The practice of gender selection of embryos is “heinous” and will lead to genocide against communities with particular conditions, says an organization which represents people who suffer from a mild form of autism, according to The Dominion Post.
Asperger’s Syndrome New Zealand has lashed out at a Bioethics Council recommendation to government that parents undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) should be allowed to select the gender of their babies.
The council report – titled Who Gets Born? – said parents should be allowed to gender-balance their families. Under laws introduced in 2004, sex selection is banned except, where it is part of treatment for a genetic disorder or disease. It is also banned in Australia and the United Kingdom, but is allowed in the United States.
People with Asperger’s vigilantly opposed any discriminatory action that could impinge on their status as equal and equally-valued beings.
“Any hint of the heinous practice of sex selection being permitted will inevitably pave the way to genocide against communities with conditions that are preponderant in one gender or the other,” said a spokesperson for the group. “It takes a rather thoughtless breed of eugenicists to recommend this thin-end-of-the-wedge approach to introducing what will end in tragedy if the recommendation is not killed off immediately.”
A rather thoughtless breed of eugenecists? Isn’t that a bit redundant?
Here’s the thing. Once babies are subject to simple whims or economic circumstance, doesn’t it stand to logic that disability and gender would play a role in decision making as well?
If life isn’t sacred, why is gender?
Once, the matter of life or death is allowed to be a “personal choice,” it stands to reason that all the other qualities of the child are up for lethal scrutiny as well. I’m pretty sure that picking our battles and negotiating in the fight to protect certain classes of the unborn is not going to ever be succesful. Either you’re pro-life or you’re pro-abortion. That’s it. You can’t be pro-abortion in some cases and pro-life for others.
So, while I am horrified by the thought of gender selection and “weeding out” children with disabilities, I’m positive that we won’t get far arguing our case unless we are committed to all life.
Different classes of people are going to fight their own wedge battles creating ideological schisms among pressure groups such as homosexuals. If homosexuality is discovered to be innate, then scientists could detect whether a fetus would likely be homosexual or not. They, of course, will rally for the protection of gay babies.
The disabled will fight their battle as well.
But it comes down to this -either we all admit that all life is sacred, or nobody’s is.
June 20, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I have Asperger’s, and while I am not involved in the online culture much anymore, I used to be.
People with Asperger’s are viewed as having something wrong, while we insist we merely have different ways of thinking and interacting with the world. Granted, it can cause some problems, but so can many other personality traits.
As a result, there is a animosity towards psychologists, and a hostility towards psychiatrists, with cases of them trying to “drug” the person back to “normal”.
People without Asperger’s are refered to as NT’s (Neuro-Typicals) and are sometimes seen as a hostile group.
Today Down’s Syndrome, tomorrow Asperger’s, day after that, Brown eyes.