LePetitPrince wrote:
Quote:
As long as the process of creating a child involves two people, in my view those two people should be free to make their own decisions without outside influence or condemnation
These two people must be responsible and if they are aware of having serious genetic diseases they must be aware that these disease-causing genes will be spread to the next generation of humans ...contributing in more suffering.
A couple of two having Major Thalessemia would surely have childrens with Thalessemia . and they'll suffer like their parents. Is this fair? Is because they are free then they have the right to cause more suffering in humanity? They could adopt children , there are millions of poor children who need parents out there and people can love adopted children and die for them as if they are their biological children , this will be a better contribution to humanity.
Well...autism isn't really a disease by my definition, or even by the official classification. (Surely you realize this to some degree, seeing as you wrote a thoughtful post about whether AS/HFA "really" exists.) It is quite possible to live a perfectly fulfilling life with AS without even knowing about it, perhaps reproducing along the way as people with AS have always reproduced. I don't really see it as a disease like cancer, where you'll absolutely die without treatment. Even within the community of people who have 100% genetic diseases, there is a lot of thoughtful disagreement on this issue. I used to be interested in Cystic Fibrosis and learned that opinions vary widely in the CF community about having children. And CF is a fatal disease. Yet there are some people who have lived with it and "suffered" with it all their lives, who are not entirely opposed to having biological children. Call them selfish if you will, but I personally try to refrain from judging other people's personal decisions. You can't know someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes and all of that.
And again, adoption is great, but I dislike how people promote it for everyone. I personally have some serious reservations about it, and feel that in a perfect world it wouldn't even be necessary. I can't get around the fact that in many countries (and perhaps even in this one) women are pressured into giving their babies up and perhaps would prefer not to. I can't imagine how painful it would be. For that reason, I personally could not adopt unless the child was either a foster child or I knew the birth mother personally and knew that she really did want to give the child up for adoption. I personally feel that it is better to try and help third-world countries come out of their abject poverty than simply to adopt a child. That's a great thing, but it's also just a band-aid solution to a larger, more troubling problem. Your analysis of the situation is quite simplistic. It's fine that you feel that way, but realize that in a topic as complex as this one, others might come to different, equally valid conclusions.
I don't agree with jonk that our modern world greatly changes the picture about reproductive rights. Is there any evidence that disabled children are responsible for more carbon emissions than able-bodied children, for instance? Heck, if we were going to follow this line of thought, we'd just have to stop all Americans from reproducing, seeing as we're the ones consuming resources at a rate vastly disproportionate to our numbers. Of course, that wasn't what LePetit was suggesting on this thread at all.
11 Feb 2008, 6:13 pm
