D.I.Y. Baby

Transracial read today a story detailing how a fertility doctor in Los Angeles will soon be offering parents the option to pre-select their baby’s eye color, hair color and even skin tone. Indeed, for a mere $15,000 fee, Dr. Jeff Steinberg of The Fertility Institute will go beyond offering “100 per cent success” in choosing a baby’s sex, but will also now offer these more elaborate characteristics. We at Transracial already find pre-natal procedures such as sex-selection and even certain genetic testing futuristic and problematic.

These next steps even more so.

With traits such as appearance now made-to-order, what does this mean for minority groups such as Gays, Lesbians, people of (too much) color or the physically-challenged. Where will they fit into this menu of baby-making services.

GLBT’s should pay particular care to this issue as Steinberg’s firm is — oddly — big in the Gay surrogacy arena . His practice is “the world’s ONLY fully integrated program incorporating all aspects of the gay parenthood process into one centralized location.”

While we can confirm no ulterior motives — as of yet — Steinberg’s hands in so many fertility pots causes our eyebrows to raise skyward.

Steinberg clearly knows his was around a petri dish and ovum. With access to so much genetic information — and fates — under one roof, we only hope that Steinberg adherers to the strictest moral standards in an industry so UNregulated that it ushered in the era of the Octomom.