Ethics scholars denounce company that helps parents pick which kids to abort

OPINION/ANALYSIS

Bioethicists and other human rights scholars recently took to X to denounce a company that helps parents decide which embryos, meaning human beings, they should destroy.

Every couple of months Orchid Health and its founder Noor Siddiqui generate some sort of controversy as their practices are reintroduced to the world. The company screens out embryos created through in-vitro fertilization to “mitigate risks” that the “future baby” will have autism, epilepsy, or be blind. 

Of course, the company cannot edit genes on the embryos so when they are implanted they grow into a human being without these diseases; rather, parents presumably toss these embryos (read: kill) in the same way some women abort their own babies. 

Thankfully, some professors are willing to publicly speak out in defense of innocent human life and against eugenics. Clips of Siddiqui (pictured) began circulating recently after an interview she gave with Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the New York Times.

University of Michigan medical school Professor Kristin Collier pointed out, for example, that Orchid lets couples swipe through reports to decide which kids to kill.

“[C]an’t imagine the next, but presumed action—choosing one of your children to live & the rest to be discarded,” the pro-life doctor wrote. “[T]his is not ‘healthcare.’”

Collier also responded to an X post where Siddiqui claimed her company is just about giving a “fair shot at health” to (some) kids.

“[W]hat about a fair shot at being able to live? [D]oes it matter to you at all that in the process you’ve created and are promoting that the babies do not all have a fair shot at life because the ones with “unfavorable” genetic profiles will be discarded,” Dr. Collier wrote.

University of Tulsa philosopher Jennifer Frey also stepped in to defend the disabled, responding to Claire Lehmann at Quillette, who defended the screening out (killing) of embryos.

“People’s very open disdain for the disabled, always under the guise of false mercy, is the result of a false self-image,” Frey wrote. “What we lose is our humanity, Claire. We are dependent, vulnerable, and each one of us potentially, at any moment, subject to disablement/disease.”

Catholic University of America medical ethicist Charlie Camosy also defended the preborn.

“I realize the way has been paved with our culture’s horrific acceptance of the violence of abortion, but it should go without saying that parents do not have the right to discard their children to death because they do not have the kinds of traits they desire,” Camosy wrote.

Even people who 1. See no problem with separating sex from procreation 2. Have no issue discarding “extra” embryos once they are done having children should still take issue with the premise of her company.

Siddiqui founded the company partially after seeing her mother struggle with vision loss. She didn’t create an ophthalmological research company to find a cure for this condition though, but thought she could eliminate suffering by killing off embryos before they were born. 

Vision loss is an unfortunate condition, but it is something people live with every day. Catholic priest Peter Totleben notes, “I was born with a defect in my left eye which has affected me all my life. — But I still really like my life, so I’m glad that my parents didn’t grow me in a lab, and screen me and decide to ‘discard’ me.”

Other conditions it screens for *already* have cures and medicine will likely continue to advance to make the cures even better. For example, Orchid screens for the possibility that the embryo, when it is older, will eventually develop breast cancer. But according to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the current survivability rate is around 90 percent. And remember, Orchid helps parents kill embryos on the *possibility* that some time in the future their child *might* develop this disease.

A second issue emerges, which is that Siddiqui is ethically challenged. During the interview, Douthat asked her if she had though about how what she was really proposing was getting rid of her mom, and thus Siddiqui herself. In Orchid’s ideal world, after all, Siddiqui’s mom would have been screened for the disease while in a petri dish and then tossed away.

To this fairly clear question, Siddiqui offered this profound thought: “I sort of understand it, but I sort of don’t.”

As Fr. Totleben concludes, Siddiqui “just hasn’t thought through any of the philosophical or humanistic issues behind her project. There’s just whole vistas of human experience that she hasn’t, well, experienced.”

“Such naive techno-utopianism.”