Family · Nationwide · August 26, 2026
The Economist Champions Embryo Screening for IQ, Height, Longevity
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 3
“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
The whole argument is staged on ground almost no pastor or ordinary church member has training in: polygenic risk scores, embryo biopsy, ranking algorithms, the difference between screening for a single-gene disease and scoring for predicted IQ or height. A congregant who objects on moral grounds is easily told he does not understand the science, and the story's own framing — 'negative' screening now, better predictive scores later — is designed to be answerable only by specialists.
Counter-Rule 3 · Preparation and Width
Prepare the unfamiliar ground before you are dragged onto it. "I don't know, I'll find out and come back" beats an improvised answer.
Learn the vocabulary before the conversation happens rather than during it: read the CDC's ART surveillance pages so you know how many cycles are performed and how embryo disposition is reported, and learn what PGT-M, PGT-A and polygenic scoring actually each mean. When asked something technical you don't know, say 'I don't know — I'll find out and come back,' then actually come back. Write down the two or three factual questions you'd put to a clinic (how many embryos created, what happens to the ones not chosen) and keep them on paper.
Rule 5
“Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.”
'Sex is for fun; embryo screening is for babies' is not an argument, it is a one-line joke engineered to make the ordinary Christian understanding of procreation sound rustic and slightly ridiculous. Quoted in a major magazine package, it does more work than any of the surrounding data, because it invites the objector to sputter and so confirm the caricature.
Counter-Rule 5 · Dignity as Armor
Do not supply the angry reaction the ridicule is fishing for. Composure denies it the thing it feeds on.
Refuse the reaction the line is fishing for. In conversation or on social media, don't answer the quip at all — answer the concrete question underneath it: how many embryos are created in a screening cycle, and what becomes of the ones ranked lower. Keep your tone level and your figures sourced; a calm person citing the CDC's own numbers cannot be made to look like the punchline.
Rule 12
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”
Three of the four action items are pastoral, not polemical — how to counsel couples, what the denomination teaches, what to ask a provider. That is the tell: the screening companies are offering something to couples in real grief over infertility, and criticism alone offers those couples nothing.
Counter-Rule 12 · Universal Construction
The book agrees with this one rather than inverting it: if you would tear something down, you are obliged to build the thing that replaces it.
Ask your elders this month what the church actually has for an infertile couple: a named person to walk with them, help with the cost of adoption or of ethically bounded treatment, a support group that meets. If the answer is 'nothing yet,' propose one concrete item and volunteer to carry it. Building the alternative is the part of the objection that costs something, and it is the only part that reaches the couple in the pew.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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