Monday, January 08, 2007

Designer Defects

Here's a story that just makes me shake my head in disgust: A New York Post article all about parents who design their children to have the same disabilities as them, such as dwarfism or deafness.

Such is the madness of our time, I suppose. I've read some people attributing this phenomenon to the very strident identity politics for some of these groups, but all I can think is that such a thing is a sickness.

There was a time when people actually considered defects to be, well, defects. Curses of fate, or what not. Not something you would actively want, or worse, willfully inflict on another person.

Yes, yes, you want a child that is like you. But why would you curse your child to share your disability? Why put them through a lifetime of hardship and trauma just to satisfy your ego? Yes, hardship can bring character, but we usually prefer to have our character built by fate and not by purpose.

What will you tell your children? How will you explain to them that they might have lead a normal life, but you handicapped them to stroke your self-satisfaction?

And where should we draw the line? If parents are allowed to design their children to be deaf or dwarfed, what about paralysis? Should parents be given the liberty to sever their children's spinal columns? How about amputation? What makes genetic defects all right but physical handicaps off limits?

No, this is only a sign of people who love themselves more than their children, as evidenced that they would deliberately inflict this on their offspring. It's utterly degenerate, and I hope such practices are put to an end.

1 comment:

Christine said...

Honestly, if I thought my hand was genetic (which the research says it isn't) I wouldn't intentionally give birth. My hand isn't the worst thing to befall a person, but I still wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I don't understand why anyone would WANT their child to go through all the nastiness that comes with any type of birh defect, disorder, etc.