People ask, "does life begin at conception?" Is the this a religious question? Scientific? Moral one? One of property rights? Who decides and to what end? Is governmental regulation needed? Required?

Governments pass laws about human reproduction. They have done so for years - perhaps since the beginning of history. We look around our own back yard, so to speak. Today, in many states, it is illegal for first cousins to have children. In the case of "Baby-M," a few years back, a court ruled that biological parents have higher standing than did the parents the child bonded with during the first several years of life. Going back a bit, it was illegal in some states for people of different races to marry. There were laws during slavery as to who "owned" a child born to a woman who in turn was owned by a slave master.

Government's role in human reproduction is well established, although it has shifted with time and technology. In the blatant example of slavery, when slavery was outlawed, a shift in perception took place as well, but not entirely and the laws around miscegenation suggests that latent racist attitudes still held sway.

Popular morality is often not in step with science. Notions about the world can threaten man's views. Galileo Galilee's views did not square with the church. Some time would pass before his theories were accepted. Fundamentalists still fight against the teaching of evolution, although phylobiology seems to have settled the matter in favor of Darwin.

The human genome project has given people a lot to ponder. The means of human reproduction have shifted. In the last century a great deal of effort was expended in preventing pregnancies. There was also the beginnings toward the end of the century in inducing pregnancy. As Harvard Professor, Deborah Spar, quipped: through science we can have sex without pregnancy. Now we can have pregnancy without sex.

In this century human cloning is possible. Legislatures in many parts of the world pass laws against it. There are also places where stem cell research is banned. There are places where fetal remnants are governed or banned. One example where the line is straddled is the human placenta, loaded with stem cells and other goodies, that many an affluent parent(s) "blood bank" for the infant. If a sibling suffering from a fetal disease needs biological material from a sibling, is that something the government needs to become involved in, or even to ban?

There is/was a law on the books in Massachusetts that a medical procedure cannot be performed on a child that would leave the child less well off. However, in one case, a child needed a kidney and the sibling was an ideal match for a kidney transplant. The Court found that the donor child would be less well off if she did not donate the kidney, in that her sister would die without it, and the surviving sister would have to deal with the sorrow and possibly guilt of that death.

In the abstract, rules about conception, and when life begins, seem simple enough to make, but as we get closer to the reality, deciding what is right takes on proportions of the Wisdom of Solomon.

There is a disease called Franconi Anemia that strikes children. It is nearly always fatal. The child can often be saved if a healthy blood donor that is a match can be found and medical steps taken. Often the best donor is a sibling. What parents have done in such cases is to have as many children in succession as possible, racing against the clock to save the afflicted child - hoping a child is born that is a tissue match. What if science can intervene during the early stages and figure out which zygote (sperm-egg joining) has the best chance of producing a child that is a good match and tissue donor? What should public policy be?

There may be impregnated eggs that will not produce a child that is a good tissue match. What should the fate be of these eggs? Should government step forward? One popular view is that since not all the eggs will be brought to term, none should be. It is not realistic to think that all the eggs will be implanted into infertile women. Thus, the parent(s) have to "roll the dice," so to speak and take their chances Yet in all this, we ask, is the public good served by this?

Some will argue that it is a slippery slope from saving a precious baby to eugenics. Today we save a child - tomorrow we make monsters. A compelling argument given the horrors we saw in the last century, yet science and popular understanding are not in sync, here. It is now possible to check our own genetic predisposition to diseases. The human genome projects rolls on as the science of bioinformatics makes genetic determinations ever easier. A predisposition for diseases is now part of medical testing. Certain medications will work better with certain diseases. For example, if a person has a wasting disease, and there are three possible medicines, which one do we give, especially if it turns out that in certain individuals only one works while the other two do not? If time is of the essence, would it not be good to find out which of the three should be used first? This is not science fiction. This is happening today.

Pharmaceutical firms are cutting down the time and cost of developing new drugs because the drugs can be better tailored to the job. Fewer people (although some) would be against this kind of medical research. But take that a step further. Since genetic predispositions can be now determined, will we now bring our genetic profiles out when we get ready to mate?

If sperm and egg can be looked at individually in some future laboratory, will we have satisfied "morality" by not joining sperm and egg until these have been properly selected under a "microscope" and then intermingled at the right moment?

Whether or not Roe should be overturned hardly gets us anywhere. Human reproduction will undergo startling changes that cannot be fully contained. Certainly these things can be kept away from the poor and underclass, but those with wealth and power will find the means.

We are afraid of creating monsters, but if a child's parent does nothing if a child needs help - who then is the monster.

Where is Salomon when you need him?