Technology has catapulted the human race eons above any other animal, make our work more efficient, our lives more comfortable and saved millions of human lives that would have been lost without the recourse to techonological advances. The power of technology has enable us to attempt to control not only human life but also the beginning of human life itself. Every one would agree that the power of technology should respect the ethical boundaries. Although the fruits of technological progress are sweet temptations, techonology too should halt at the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But where concretely is that limit? What are the lines technology should not cross?
53. It is wrong to kill embryonic people to have more people.
54. Spouses should procreate with each other exclusively.
55. People should be procreated, not made.
56. Technology should help people, not substitute them.
57. Couples may not want children, but there should never be an unwanted child.
58. Respecting the spouses is respecting their bodies and their fertilities.
59. The pill promised to fix marriages but backfired.
60. Abortion is a taboo topic for the wrong reasons.
61. We all have the same basic dignity because of what we are; not because of what we do.
62. All humans have equal, basic dignity, human embryos included.
63. Birth control does not justify choosing who lives and who dies.
Technology not only empowers us with greater capacities: capacities that are intrinsically tied with the very origin and transmission of human life itself. But technology also comes with the Promethean temptation to believe that we are almighty and nothing can stop the technological progress of the human race.
Technology is "more than technology". It not only changes the realities that it aims to change; it changes the agent of technology as well. It makes us think differently. When we think about human relationships, human life, marriage, and human embryos are understood in techonological terms, they become objects to be controlled and subjugated. Then, human life stops being understood as a gift to be welcome, honored and shared. The technocratic paradigm is slowly but surely invading the personal paradigm putting persons at the service of efficiency and pragmatic goals.
Only a radical view of the dignity of human life can offer some light to the limits of the new technological powers. Not everything that can technologically be done should be done. Technological advancement should serve the dignity of human life and not snatch the fruit of that dignity from the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil". For it is precisely the tree of morality that nourishes that fruit.