Relying on--or recoiling from--reproductive enhancement.

• Author: Levine, Philippa
• Position: Education

"There are some who think that a world without flaws not only is desirable, but that parents bear a responsibility to improve the human stock using current technology....

Designer baby, anyone? It seems that is what the future may hold. For instance, model Chrissy Teigen and her husband, singer John Legend, chose the gender of their baby a daughter. It may seem futuristic but, with technology and science, that future essentially is here.

The promise is that we can eliminate defects and unwanted characteristics. We can bring into the world babies who fulfill parental dreams, who are beautiful and intelligent, humane and successful. Sounds good, right? Perhaps.

There are some who think that a world without flaws not only is desirable, but that parents bear a responsibility to improve the human stock using current technology--that failing to seek prenatal testing, if you suspect a fetal genetic disorder, is morally negligent. Some argue that human survival depends on selecting the best children.

However, there are hard questions that need to be answered before we set off down this path. Not so long ago, politicians, social workers, and doctors in many places got to choose who could and could not have kids. If you were considered unfit, you might be sterilized, be kept in an asylum, and see your family broken up. People with hereditary diseases and mental problems were among the unfit, but so were those with criminal records, who suffered from epilepsy, who had a family history of alcoholism or vagrancy, or who were blind, deaf, or mute--and the list went on.

The lucky ones who were deemed fit often were rewarded for bringing kids into the world, sometimes with medals and diplomas, sometimes with cash and tax incentives. This was all part of a science known as eugenics that swept across the U.S. and many other parts of the world from Scandinavia to the Soviet Union, from Brazil to Britain, early in the past century.

Not surprisingly, the people who were discouraged, and sometimes prevented, from conceiving often were poor or from minority communities. They were less educated and had little recourse in the courts to challenge these decisions.

In fact, in 1927, the Supreme Court ruled that the mentally unfit could be sterilized without their consent in order to stamp out heredity mental illness. It was a disastrous decision based on faulty science. Fifty years after...