3 ms·

Right now it appears unreliable, but once it's eventually proven to be nearly perfect, it should be compulsory with penalties for child cruelty if not followed.

Right now it appears unreliable, but once it's eventually proven to be nearly perfect, it should be compulsory with penalties for child cruelty if not followed. Birthing a child with genetic defects that would be detectable by common methods is morally equivalent to harming a healthy child in the exact same way. In both cases the end state is a damaged human that wouldn't exist if not for the actions of (presumably...) adults. Legal consequences should therefore be equivalent. I'm aware it's outside of the Overton window now, but so was legal homosexuality not that far ago (in many Western countries) - support was fundamentally religious in nature and eventually disappeared. Assuming general progress in genetics, the situation is going to repeat here. Eventually only a tiny fringe will think it should be legal to make a new kid with no genetic tests during pregnancy (or before implantation). Fixing found problems with genetic engineering is also fine, if feasible.

yucky 4y ago
[flagged]
shkkmo 4y ago
>so was legal homosexuality not that far ago Which is precisely the point. Mandating eugenics inevitably harms the out groups. The definition of "birth defect" is highly cultural and you will be imposing your definition on others. You might be comfortable saying that a cleft palate is defect , but what about down syndrom, autism, bipolar disorder, deafness, gender disphoria, below average intelligence etc? There is no easy place to draw the line and even a conservatively drawn line will means extinction for whole groups of people. That is such a drastic choice that of it is to be made, it must happen organically through collective individual choices not an autocratic mandate. Doing it the later way is simply Evil, and I don't use that word for many things. Even the former way carries risks and shouldn't be taken lightly.

yucky 4y ago

[flagged]

shkkmo 4y ago

>so was legal homosexuality not that far ago Which is precisely the point. Mandating eugenics inevitably harms the out groups. The definition of "birth defect" is highly cultural and you will be imposing your definition on others. You might be comfortable saying that a cleft palate is defect , but what about down syndrom, autism, bipolar disorder, deafness, gender disphoria, below average intelligence etc? There is no easy place to draw the line and even a conservatively drawn line will means extinction for whole groups of people. That is such a drastic choice that of it is to be made, it must happen organically through collective individual choices not an autocratic mandate. Doing it the later way is simply Evil, and I don't use that word for many things. Even the former way carries risks and shouldn't be taken lightly.