Begotten or made?

by Oliver O'Donovan

As I looked through evidence submitted by Christian bodies to the Warnock Committee, and compared them with writings from other Christian sources in the last quarter-century, it seemed to me that a consistent concern emerged. It was expressed as clearly by those who accepted these new techniques as by those who rejected them. It was common to Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. It arose from a caution about the impact of technology (which is, above all, the impact of certain ways of thinking) on our self-understanding as human beings. It found common expression in a distinction that constantly recurred: between the use of technique to assist human procreation and the transformation of human procreation into a technical operation. It was a concern about the capacity of technology to change, not merely the conditions of our human existence, but its essential characteristics. - Preface.