"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. 

"If states are using DNA to verify paternity on births to underage women..."

"... why not use it to verify paternity on all births?"

"If DNA sampling was actually like fingerprinting, [the Supreme Court's] argument might be convincing."

"But of course it isn’t. Fingerprints are a phenotype that reveals nothing except a random pattern that no two individuals share. DNA, however, is your genotype: the blueprint for your entire physical person. If the government has my fingerprints, it’s like they have my randomly assigned Social Security number. If it has my DNA, it’s like they have the entire operating system."

Harvard lawprof Noah Feldman says in "Court’s DNA Ruling Brings U.S. a Step Closer to 'Gattaca.'"

Like many, Feldman bestows admiration on the oft-scorned Scalia, who dissented. Feldman — despite the admiration — refers to the Scalia opinion as "his pungent dissent." I guess he wanted a less-common adjective to tack onto the word "dissent." What are the usual words? Stinging, sharp, pointed, biting...
But "pungent"? Doesn't that mean smelly? Feldman doesn't intend an insult, so, did he — shunning the trite — pick the wrong word? Actually, no. The (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary gives 6 meanings for the adjective "pungent," and they justify it as a compliment paid to a strong and well-written dissenting opinion:

1. Of pain: as if caused by a sharp point; piercing, stabbing; pricking....

2. Sharp; piercing; that has sharp points....

3. Forcefully or incisively expressed; (of argument, opinion, etc.) convincing, persuasive; sharply critical; (of censure) trenchant, biting....

1747   J. Edwards True Saints vi,   He expressed himself with that exact propriety and pertinency, in such significant, weighty, pungent expressions, with that decent appearance of sincerity.
1761   tr. C. Batteux Course Belles Lettres III. ii. v. 195   This poet is author of two satires universally esteemed the most pungent and best written in our language....
1876   Atlantic Monthly Aug. 202/2   He forced the unwilling esteem of men by his inflexible probity, his pungent logic, and his untiring industry.
1953   E. Jones Sigmund Freud I. viii. 168   She had a pungent tongue that contributed to a store of family epigrams....

4. a. Affecting the sense organs, esp. those of smell or taste, with a sharp, penetrating sensation; acrid, irritant; intensely flavoured, piquant....

5. Strongly or painfully affecting the feelings; intense, keen; painful, poignant. Now rare and literary....

6. Mentally stimulating or exciting; fascinating. Now rare....

I think the "smelly" connotation arose — a rose! — over the years as people used the word as a humorous euphemism, causing it to sound — at least to me — like a insult. I will reassign it to my mental list of noninsults.

In addition to troublesome words like "pungent," we're expected to get "Gattaca." That's a movie I put on my "watchlist" at Amazon after I saw that it was one of "The Top 5 Underrated Sci-Fi Movie Masterpieces."

"Mississippi lawmakers have embarked on a controversial campaign to discourage older men from having sex with teenagers."

"Starting in July, doctors and midwives in the state will be required by law to collect samples of umbilical cord blood from babies born to some women under the age of 16. Officials will analyze the samples and try to identify the fathers through matches in the state's DNA database."

NPR reports today... the same day we hear the Supreme Court's ruling that allows police to routinely collect DNA from anyone who's been arrested.

... Matthew Steffey, a constitutional law professor at the Mississippi College law school in Jackson, said the measure could raise a "hornet's nest" of legal problems. "It is not at all clear that the legislature can deputize health care workers to collect evidence without a warrant," he said.

Here's a news report on today's Supreme Court case:

The police may take DNA samples from people arrested in connection with serious crimes, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The federal government and 28 states authorize the practice, and law enforcement officials say it is a valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes....

Justice Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that the swabbing procedure was a search under the Fourth Amendment, meaning it had to be justified as reasonable. It was, he said, given “the need for law enforcement officers in a safe and accurate way to process and identify the persons and possessions they must take into custody.”

To identify the persons and put tham into the machine that will match them up with unsolved crimes where DNA has been collected, like all those cases where underage women have given birth.

Shouldn't the states also be collecting some clumps of cells from all the various abortions performed on underaged women?