Hello my fellow Mibbians,
Well…I need help. Every year, the sophomores and freshmen law students in my school have a law debate. Last year as freshmen, my class and I had to debate gun control and the 2nd amendment. We lost by one point. Anyway, this year, the topic we chose was designer babies or the ability of a parent to choose their child’s genes. I suggested it after reading an article. The proposition of the debate is as following:
The federal government can legislatively prohibit parents from using genetic engineering to design their own offspring.
We are the proponent, which means we do agree with this statement and the freshmen by default are the con or opposition. So basically, we are saying designer babies should be illegal. Our reasons for this are:
• Eugenics and the creation of the master race and discrimination
• If we create our children, we will eliminate most diseases. While this is positive, it will cause people to live long thus adding to the overpopulation problem
• And our legal point: The government has to balance the rights of an individual to the rights and safety of the public.
We are having problems with our legal point. There is a possibility that the freshmen may come back and use Roe v. Wade. For those who are not familiar with this case, it’s basically the case that legalized abortion in the US because it says that laws against abortion violate the rights of an individual under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment is: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So we may be screwed because this is a ruling. The freshmen may say that parents have the right to choose what their baby is. However, the only leg that I see we can stand on is that this causes more harm than good. Also that already in some countries sex selection is illegal. We have to use practices like abortion, sex selection, cloning, and stem-cell research because designer babies haven’t happened yet I need help with a counter argument. Thank you!
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