Blog Post #12

I think there comes a very high cost to having an ability to design your child. Although the advantages that come to having antenatal screenings could be helpful in identifying children with burdensome conditions, reduce risks to mothers, reduce public costs of care and our ability to choice. But I think that having this miracle, the ability  to bring a child into the world, is something that shouldn't be designed by you. I think it is naive to think that parents should have a choice over what their child is like, despite their autonomy. In the case of Down syndrome, I think that by considering it as a genetic defect further promotes this idea of ableism - or otherwise discrimination in favor of able-bodied people.
Just because someone is handicapped - it does not lessen them as a person. To think that you could save your child from a life as a child with down syndrome is a mightily selfish thing. From those handicapped that I have had the privilege to know (all who are working members of society), they do not look down on their situation - they are proud to be who they are, just the same as someone who is proud to be an individual. I think the real reason that people try to get rid of this "defect" is that it is a "burden" that many parents don't want to deal with.
I think that for situations in which the child is still able to function - like down syndrome child - genetic specialization is an unethical thing. There is a valuable lesson that we can learn from any handicapped individual. If we rid ourselves of such an opportunity, we are missing something pretty important that we cannot learn from anything else.