Pro-Life and Anti-Life movements join forces to battle designer baby abortions

Both movements agree designer babies are a bad idea.

Gene editing is making unlikely allies between pro-life and anti-life groups, both of whom oppose the new technology. Gene editing will allow scientists to customize babies, and while it can solve serious diseases, it can also create designer babies which would have natural advantages over their less wealthy peers. It will also lead to new abortions as children are destroyed in the name of research.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Gene editing is a promising new technology that allows doctors to cure genetic defects and other diseases, even in the womb. Conditions like cystic fibrosis and sickly cell anemia would be cured forever.

The technology is also cheap and effective, using a method known as CRISPR. The newly developed method is extremely precise and can delete, then replace any specific gene in the body. This technology has the power to revolutionize medicine forever.

Gene editing can also be used to create genetically modified humans, particularly those with preferred traits. Eye color, skin color, intelligence, and a whole host of other traits could be programmed in, or out, of a child's body long before they are born.

Unfortunately, gene editing makes one thing plain, humans are a genetic commodity which can be tailor made to order. This removes God-given traits in favor of artificial ones. This might not be particularly wise, since human-selected traits might be chosen for superficial reasons, and could cost the child a survival trait that was previously unappreciated.

And what will happen to babies if the editing goes wrong, or if the parents are dissatisfied?  Naturally, they'd be aborted. In the course of experimentation, every single new life will be destroyed, never implanted into a mother's womb, never given a chance. Gene editing is research that kills.

And what will there be to keep mad scientists from engineering a Brave New World of genetic segregation? Will eugenics become an issue?

Anti-life proponents are also opposed to gene editing, although for different reasons. For them, it is an issue of equality. How would society be changed if a subset of the population were considered genetically superior? Would this lead to new inequalities and new discrimination? While that's ironic from anti-lifers who routinely discriminate against children in the womb, at least they too see the larger issue.

While the US government plans to strictly regulate gene editing, the procedure isn't going to be outlawed. Large sums of cash have already been awarded in the name of research. At least in the laboratory, gene editing will take place, with the unborn children being aborted once the experiments are done.

We all want the advantages of gene editing. Imagine a world without birth defects and without dangerous genetic conditions. It would be a world with less suffering. However, the price is not always satisfactory. What is the value of avoiding one person's suffering if dozens of others must first be destroyed?

Gene editing is here and it's time we enter the new fray on the side of life.