a tendency towards homosexuality? Or of only selecting embryos for implantation that have blond hair or above-average intelligence? Or what about only selecting embryos that have below-average intelligence?
We're talking a major expense, John, so the number of procedures is likely to be limited to either wealthy people or people that are desperate for a child of a certain sex (not because we favor one sex over the other but because they have trouble conceiving one or the other) or want to avoid a child with a debilitating birth defect that they may be prone to.
I think another thing that you'll find among most people is that most of them are proud of their own genetics. However silly it is, I get a lump in my throat when I match my hand with that of my grown son and it's almost an exact match.
Your solution wants a problem.
The ironic thing is that I just received word today that the pro- choice government of Tony Blair is moving today to ban gender- selection abortions in the UK. But I guess that that the UK wasn't founded on freedom of choice, eh? (Magna Carta and John Locke anyone?) To me, its a shame that the pro-choice extremists in this country have turned the United States into a place where the Chinese come to engage in a practice that even the communists have banned back in their own country...
We weren't discussing abortion. I would have much more trouble with abortion along these lines. In fact I would object to it altogether. From the original article:
"The procedure, which Steinberg also offers as an add-on service for infertile couples, determines the gender of a batch of fertilized eggs and implants only embryos of the wanted sex. This process -- called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD -- is more widely used to screen for genetic diseases."
Let me ask you again. Do you think we should tailor our laws to remedy the shortcomings of the Chinese social system?
-- Doug _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
