The clinic brochure is minimal. Soft colors. A photo of a baby holding a finger. A headline promising “more control over your family’s future.” It does not mention elections.
Today's unwitting financial backer: Dude Wipes — you can open it if you want.
Inside, the language tightens.
A new fertility technique, now offered at a growing number of private clinics, allows parents to preselect not only physical and cognitive traits, but long-term political alignment, using what researchers call Predictive Ideological Mapping (PIM). The process analyzes genetic markers, behavioral tendencies, and probabilistic personality modeling to produce what one document describes as “a projected adult worldview with 72% confidence.”
Parents are then presented with options.
Brought to you by people who also sell the "Time Travel Sucks" tee.
Not parties, exactly. More like tendencies. Risk tolerance. Authority response. Collective versus individual bias. A slider labeled “institutional trust” moves left to right. Another labeled “economic preference rigidity” adjusts in small, expensive increments.
The child does not exist yet. The argument does.
Early adopters have already begun customizing. Clinics report increased demand for what intake forms call “low-conflict Thanksgiving profiles,” though data suggests most clients ultimately select for ideological certainty rather than harmony.
The embryos are ranked accordingly.
Parents Quietly Replace “Healthy Baby” With “Correct Baby”
The procedure itself is technically described as an extension of existing embryo selection practices. Multiple embryos are created, sequenced, and evaluated. Previously, the focus was disease avoidance. Now, the list is longer.
Temperament. Compliance. Susceptibility to outrage. Long-term likelihood of reposting something without reading it.
A final report is generated—12 pages, color-coded—summarizing each embryo’s projected adult identity, including voting probability by age 28.
<blockquote> “It’s not about choosing a party,” said Dr. Helen Voss, Director of Behavioral Genomics at the New Cambridge Reproductive Lab. “It’s about reducing uncertainty. Parents don’t want to wait 18 years to find out who their child argues with.”
The cost ranges from $38,000 to $65,000 depending on how aggressively parents optimize. Financing is available.
Critics have raised concerns about ethical boundaries, long-term societal fragmentation, and the possibility of engineered ideological homogeneity. Clinics have responded by emphasizing that outcomes are probabilistic, not guaranteed.
Still, internal marketing materials highlight a “significant reduction in future household disagreement.”
In one consultation transcript, a couple asked whether it was possible to ensure their child would “respect institutions but question them just enough to seem thoughtful.” The clinician marked a box and said they could try.
Follow-up studies suggest early results are inconclusive.
Several children selected for ideological alignment have already begun disagreeing with their parents in ways described as “statistically annoying but developmentally normal.”
The clinics are not offering refunds.
The models did not account for adolescence.