In the Detroit Free Press today was an article about how parents are able to pay for the gender of their child - up to $15,000 if you go to this clinic in Walled Lake, Michigan. The article opened with a woman who "had always wanted a little girl." Then, of course, "with the death of her mother, she longed even more for a mother-daughter relationship."

So they try whatever old wives' tales suggest regarding how to conceive a girl - and have a boy. So for the third child, they go to this clinic, where they pay to have a girl. She is now 8 months old and is named Olivia.

This brings to the fore all my personal opinions on conception and God and the nature of miracles, and the fact that scientists are not God. Strikes me that if you're playing God, and people pay you to do this, wouldn't that be a manner of having another god before Him? I don't know how I feel about Hell and if people go there, but it sure doesn't seem fittin' that doctors who get paid to select genders (or anything else regarding conception), and people who pay them, get to spend eternity in the glory of His presence.

I went to church today, can you tell? :)

But then it makes me think - all the people in the world who adopt or choose childlessness because of struggles - who spend thousands of dollars to have just one child - and there are people who have upwards of $15,000 to pay for the GENDER of their THIRD child. Disgusting, really. But then, what of the people who do in-vitro and all that entails? Isn't that playing God too? I have always been in favor of adoption over other options... why struggle to have a biological child when there's so many on Earth who are already born and need a family?

This leads me to the long-promised "Forever Family" debate.
Next article.