Multiple choice in baby making.

IKE THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER FOLLOWING THE SPRING SNOW MELT, THE FAMILY landscape is being flooded with new technologies having to do with baby making or not making. The explosion of progress in reproductive technologies is creating choice in a dimension of life we previously consigned to destiny, namely, procreating children. Fertile women can stop baby making with Norplant, RU486, or abortion. Infertile couples can still make babies with the help of artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization (IVF), donor semen, donor eggs, frozen embryos, and surrogate motherhood. Soon we will be able to exact quality control regarding the health and perhaps the genetic make-up of future children with the aid of genetic screening, genetic engineering, nuclear transplantation, egg fusion, cloning, selective abortion, and in-utero fetal surgery. A woman can become a mother at age 62. And if experiments in ectogenesis and interspecies gestation prove successful, a woman will be able to become a mother without herself becoming pregnant. Technology and choice quickly translate into markets. The already nascent reproductive industry is likely to expand as new technologies open up new possibilities for baby stopping, baby making, and baby selecting. Infertility clinics will soon expand the range of services they offer; this may expand the clientele to include fertile couples and perhaps even individuals who are willing to pay for designer babies.