Abortion is currently the most fevered issue in American life, sometimes even surpassing questions of national security and defense, the economy, international terrorism, health care, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, drug usage, and education.
While we know the shorthand linguistic terms employed in the never-ending public argument over abortion — pro-choice, pro-life, personhood, “war against women,” family values, Roe v. Wade, sanctity of life, “safe, legal and rare” — there is an emerging issue with a three-letter abbreviation that may soon dominate our religious, political and cultural debates: assisted reproductive technology, or ART.
Just as abortion has divided our nation, ART could do the same, especially as it becomes better known and more widely practiced in America.
ART offers women — heterosexual, lesbian, single, or married — a method to become pregnant through a complex procedure involving anonymous donor sperm. A recent Religion News Service story indicated that 30,000-60,000 donor-conceived children are born each year in the United States and as the technology improves, that number will grow.
