Critics fear it could also be harnessed to craft 'designer babies.' | Getty Gene editing: The next frontier in America’s abortion wars Longtime combatants find themselves on the same side when it comes to manipulating the DNA of human embryos.

Activists on both sides of the abortion debate now have a common enemy — the use of a powerful new gene editing technology to tinker with the human race.

That may seem like an idea from a sci-fi flick, but it’s already here. The gene-editing technique is already used in research and has the potential to modify human DNA with unprecedented ease in the not-too-distant future. British regulators approved limited experiments in human embryos earlier this month.


The technology holds promise to cure diseases like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell and even revive extinct species. But critics fear it could also be harnessed to craft “designer babies,” who are more intelligent, beautiful or athletic and to “edit” embryonic cells to change an inherited trait forever.

Those dystopian prospects have aligned U.S. groups long at odds: The anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, Family Research Council and the Center for Bioethics and Culture oppose gene editing in embryos. So do abortion rights groups like Our Bodies Ourselves and the leadership of the Pro Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, albeit for very different reasons.

They’re not alone in raising concerns. Scientists and policymakers around the world were drawn up short last April after Chinese researchers reported they had used the technology, called CRISPR-Cas9, to edit the genes of human embryos for the first time. The Obama administration issued a statement a short time later opposing such research. Congress forbid the government to fund similar experiments in this country, and the National Academy of Sciences convened experts last week to begin looking at the ethical, legal and social questions of editing the genes of human embryos.

“Fears about eugenics, a brave new world … are concerns that are shared by people across the political spectrum,” said Nathaniel Comfort, a medical historian at Johns Hopkins University.

Indeed, a poll last month by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and STAT found that about two-thirds of Americans oppose gene editing in fetuses, and 83 percent oppose gene editing solely for intellectual or physical characteristics.

Just because pro- and anti- abortion rights groups are on the same side of this issue, however, doesn’t mean they will join forces on this issue.

Abortion-rights advocates say they are wary of collaborating for fear their views might be misunderstood or distorted.

This is not a case of strange bedfellows, said Marcy Darnovsky, executive editor of The Center for Genetics and Society, adding, “no one is in bed together.”

China breakthrough

In fact, the groups’ rationales for opposing gene editing in human embryos could not be more different.

That came into sharp relief last spring after the Chinese reported their unsuccessful efforts to modify the gene responsible for a potentially fatal blood disorder. Those researchers had hoped to sidestep ethical concerns by using non-viable embryos, meaning the cells could not develop into babies. But the report generated an outpouring of questions, challenges -- and, in some quarters, horror.

“We don’t believe any human being should be used as an experiment, no matter their stage of life,” said David Prentice, vice president and research director of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of Susan B. Anthony List.

Prentice’s group has long opposed any research involving human embryos. This work is even more egregious, he said, because “the embryos are the experiment.”

Groups that favor abortion rights, including the Center for Genetics and Society, support embryonic stem cell research and basic research on gene editing on principle. They see the potential to alleviate suffering from genetic diseases but favor using the technology in adults only. If used in embryos, they worry the technology might further inequalities and bring greater harm to those on society's margins, including the disabled, minorities and gay people.

That’s because some parents might want to use the tool to “prevent or cure” things like dark skin or homosexuality, “instead of looking for social changes to make people see each other as more equal,” said Darnovsky.

The line between altering traits for medical reasons and enhancement is “inherently blurry and subjective," she said, imagining fertility clinics that “offer the latest upgrades for your offspring” and even nationalistic rivalries among countries using the technology.

Other abortion rights groups, including Planned Parenthood and NARAL, have not yet expressed a position.

Debating limits

Neither side of the abortion debate was pleased last December after scientists and bioethicists from around the world attended a meeting in D.C. and recommended a voluntary moratorium on making changes to DNA that could be passed down to subsequent generations, but not an outright ban. (The British research approval complies with that moratorium since it forbids altered embryos from being transplanted to the womb.)

“Future parents have a right to respect the human dignity, or at least respect some morally relevant status of the human embryo,” said Hille Haker, the chair of Catholic Moral Theology at Loyola University Chicago. “We need to ensure the rights of all.”

Abortion rights groups were also unhappy. Such technology “would set in motion a bunch of competitive and commercial dynamics … and even if these genetically modified children weren’t really stronger, better or more intelligent, [we] could be inserting new types of discrimination and new inequality into the world,” Darnovsky said.

Congress took steps to limit the technology a short time later by blocking FDA review of clinical research that modifies a human embryo. That effort, supported by the Susan B. Anthony List, came in the form of a policy rider attached to the year-end spending package. That ban does not apply to privately funded researchers, however.

The debate so far has engendered surprisingly little partisanship, says Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), a physicist by training, who gave a speech in December kicking off the National Academies of Sciences’ International Summit on Human Gene Editing.

“It is very rare that prominent members of the scientific community come together to warn our leaders of technologic breakthroughs that our legal system and our society may not be prepared for,” Foster said.

The summit concluded with a consensus statement that laboratory research should proceed but gene editing in humans should be limited to changes to adults that would not impact their future children.

Foster cautioned lawmakers against overreacting by banning or placing an overly restrictive moratorium on gene editing.

“We have to be careful in defining things here so that you don’t eliminate potential life-improving cures,” he said.

Foster told POLITICO he has heard from scientists who are concerned “this issue will get all tied up over the abortion debate,” interfering with the creation of “good policy decisions.”

Improving on nature

Some scientists cheer the use of the technology, welcoming the chance to prevent devastating diseases in the womb and perhaps even to improve the human race.

“Gene editing of human embryos to eliminate disease should be considered to be ethically the same as using laser surgery to correct eye defects, or a surgeon operating on a baby to repair a congenital heart defect,” molecular geneticist Johnjoe McFadden wrote in The Guardian, supporting Britain's approval. “DNA is just another bit of our body that might go wrong.”

The moral imperative of civilization is “to do our best” when pursuing scientific investigation, including the technology of gene editing, said John Harris, a bioethics professor at the University of Manchester.

“We should improve on human nature “if we can, when we can, by ways that are safe enough,” he said.

But given the state of research, much of the scientific establishment opposes gene manipulation in a human embryo. Currently, the risks are much greater than the potential benefits, said NIH’s policy chief, Kathy Hudson.

While the technology is “very precise, it also makes errors and those errors can be catastrophic,” she said. “A small percentage of catastrophic errors in humans doesn’t really pass the test.”

Many biotechnology companies, including CRISPR Therapeutics, and pharma giants like Novartis, have made it clear they are not pursuing gene editing of human embryos at this time.

But the recent policy rider passed by Congress wouldn’t prohibit most embryo gene editing in laboratory settings. At least $1 billion in private funds have gone into CRISPR companies already "so there's loads of private money that could fund research attempts in human embryos even if the FDA and NIH don't like it" said Paul Knoepfler, a professor at University of California Davis’s Genome Center.

That’s one reason it’s important that the public and politicians to be involved in the debate, said Patti Zettler, a law professor at Georgia State University and former associate chief counsel at the FDA.

Anti-abortion groups say they are willing to work with any and all groups to achieve a ban -- including those who support abortion rights.

“Very often, you find when you work alongside somebody on a particular issue, you get to know more about them and their motivations and it helps tear downs the walls that might have built up,” said Prentice of Susan B. Anthony List.

To date, no one in the abortion rights movement has taken him up on that offer.

