Mark Morford: Is Your Fetus A Republican?

[babylonsister]

Is Your Fetus A Republican?
by Mark Morford

Oh right, like you don’t want to play God.

Maybe it’s time to blow it all out of the water. Maybe it’s time to say, You know what? All this chatter and yammering and cute brow-furrowed quasi-religious faux-ethical squirming about DNA and gene pools and all the horribly fraught issues surrounding the notion that you soon will be able to select the various traits you want in your baby, maybe it’s all just so much childish screaming into the Void. Which is to say, utter, adorable, self-reflexive bull–.

Here’s the big hot-button gumdrops: Science is now on the verge of being able to test for gayness in a fetus. It’s true. It’s the most recent genetic development and it comes hot on the heels of the fact that doctors are essentially this close to being able to let you choose anything you want about your kid, from gender to eye color to height to intelligence to parallel parking acumen to really superlative taste in stemware and designer watches.

This is the message: Get over yourself and your hollow moral indignation concerning baby customization, and do it quickly, because science is about to slap the entire universe of genetics and babydom upside the head, and it won’t be pretty. Or rather, maybe it will be. Maybe it will be beautiful and interesting and messy and fun and dangerous and stupid and random and sad and absolutely insane. You know, just like life.

Here are but a few of the imminent questions: What would you do if you knew your unborn child was, without doubt, destined to be gay? Or what if you knew your unborn had all the DNA markings of, say, a drug addict? How about if you knew he was genetically predisposed toward becoming, oh, a severe Republican, one with, say, a vicious hate-filled talk-radio show somewhere in the Deep South that ranted about war and gays and uppity wimmin and the need for more prisons and guns in the schools?

Would you celebrate? Would you scream? Would you abort? Would you call Fox News and demand your own reality show? Or would you immediately seek medical treatment to turn that hapless helpless bundle of goo and tissue and possibility into a nice straitlaced bland-as-milk moderate Democrat with a thing for gardening and the missionary position and tepid travel magazines?

more...

[iamjoy]

1. It's Like Gattica (eom)

[mike_c]

2. Mark Morford is a gift from god....

We are not worthy....

[juno jones]

3. Reminds me more of the old SNL...

Do you want your baby to have a human head or a shrimp head?

Uh, what's the difference?

Well if he has a shrimp head, the welding glasses will fit better...

Oh, yeah, yeah, shrimp head sounds good..

OK, so you want your baby to be a shrimp-headed welder, coming right up....


edited for spelling in the title, oh god edited for spelling everywhere...

[MistressOverdone]

4. Gosh

I haven't met any bland, straight-laced Dems. I would have described the other side of the aisle that way.

But this is a VERY thought-provoking piece. How far would we go for "perfect" people? And WHAT is perfect?