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Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
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I’ll admit I’m pretty close to being anti-natalist from the jump. I think it is morally wrong to voluntarily have children and having transparent knowledge that you have hereditary conditions that could cause a human to be totally disabled and subject them to being society’s burden after the parents have left this earth. Subjecting them to a life of discrimination and potential bullying would be the cruelest thing you could do IMO.
I won’t even have kids myself because I’m black and I don’t want to subject another human being to a life of racial inequality and discrimination just because of their skin color.
I'm not sure about "morally wrong" but I think anyone who decides to have kids ought to think about their own genetics and that of their spouse/SO/whatever you want to call him or her. People with Tay-Sachs for example can avoid choosing a partner who also is a carrier so they don't have a kid with the full-blown disease.
Although, I'm with Diss here - I don't want kids in the first place. So I'm talking "theoretically and for entertainment purposes only."
I think there's a difference between being born blind or going blind, and making the most of it, versus choosing to conceive a kid you know will go blind. To me that's a lot like choosing to blind someone, which is obviously wrong.
In the OP's example a man and wife have a condition that caused them to gradually go blind. Their daughter is now 21 and starting to go blind. Obviously the husband and wife don't think their conditions are bad enough to deny life to their daughter. I won't say what I think of your analogy with deliberately blinding someone.
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Isn't the life expectancy for a cystic fibrosis patient to manages to survive childhood something like 40?
Again, if you get a surprise diagnosis, of course you're going to do your best to live a fulfilling life in the time you have with the condition you have. But deliberately choosing to curtail your kid's life and opportunities by deciding to conceive a child with the condition is something else.
I don't know what Gunnar Esiason's life expectancy is right now. He's 26. I do know that his parents were surprised by the diagnosis.
You may think it's your place to judge people who have babies under adverse circumstances, but I don't.
Thanks for this very good conversation. Allow me to write a few things:
1. To those of you who are somehow suggesting that being blind will automatically mean that a person will have a terrible life, that's somewhat of an oversimplification. I think we can all agree that being able to see is better than NOT being able to see. I think we can also agree that being blind (especially after being able to see for many years) will have a traumatic effect on one's life. Making matters worse, I live in Malaysia, a country that does a poor job ensuring the well-being of the handicapped, so she'll be forced to rely on her family and charities for the things she can't do herself. If/when the daughter goes completely blind, her life WILL get significantly worse - at least for a while.
2. There's not doubt the daughter will learn to live with her disability. That's because she'll have to just to survive. That doesn't change the fact that her life is about to get really hard.
3. I think of my own wife and our quest to have children, even in our 40s. Yes, I've read that older parents are more likely to conceive a child that'll be on the autism spectrum. As for our genetic background, for my wife it's somewhat of an unknown. She was adopted and has no record of her biological family. For me? The men seem to die a bit younger than the women (My father was 74 and died of cancer, his father died at 82 from heart attack, my other grandfather died at 77 from a heart attack), but the women all seemed to live quite long (my mother is alive and healthy at 77, her mother died at 93, my other grandmother died at 95). I'm also aware that some mental issues have been passed down from my mother's side (history of depression in my grandmother, mother and uncle) and tourettes (my uncle). And even one of my nephews is on the spectrum for autism.
So we had a lot to think about when having kids, but I also thought that if any one of those problems were passed down to our child, we could deal with them.
And we could have dealt with blindness as well - but if we had known that if we decided to have children, there was a greater than 50% chance the child would go blind (or deaf, or need a wheel chair), I'm just not sure I'd want to bring that child into the world.
"Was it morally wrong for them to have had children knowing that their condition could be passed down to their child?"
no.
every little thing is "passed down".
some are good and some are bad.
some are "expressed", meaning that the child has the good/bad.
some are "recessive"....they might show up much later.
in our family, we have Type One diabetes (it kills, too)
metal retardation, male pattern baldness, and a lot
of other things. pregnancy was still popular.
and moral.
"Was it morally wrong for them to have had children knowing that their condition could be passed down to their child?"
no.
every little thing is "passed down".
some are good and some are bad.
some are "expressed", meaning that the child has the good/bad.
some are "recessive"....they might show up much later.
in our family, we have Type One diabetes (it kills, too)
metal retardation, male pattern baldness, and a lot
of other things. pregnancy was still popular.
and moral.
I dunno, breeding with known male pattern baldness is fairly extreme. I guess you could present each male child with a lifelong membership in "Hair Club for Men" though. Oh, the humanity!
as someone said before.. Probably not the place for this.. Great Debates could be a better area.. But, fascinating to read some of the responses from the regulars in this forum, which.. I don't pop into very much.
First.. As to OP's point.. I fall on the side that blindness is not a condition that I believe would be up for debate. Even CF, as someone else brought up.. That.. gets really tough.. Blindness.. Listen, people can be blind and have a wonderful life. And, as days go on, that life seems to be getting easier and easier. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to go blind tomorrow(to Lillie767's point earlier.. Absolutely I think that's a fear of every sighted person. Right ahead or behind all your teeth falling out all at once) , and I'm certainly not implying that blind folks have an easy life.. But I'd say it's a hell of a lot better now than it was in the 60's or 1860's.
CF.. ugh.. that is tough. That's a pretty horrid death. But.. Life expectancy is up to near 50 years. I believe that was only 30 or so just.. 30 years ago? So.. Tough, but I think.. Go for it. Is it better to have love and lost or never have loved at all? Plus.. Isn't CF recessive? You need both parents to be a carrier? I think that part also makes a difference.
Now.. let's get into some of the really rare stuff. The ones where kids are born deformed.. Aren't apt to live more than a year or two. Is it right to bring them into the world in that case.. Much stronger argument against it there. I'm reminded of a case, I don't recall the name of the disease.. But parents were thrown into jail (perhaps just the mother) for killing their kid.. Turns out that their kid had a rare disorder that formed anti-freeze in their blood, which killed them. Like 1 doctor in the entire US was familiar with the case. I saw it on Unsolved Mysteries years ago. Patricia Stallings.. https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com...icia_Stallings
I wasn't sure where to put this question, so if a mod wants to move it to a more appropriate place, I won't be upset.
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