Couples often have certain hopes and dreams for what kind of baby they'll have--hopes about the gender, hair color, personality and so forth but now a clinic is trying to cash in on those desires. "A Los Angeles clinic says it will soon help couples select both gender and physical traits in a baby when they undergo a form a fertility treatment, " says an article in today's Wall Street Journal. The headline of the article reminds us just how much this mindset towards babies has grown out of a consumeristic culture. It's titled, "A Baby, Please. Blond, Freckles--Hold the Colic: Laboratory Techniques That Screen for Diseases in Embryos Are Now Being Offered to Create Designer Children."
Any couple that has found themselves intrigued by the opportunity to create a designer baby should at least stop and watch the 1997 movie Gattaca. Here's a description from Wikipedia:
The movie draws on concerns over reproductive technologies which facilitate eugenics, and the possible consequences of such technological developments for society. It also explores the idea of destiny and the ways in which it can and does govern lives. Characters in Gattaca continually battle both with society and with themselves to find their place in the world and who they are destined to be according to their genes.
Probably the better read is Psalm 139 where we're reminded that every life is already "designer"--because of the care given by an intelligent designer: