Deaf demand right to designer deaf children

The Sunday Times (UK) ^ | December 23, 2007 | Sarah-Kate Templeton

[neverdem]

Weird reproductive rights ping

[mikrofon]

Totally agreed

[nothingnew]

WTF is next?

I await your return, King of Kings.....

FMCDH(BITS)

[Jaysun]

This is sick and absurd. I wonder how many times they’ll have to abort before they conceive a child who is deaf?

[The Pack Knight]

Sooner or later such a designer child will sue their parents regarding his/her civil rights and the Liberals have a moral dilemma:

You know, there was a case where a child (through a guardian ad litem) successfully sued a doctor for "wrongful birth".

The doctor had either performed a faulty vasectomy on the father after the parents learned that all of their children would be born deaf, or had informed the parents that their future children would not be deaf. I can't remember which.

Anyway, the appellate judge reasoned that the child had a right to be born whole that had been violated by the doctor's negligent conduct.

In this case, if the same common law reasoning holds in English courts, that same right would have been violated intentionally by the child's parents. Even if this statute does not make it a crime to intentionally have a disabled child, it doesn't necessarily protect the parents from liability towards their children for violating their rights.

After all, the RNID wants to protect the parents' "right to choose", but what of the child's?

[SERKIT]

Why do it? It's the same reason a dog licks his nutz...because he CAN.

In all genetic engineering misadventures like this, just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

[w1andsodidwe]

My grandfather was a hearing child born of two deaf parents. His first language was sign language. When he was old enough for school he could not speak, so he went to live with his Aunt and Uncle and family for a year to learn to speak. He then started school one year late, but quickly caught up and graduated a year early because sign language involves a lot of spelling and he was quickly able to learn to read.

In later years he never forgot how to sign. As a child I was traveling with him and we stopped ina restaurant. While we were there a bus load of deaf arrived to eat. My grandfather had the best time chatting with them.

The idea that a hearing child won't fit into a deaf family is just unfathomable.

[Zero Sum]

I have no objection, so long as the parents accept no taxpayer $ or taxpayer-funded support for the child.

As bad as ill-conceived income redistribution may be (read: theft), you don't see an even bigger moral issue here? Not even just a little bit?

[VOA]

Madness.

I wish I had your restraint.
When I read stuff like this, I'm add this keyword to the thread:

KEYWORD: SHEERUTTERMADNESS

[The Pack Knight]

I remember now. The case is Turpin v. Sortini, 643 P.2d 954 (Cal. App. 1982).

[kinoxi]

I’ve always wanted my children to have more and be more than myself. The selfishness, arrogance, and sheer cruelty of forcing your children into this life with a functional disability is truly evil and foreign to me.

[Mila]

“I remember reading about a poll that said that a substantial percentage of deaf people wouldn’t,if given the chance,choose to have a treatment or device that would allow them to hear.The explanation was,IIRC,that these people are too “proud” of their “deaf culture” to leave it.”

I’ve heard the same thing and it just boggles the mind. I remember seeing a report on cochlear implants and how it was being met with great disapproval by some in the deaf community that didn’t consider deafness as an abnormality that needed to be “fixed”.

[FreedomCalls]

Is this a joke ?

They are completely serious. In 2107 when a history book covering the decline and fall of Western Civilization is written (in Arabic?), this will probably be included.

[tanknetter]

This is narcissism taken to the max.

That's it exactly - but it's really just the old "what was good enough for me is good enough for you" parental mentality applied to the deaf.

I couldn't imagine a situation where I wouldn't want my children to have better opportunities and a better standard of living/quality of life than I had.

I also couldn't imagine a situation where, upon learning that my parents had deliberately engineered me to have limitations along the lines of being deaf, I wouldn't despise them with all my soul.

[Mila]

“I remember reading about a poll that said that a substantial percentage of deaf people wouldn’t,if given the chance,choose to have a treatment or device that would allow them to hear.The explanation was,IIRC,that these people are too “proud” of their “deaf culture” to leave it.”

I’ve heard the same thing and it just boggles the mind. I remember seeing a report on cochlear implants and how it was being met with great disapproval by some in the deaf community that didn’t consider deafness as an abnormality that needed to be “fixed”.

[proudofthesouth]

Madness doesn’t begin to describe it. They should be declared insane and forbidden to bear children!

[IronJack]

Evolutionary U-turn alert.

[ApplegateRanch]

How utterly selfish these people are! Shame on them, wishing a disability on a child.

Sadly, these activists are very quick to point out that they consider hearing a 'disability'; that they have a richer life, with more communicative nuance than the rest of us.

At least the blind don't harbor such delusions...yet.

[ApplegateRanch]

Too bad it isn’t just, “Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat...”.

Guess she hasn’t been mugged often enough yet.

[humblegunner]

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