Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. With the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. On a recent visit to the Interesting Times podcast, Nor Siddiqui, the head of the IVF screening company ORCID, told Ross Douthett that baby making needs to change. Not only will the genetic screening of embryos be available, she predicted, it will become the new normal of procreation. And I quote, the vast majority of parents in the future are not going to want to roll the dice with their child's health.
They're going to see this as taking the maximum amount of care, the maximum amount of love. In the same way they plan their nursery, plan their home, plan their preschool. I think it becomes about stewardship. It becomes about how do I make a responsible choice for my family, end quote.
Now Suddiki is probably correct with this prediction. When children are seen as accessories to adult life, Eugenics is the path that makes the most sense. Why wouldn't we take every step possible to optimize the health of the child we take home, even if that involves creating and discarding other tiny humans in the process? Why wouldn't we use the best available technologies? in order to get the baby that is the most healthy.
IVF is pitched as a therapeutic technology, of course, enabling those who are unable to have kids to become parents. But increasingly, it's also sold by appealing to certain life cell choices. Those who wish to postpone pregnancy or to hand off the task to willing incubators can all still have the children they want when they want them.
Now to be clear, the IVF process has always separated procreation from sex. And it is always involved to some degree or another. the screening and selection of embryos. Siddiqui is simply promising more of the same. only better.
Sex is for pleasure, she said on several occasions. IVF is for having children. There's a market, she thinks, and more thorough testing and better screening. And. She's probably right.
As many people have noted, the 1997 movie GattaGa has proven eerily prophetic. The main difference is in that movie, society was obsessed with genetic perfection. Ours is more intrigued by that concept, but mostly as a way of maintaining the lifestyles we all want. Of course, if ORCID services are ever perfected and normalized, parents who choose to have babies the old-fashioned way will soon be accused of being reckless and irresponsible. Those who don't genetically screen out imperfect children will be labeled abusive and heartless.
One can easily imagine a world in which insurance companies will cover the cost of certain pregnancies that guarantee certain outcomes. But not others. As Dr. Kristen Collier put it after a visit to ORCID's website: quote, this is not health care. No, it's a way of normalizing the next descent on an already very slippery slope.
Recently, Lila Rose of Live Action shared a video in which a man chronicled his journey to parenthood with his male partner. Quick recap, the man said. We're having two babies. We bought forty frozen eggs from our egg donor. The man then proceeds to yank post-it notes off a cardboard, each one representing one of the eggs with So-called genetic problems until he got down to the two keepers they wanted.
Orchid will just make it possible to do this very same thing. only with tiny humans, not just eggs, and with the swipe on a screen. In the Wall Street Journal recently, Zusha Ellenson described Silicon Valley's obsession with having smarter babies. She wrote, quote, the fascination with what some call genetic optimization reflects deeper Silicon Valley beliefs about merit and success. I think they have a perception that they are smart and accomplished.
They deserve to be where they are because they have good genes. said Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist at Harvard Medical School.
Now they have a tool where they think they can do the same thing in their kids as well. In a recent post on X, Princeton professor Robert George described perfectly what is really at stake here. as modern technology makes eugenics even more possible. Quote, eugenics is now a permanent temptation. Every new generation will face it.
Resisting it will be difficult, as difficult as it is important.
So it's critical we understand children as persons, not products. We must not make them objects of manufacture subject to quality controls. End quote. Indeed, but so much of this ethical genie has already been let out of the bottle, and has been for some time now. We have to oppose eugenics in all forms, but that requires that we recognize eugenics when we see it.
And we have to train the next generation, especially the next generation of parents. about the God-given intrinsic good of children. Stanley Hauerwass famously said that if in a hundred years Christians are known as those who did not kill their young, And do not kill their elderly, we will have done well. Yes, and if so, that will likely mean that we are also known for the way we make babies. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by actor Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources to live like a Christian today, go to breakpoint.org.
