Ever since the first “test tube” baby was born, I have long since struggled with the ethics of fertility treatments, and prenatal testing. I certainly don’t judge anyone who has gone through extensive lengths to have a child. But I’ve struggled with the idea of where it all ends. At what point have we breached ethical boundaries and simply crossed the line?
Such is the question surrounding the idea that you can pick your child’s gender. Some say that it seems unethical–you should just take what you get and be happy. But other parents feel strongly that they want one child of each sex. There is little ethical debate in this if the embryos are already being created in the lab for use in an in vitro fertilization procedure. However, making made to order babies is now being taken to a new height: some parents are choosing to have babies with specific defects just like them.
The idea that you can purposefully choose your child to have a disability seems highly unethical at first glance. Why on earth would you want to give your child the same disability you have? It would seem like if you get to choose, you would choose your child NOT to have your own disabilities. Especially if those disabilities run with health risks.
However, it has sparked a huge debate over what exactly makes someone disabled. Take for example, Gibson and Cara Reynolds of New Jersey. They plan to use embryonic screening to have a child just like them; a child of noticeably short stature. Last year, their newborn daughter died of a devastating dwarf related condition. The chances of a dwarf couple conceiving a child with the lethal condition is 25%–the same as the chances of them conceiving a child of normal height. To avoid a similar tragedy, they have sought embryonic screening to ensure that they have a healthy embryo–that is a dwarf. As Cara points out, “a healthy dwarf embryo is a healthy embryo.”
Other than the fact that they are vertically challenged, there is nothing wrong with them. They are not asking for a child with a heart malformation, or something more serious. (In fact they’re trying to avoid it.) Just a child who will look like them. And to them, short is quite normal. Similarly, there are parents going to clinics asking for not only a particular sex, but children who are blind or deaf (as their parents are).
Like I have said, to give a child a disability on purpose seems cruel. But the debate then is what exactly is a disability and what is ‘normal’. To tell an adult who is blind or deaf or has some other ‘disability’, that there child would be better off without said disability is, well. . .insulting.
I have to say that as our daughter has made friends with another girl who is blind. . .she certainly doesn’t seem to have a disability. In fact, the last time we were out, it was our blind friend that warned my three year old of some bone head who was driving a motor cycle on the sidewalk. She “saw” it long before my sighted three year old did. If you ask her, she says she’s not blind. . .she just sees differently.
So what do you think? Is it okay for parents with certain, non life-threatening disabilities to use embryonic screening to have a child with the same disability? Or is it crossing the boundary lines? Here is the original article.
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