What image comes to your mind when you think of the perfect baby?
Even though the rhetoric of the body as it pertains to the area of biotechnology is not my field of specialty, I am interested in how this subject converges with my work when looked at from the standpoint of reprogenetics or the industry of so-called designer babies.
I admire the work of Dorothy Roberts who eloquently explains how reprogenetic technologies prescribe the qualities and characteristics of the “perfect baby” as being intrinsically so. Roberts reminds that just because something is more technologically advanced doesn’t make it more liberating, or even progressive for that matter. She goes on to caution against a profit driven situation “where minority people’s eggs that aren’t desirable to most white couples for reproductive purposes (where race matters a lot) will be purchased on the cheap for stem cell research (where race won’t matter that much).”
Even those privileged women, who might seem to gain advantage from these technologies, will be increasingly subject to more intensive surveillance that is generated through reprogenetics. In effect, women from all areas of life will be subject to greater social and moralistic scrutiny because of the inordinate burden of responsibility that has traditionally been placed on women to always make the “right” kinds of choices.
CircuitouslyCute 