the Moral Maze

[ramtops]

I was listening to the Moral Maze on the consistently excellent Home Service last night (and aren't we lucky to have it?). The subject was "designer babies", a term I find irritating. Almost as irritating as "saviour babies", which is another one.

I loathe and detest the idea of parents deliberately conceiving a child to in some way "mend" an existing child. I think that having to live with the burden of knowledge that you would not have been born had your sibling not required something from you must be dreadful. And what happens if it doesn't work? - if the sibling still dies, and your birth has effectively been for nothing.

I don't like genetic engineering. I don't like test tube babies and stem cell research and 50-odd year old women giving birth and ovum harvesting and all that stuff. I think we are letting stuff out of Pandora's box, and I wonder where it will end.

and I think it's because our society now rejects illness and death. If you have a child with a genetic disease, that's a tragedy. If you can't have children and you want them, that's a tragedy. I don't mean to minimise or trivialise this, truly I don't. I can't begin to imagine how appalling it must be to find yourself in this situation.

but we don't have a right to children, or to healthy children, and I think that our society is wrong to let people think that they do.

Comments

[robsoft.livejournal.com]

Mac: Nice to read some sense on the subject. I totally agree with you on the subject of "society rejecting illness and death".

Somehow, somewhere along the line, the West has siezed this idea of the right for everyone to have as many healthly, happy children as they like. Regardless of cost, regardless of effort, regardless of any obstacles that nature might put in the way. It doesn't seem right to me, but it's the sort of subject that is incredibly difficult to discuss become of the high emotional content; bring it up and it usually gets someone going within minutes, so...

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I think that having to live with the burden of knowledge that you would not have been born had your sibling not required something from you must be dreadful.

Why? You think those people would rather they'd not been born? It's not like any of us get a choice in it. Is it better to be born because your parents got drunk and fell into bed without using contraception? Or to live out daddy's dream of being a footballer? Or because someone wanted a cute baby to dress in pink or a baby to love who would love them back because no one else does? Or to get a council house? Or to have just, you know, happened, and getting rid of you would have been inconvenient.

There are a million crap reasons to have a kid before science intervenes and saving an existing child seems like a pretty valid one to me. We're not talking about throwaway children that are discarded once the "purpose" has been served. And we're not talking about curing a bout of the measles. You don't want to reject death and illness? I don't get that. Why not? You'd rather have a crippling disability or be dying slowly and uncomfortably than be cured? You can't be saying that, can you? That's what it sounds like but... Sorry, I'm failing to comprehend your point of view.

I was born because having kids was the next stage after marriage, as I understand it. My brother was born in an attempt to save the marriage. My first half sister was born because my stepdad wanted a kid of his own to go with the ready-made ones and my littlest half sister was an accident that the doctors originally reported as "a growth". I'm kinda glad we were all born but none of the "reasons" seem like particularly good ones. A birth to save someone else seems like a decent reason to me, but I don't think reasons matter in the long run. I do plan on rejecting any illness or early death that comes in *my* direction, to the best of my ability, though!

[thewingedteapot.livejournal.com]

I agree with hawkida. And these are children which are also loved and which the families would have gone on to have in any case. It is just their only way of saving the child they have at present that makes them go down this road. The Hashmis are a wonderful family and would give only love to the new child too.
And, as a mother, I would do whatever I had to do to keep my child safe and to help them avoid suffering. I have got the most raw emotions ever when someone has made my children unhappy so I can not imagine what it would be like if I was faced with their death.