Wanting Babies Like Themselves, Some Parents Choose Genetic Defects

New York Times ^ | 5 December 2006 | DARSHAK M. SANGHAVI, M.D.

[shrinkermd]

...Yet Susannah A. Baruch and colleagues at the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University recently surveyed 190 American P.G.D. clinics, and found that 3 percent reported having intentionally used P.G.D. “to select an embryo for the presence of a disability.”

In other words, some parents had the painful and expensive fertility procedure for the express purpose of having children with a defective gene. It turns out that some mothers and fathers don’t view certain genetic conditions as disabilities but as a way to enter into a rich, shared culture.

[DuncanWaring]

Accepting a disabled child is commendable.

Intentionally going out of your way to create one is barbaric.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

And so more and more people rush to prove that my user name speaks the truth.

[Moonman62]

Why are these people getting all those subsidies and tax exemptions if they are going to deliberately reproduce their disability!!!??

I think you answered your own question.

[BlazingArizona]

we, as a species, are doomed. We have been toying with natural selection for decades and have been weakening the gene pool by keeping alive and alowing to prosper, individuals who would normally die.

You're being misled by the MSM here. The existence of a few sickos who are deliberately trying to bear Isabel children means nothing when the vast majority of parents, given improved technology for genetic selection, are trying for children better than themselves: smarter, tougher, less subject to disease.

[ExpatCanuck]

Anyone who would intentionally do this has a severe mental disorder in addition to whatever physical handicap they have.

[SmoothTalker]

"You're defending life by borrowing the same rhetoric used by the pro-abort crowd, that bringing to term a disabled child is "sick"."

I took what he was saying to mean that deliberately taking steps to make sure your children are born disabled is sick which I think it is. There is nothing wrong at all with having a disabled child. Purposefully making sure that child is born disabled is unnatural and disgusting.

[SmoothTalker]

"You're defending life by borrowing the same rhetoric used by the pro-abort crowd, that bringing to term a disabled child is "sick"."

I took what he was saying to mean that deliberately taking steps to make sure your children are born disabled is sick which I think it is. There is nothing wrong at all with having a disabled child. Purposefully making sure that child is born disabled is unnatural and disgusting.

[CPOSharky]

It turns out that some mothers and fathers don’t view certain genetic conditions as disabilities but as a way to enter into a rich, shared culture permanant victimhood.

[Adder]

Thank you..that is what I was saying.

Sorry to all if it was muddled.

[veronica]

I need to stop reading the news. It's an exercise in frustration. Creating deformed babies on purpose - madness!

[Flash Bazbeaux]

"This child abuse plain and simple."

I'm not sure it's "child abuse" exactly, because there is no child to abuse before actual conception occurs. I can see calling this "child abuse" as being turned into a pro-abortion argument -- along the lines of if it's wrong to create one deliberately, it's OK to kill one that got that way accidently. Another aspect being "oh, how can you say defective children are also full human beings when you oppose the creation of them deliberately?"

Now this argument does not answer any questions, it merely tries to paint you as some sort of hypocrite -- which to "progressives" these days is the same as winning the argument.

Whatever you call it, though, it's sick.

[Raymann]

That used to worry me but it won't be too long before genetic engineering becomes widespread