CAN ANYONE IMAGINE A DISCUSSION ABOUT A RIGHT TO COLOR SELECTION?

i'm sure paris hilton would want to get a baby in every color to match her outfits!!! lol!

seriously, though, are you trying to equate choosing a gender with choosing the baby's ethnicity? are you imagining a world where an asian couple comes in and decides they want a white baby? or are you thinking more along the lines of an interracial couple coming in and deciding that they want the pigmentation from the mother, but the nose from the father and the mouth from the old lady who lives in the shoe?

these are all interesting concepts for scifi movies or books. but don't you think it would take at least a couple of generations for this to become a topic that people would really wrestle with? just because you CAN do something doesnt mean that everyone would want to. the same way not everyone finds out if it's a girl or boy before it's born, not everyone would want genetic screening...

" As technology makes it possible to break the (fill in the blank) taboo privately and inexpensively, the practice spreads, and we get used to it. The question of whether to restrict it becomes, as with other (human activities), a mere question of consumer protection."

So the whole question revolves around not pro-choice/pro-life, but the flexibility of moral systems. It seems our boasting of how much more "civilized" we are than our less technologically advanced ancestors is total bull****. We seem to be far more concerned with whether our neighbors find out what we did/did not do than the fact that we did/did not do it.

I shudder to think what my great-grandchildren will and won't consider acceptable. But that's just because I believe in moral absolutes, not just cultural mores.

Please define one 'moral absolute'.

I don't know of one. Take a current cultural topic; The use of torture. Is it moral to use torture for self preservation?

It is OK to KILL someone for self preservation, right?

So if self preservation is a moral absolute and so is NOT using torture, then how does one decide WHAT moral absolute overrides the other? The answer is cultural mores and this is why there is no such thing as a moral absolute.

Didn't any one ever tell you the Anne Frank 'it is ok to lie' story when you were 10?

Yes I can. I come from Latin America and in case you haven't watched Spanish or Braziain TV recently there are hardly and brown or black people portrayed except for servants.

Trying to conform to the dominating class with light skin would be an asset to the parents since as opposed to the US where 1 drop of black blood makes you black regardless of how you look, in Latin America you ARE the race you look regardless of ancestry. There will be lighter and lighter babies for those who can afford to pre-select. After a few generations everyone will look European.

You seemed to have defined two moral absolutes, then deliberately set them against each other in an extreme situation. I don't see how this conflict proves neither exists. I see it as analogous to two laws of physics colliding (gravity and air pressure), with one dominating based on the circumstances (a plane remains earthbound until high speed creates enough lift to make it airborne). Both forces still remain in existence.

I was well aware of the Holocaust stories long before I read Anne Frank in Jr. High, including the necessity of lying to save lives. In this circumstance, the law against lying was not negated, but rather overriden by the law against killing. The law against lying would remain, say, to counter against telling the hidden refugee that one needed more money to keep him safe.

The Nazi cultural mores considered killing and looting of certain groups perfectly acceptable. They passed laws making such activities perfectly legal. In certain countries, (not just Germany) the majority of people agreed with these mores. Without moral absolutes, there is no basis for condemnation of what happened.

And don't say this wouldn't happen in today. Murder, rape, looting, vandalism and kidnapping are currently raging in Sudan, Iraq and Kosovo. The UN condemns these, not on a basis of legality, but rather on the basis that humans have certain moral lines they should not cross. The cultural mores are trumped by a perceived higher law.

If you want to know my moral absolutes, its a rather simple formula (aka Golden Rule). If a certain action or inaction in a given circumstance would hurt a person without cause, then it is immoral.