Picky parents customize children

Picky parents now possess the option to customize their unborn child. The advances in genetic engineering have opened the possibility of parents choosing the sex of their baby. Although, this powerful technology is answering prayers, it is raising difficult ethical questions.

This type of genetic engineering has been used to detect physical and mental defects in unborn children. However, science is now offering couples customized babies through the manipulation of their chromosomes.

The technology is so advanced it is beyond scary. With gender selection coming so simple to doctors, what will be next? Technology moves at such a rapid pace, what will stop it from allowing couples to customize a whole child? Who’s to say that these dream children won’t turn out to be nightmares?

Medical experiments can go wrong at anytime. How can we be sure that these genetic modifications won’t turn into genetic mutations?

Claudia Kalb asks these tantalizing questions in her article on sex selection in Newsweek, “If couples can request a baby boy or girl, what’s next on the slippery slope of modern reproductive medicine? Eye color? Height? Intelligence? Could picking one gender over the other become the 21st Century’s form of sex discrimination?”

Imagine the issues rising in the family alone. A family completely composed of boys and Mom is dying for a little a girl. Frustrated with nature’s guessing game, the mother decides to choose the sex of her next baby. Will the mother treat her daughter different than her sons? Of course. The girl will be raised with the mentality that she was chosen. The girl will feel she may need to live up to higher expectations while the boys will know they are not what Mom really wanted. Anyway you approach it, playing favorites destroys family chemistry.

Genetic choosing raises age-old issues associated with abortion and stem cell research. When does human life begin? Do humans have the right to manipulate human cells?

By stepping into human creation, science has nearly taken away the miracle of birth. Parents taking this unnatural route to alter their child seem to be playing the role of God.

Science needs to draw a line before the world becomes obsessed with the idea of creating the perfect designer child.