Technological Morality

Many of the technologies available to the civilizations of the New Diasporia have the potential to be both socially and morally disruptive. Just as the technologies of contraception, in vitro fertilization and fetal stem cell utilization carried a grave moral price so can many of the possible utilizations of known technologies in the New Diasporia universe exact a grave moral cost.
One of the greatest lessons of Natural Law is that just because something is possible does not mean that it should be done. It is often possible to destroy human life or dignity, to exploit the poor, even to commit crimes against God and humanity. The possibility that such things can be done does not give license to do them.
In the Highlands at least, and to a lesser extent in the Midlands, a combination of secular laws and Church interdictions have kept most immoral and dangerous practices in check.  There are really no new evils. Abortion was known and practiced in the Roman Republic of Julius Caesar's time. Most of the evil practices of the new science are just new ways of committing the old evils of trying to subvert the authority of God. These ancient evils are banned. Education in the precepts of Natural Law are even more effective than laws and bands in preventing much of these kinds of actions.
The dangers of unlimited nanite replicators is well known to even the youngest school child. Like most technologies nanotech did not spring full grown at the TL A level. Science had worked for over a century on the construction of nano-machines. Constructing the first generation nanomaterials used biological processes to create molecular materials. Next came the construction of the first limited assemblers, able to create other nano-machines. Some of these were constructed to work in the construction of chemical and biochemical compounds, others to construct second generation nano-machines.
It was inevitable that eventually a sloppy or overly arrogant researcher would overreach and create nanites which were neither self-limiting nor incapable of replication. This grey goo apocalypse fortunately happened at the Grytotech orbital research station, instead of on an inhabited world. The resulting fifty year bane on nanotech research pushed commercially available nantechnology up at least a tech level.
The development of deflector force fields made protection against such out of control nanotechnology safe enough in the public and Church mind to allow its more general use. A very rigid system of ethical rules for the production and use of nanotechnology is enforced in the Highlands. Most places in the Midlands follow similar rules. In the Wilds less oversight has resulted in some horrific results, which have acted as a warning to some, but been ignored by others.