"Genepeeks... digitally combines the DNA of a client and a sperm donor to gauge the odds that a future baby would have various genetic disorders."

"Donors whose 'virtual children' consistently have a higher risk of inherited disorders will be removed so the prospective mother is left with the best matches — at least from a genetics standpoint."

What is wrong with that, as long as the service doesn't claim to be able to do anything more than it can do, which is, apparently, reducing some of the risk of heritable defects?

The usual bio-ethicists and other quasi-philosophers and busybodies weigh in and say things like: "It amounts to shopping for designer donors in an effort to produce designer babies... We believe the patent office made a serious mistake in allowing a patent that includes drop-down menus for which to choose a future child's traits. A project like this would also be ethically and socially treacherous."

They say things like that even though they would not say that female reproductive choice is generally an ethically and socially treacherous project. If women have the freedom and power to reject any partners they don't want and to use birth control and abortion to avert any pregnancy that doesn't align with their personal conception of what is worth doing, then we have an amazing new world, we've yet to perceive what it will be like over time, and we have no way to go back if the results of this "project" turn out badly.

Not all of us have committed to female reproductive autonomy, but it is, for the most part, the law and the dominant culture here in the United States. What is the basis for depriving women of these technological tools?

If women were truly free to select the genetic material to which to devote their reproductive efforts, we might end up, after a few generations, with a population of gangly giants, as all the ladies choose "tall" and "thin" on their drop-down menus. I do worry about that sometimes.