pre-natal decisions

warning: genetically modified humans

"...human pre-natal diagnosis... The object of the exercise: to identify foetuses with the earmarks of genetic disease as candidates for abortion."

rip and i talked about this the other month. we agreed that if we knew our kid was going to have a major mental or physical disability we would most likely choose to abort it. reasoning: "growing up is hard enough. i wouldn't want my kid to go through more discrimination / bullying / hardship if he had no arms or some sort of major mental handicap."

one of us then asked what we would do if we knew the kid was going to be gay? i said i'd keep it, rip said he would have to think about it. i was offended. but after thinking about it, i now see how hypocritical that is. being gay is hard. in america most of us don't worry about getting killed just because we're a certain ethnicity (it does happen, but not often enough to be really worried about). but being gay is dangerous. crazy haters will make my kid's life miserable just cause he likes boys instead of girls. so if my reasoning for not wanting a child with harlequin ichthyosis is that i want my kid's life be "easy" doesn't that mean i should also not want my kid to be gay? but how far does this go? (and yes, i know i'm approaching, or maybe even on, a slippery slope here...) should i also not want to have girl?

it's hard to be a parent. good parents want whatever's best for their child. but what's "best" isn't always clear.