Preferring Biological Children Is Immoral

Recently, a close friend told me how much he wanted to be a parent one day. The bioethicist J. David Velleman expresses this line of argument when he writes that knowledge of one’s biological parents is a “basic good on which most people rely in pursuit of self-knowledge and identity formation.” Yet this prioritization of biological inheritance has recently become unsettled. Previously, if you gave birth to a child, it was a simple certainty that they were genetically related to you—the biological fact was inextricably linked to their existence. Our improving ability to genetically screen embryos and the continued development of assisted reproductive technologies have enabled prospective parents to assess potential embryos for hundreds of traits—and forced us to revisit a wariness around biological considerations in reproductive decisions caused by the horrors of state- A few core beliefs have already solidified. As Laura Hercher puts it in the MIT Technology Review, “public opinion on the use of assisted reproductive technology consistently draws a distinction between preventing disease and picking traits.” Studies, like one conducted by the Johns Hopkins Genetics and Public Policy Center, seem to indicate that this intuition is broadly shared.