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MORAL ABSOLUTES PING.

DISCUSSION ABOUT:

Dangers of Artificial Procreation - Five Children Suffer Genetic Disease Passed Down By Sperm Donor

Families are about a married mother and father reproducing.

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"Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife. "
HUMANAE VITAE

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Unfortunately, we "play God" every time we concieve a child and see it through to birth. I think in the case of articificial insemination, that there is an excessive amount of opportunity for one person to pass genes on to future generations, compared to natural procreation.

Usually, a man is limited by his personality, lack of good looks, or some other factor that keeps him from being able to impregnate too many women. Thus, a man who might otherwise be considered a less-than-desirable mate in the wild, and therefore unable to procreate, could become over-represented in the gene pool, as it were. It is possible that marriage as an institution originated in part as a means to keep men from becoming similarly over-represented. I think it may be time to put a limit on how many times a sperm broker can broker any one man's sperm.

Not having known desperation to have a child, it's hard to judge, but I don't think it is a good idea.

My daughter is pregnant and met a lady about her age or a little older (40) who had had her tubes tied. She was pregnant, too, by artificial insemination.

Then there are women who have hormonal shots to reverse the natural course of events to become impregnated, nothing that I would want to do, can't imagine the circumstances that might impel me to do that.

There is one thing I did think about though which doesn't quite fall into this category. If medical science learns to transfer a developing baby from one woman to another, I was thinking that if I felt I was healthy enough, I might volunteer as an incubator to try to carry the baby to term to save it because something goes wrong with the pregnancy. I don't know what the morality gurus; i.e., men in Rome and other theologians would think about that. I don' think it can be done yet. I think we are coming close to where we might be able to incubate a baby through to full term outside the womb in some kind of artificial womb.

Generally, I agree with you that playing God is neve safe, even if it is morally acceptable to this group or that. The lines get blurry there though with all the other things medical science can do, like open heart surgery for example. In a way that is playing God and there is a risk factor to one degree or other depending, but not playing God can lead to imminent death or severe disability.

A man has been doing some electrical and plumbing for me who had open heart surgery to repair a defective heart valve. Won't get into too much of that, but he whips around better than I do, and I'm only two years older. He's very agile and energetic despite having had severe arthritis for which he has taken medication in the past. Amazing. He got a lot of things done for me that had been put off for years. I'm extremely grateful to have those problems fixed, multiple ones.

Guess I drifted off course on that one. Sorry.

"Playing god.." Remember Prometheus? When humans got their hands on fire, an old shaman [forgot his name] was mouthing these very words: "playing god is never safe"... Life is not, nor should it be, safe. Without playing god we'd still be living in the trees, not even in caves. Besides, playing god is a lot of fun and could be made a learning experience, as that shaman found out when another member of the tribe poked a burning branch in his [shaman's] derriere.

The big argument against sperm-vending is that every child has a right to have his origins in the loving sexual union of his married parents. This is not just an "ideal," but a right. To deliberately start a kid in any other way, is to rob him of some portion of what he has a right to as a human child.

If a kid is born lacking this (e.g. out of wedlock) then of course we do what we can to supply what HE NEEDS, e.g. the unwed mother gets married, or the child is adopted. This is in response to the child's needs. It repairs, to some exgent, his initial loss.

But to intentionally conceive a child outside of the marital embrace, lacking the normal elements of parentage, is to set aside his needs as being less important than the adults' wants. That's why it's selfishness on the part of the adults. And that's not right.