“Reproduction without sex, a liberating future.” What on earth — or whatever planet CNN broadcasts from — could possibly go wrong? In any case, the Media Research Center reads CNN’s Website so you don’t have to:
CNN contributor Aarathi Prasad yearns for an “egalitarian” brave new world of laboratory babies and artificial wombs.
Prasad, in a revealing December 20 opinion piece titled “Reproduction without sex, a liberating future,” argued for the glories of a technological future where kids could simply be produced in the laboratory. She summed up this future in one simple phrase: “After sex without reproduction, reproduction without sex.”
Prasad was quite specific about what this shining future would entail: a technological revolution, including such wonders as: “freezing strips of ovarian tissue instead of eggs, or tapping into recently identified reserves of ovarian stem cells that could be turned into a fresh supply of eggs for a woman, at any age; or even creating to order eggs (or sperm) from skin or bone marrow stem cells of men and women.”
This, of course, sounds suspiciously like a world in which babies can simply be made in the laboratory. And indeed, Prasad takes her concept further: “If eggs can be made from the stem cells of men, with the advent of an artificial womb (already in use for sharks, in development with mammals and projected to be in use for humans within 100 years), it will also give them an organ they currently have to pay surrogate mothers for the use of.”
This, of course, is viewed as a good thing by Prasad.
But would it be viewed as a good thing by CNN’s founder?
Ted Turner told global leaders at a meeting in Mexico that the rest of the world should adopt China’s one-child policy, according to a Toronto newspaper.
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
” ‘If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,’ CNN founder Ted Turner said Sunday at a conference discussing the impact of demographic trends on the future of greenhouse gas emission.”
“If such a plan was adopted, the father of five said, poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce by selling fertility rights.”
“China claims its policy has resulted in 400 million fewer births since 1979, limiting emissions growth even as the country becomes more industrialized. But critics argue the mandate has contributed to more abortions and high levels of female infanticide.”
Did you catch that little factoid our reporter threw in – Turner is a father of 5! Which four children would he like to give back? Which four shouldn’t have had the chance to live?
I’m sure Turner and Prasad would trust the all-knowing state implicitly to make such decisions for them, right? Like Lincoln Steffens visiting the nascent Soviet Union nearly a century ago, CNN sees the future — and it always seems to work whenever their cameras drop in on the Potemkin village:
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Related: Oh, and speaking of the totalitarian artists formerly known as the USSR, Roger Kimball writes today at his PJM column, “Those worried about the resurgence of a Soviet-style totalitarian empire can take some solace, perhaps, from the fact that Russia is a country in a demographic death spiral.”
Unexpectedly.
Meanwhile back at CNN, while one contributor is channeling Aldous Huxley and H.G. Wells, another unleashes his inner Orwell: “Piers Morgan Strikes Again: Claims Bible ‘Inherently Flawed,’ Needs to Be ‘Amended.'” I’m looking forward to its doubleplusgood 11th Newspeak Edition:
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But then, Piers has been toiling in the Ministry of Truth for quite some time.
Update: Welcome readers clicking in from Captain Capitalism — who’s certainly having much more fun than Ted Turner’s Captain Planet character
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