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“Designer babies” seems like a concept from a dystopian future, but they’re here now: would-be parents who utilize in-vitro fertilization to conceive often also have the option of genetically testing embryos and then picking which one to implant.
Scientists can test for hundreds of things, from fatal genetic traits like Tay-Sachs and Huntington disease to non-fatal but culturally devalued embodiments like Down syndrome, deafness, blindness and intersex conditions.
Like pre-natal tests, the purpose of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is clear: to allow women to choose which embryo or fetus to try to bring to term, and to terminate those which they do not. Like many scientists, I support women’s choices to terminate pregnancies or select against a potential fetus, even when I might prefer they did not. But it is important to acknowledge that using PGD to select against culturally devalued bodies, like those of people with disabilities or who are intersex, is simply a contemporary example of eugenics.
Eugenics is not a horrific memory of the past; it is an ongoing practice that hides under the guise...