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Lesbian couple choose to have a deaf child

 
  

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Fist Fun
06:56 / 10.04.02
Yeah, but SFD, how would you answer the question posed by Jeanette Winterson.
How would either of the lesbians have felt if their own parents had said that heterosexuality was such a beautiful thing that they had to screen out any potential gay gene in their children, just to make sure they had a good life?

How does that relate to what Tom has said above:
I'm not sure, but I don't know that if forced to make a choice about the sexuality of my child that I might not vote gay... Is that the same?
 
 
that
08:15 / 10.04.02
I'd just like to say that I too can totally see where the couple are coming from...but that has already been expressed by several people here far better than I could put it.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
08:35 / 10.04.02
buk - the first (winterson's) question: it is not a fair comparison. a deaf child is not the norm in the same way a gay child is not the norm. every parent forces their lifestyle choices on their children - religion, meat eating, heterosexuality. this story has made the news because it's different. a perceived 'less than' attribute is being preferred by the couple. if i had a child, i *would* want it to be a hearing child. is that because i am not hearing impaired and i would like them to be like me, or because i think/assume life is easier if a person can hear? i will try and discuss this with my hearing impaired ex - she might agree and be able to word it better, or she might think the couple and myself are full of shit.

as for the second question: if forced, i would always choose to have a queer child. i don't find the heterosexual world attractive in the least, and i think my child would be better off away/outside of it.

if you're on the outside, the inside isn't always something you will aspire to.
 
 
gozer the destructor
09:03 / 10.04.02
I think that it's important to keep in mind that what they're doing is what they want to do and although it seemed a little difficult for me to comprehend 'why' they had made that decision it was there decision, from what i've read they arn't manipulating the genes in any way that isn't naturally done by choosing a donor of sperm for intelligence or attractiveness (as I have heard most homosexual couples do when planning a child) AND it is them who have to live with the fact that they have made a conciouss attempt to influence that childs future-if the child then rebels against that it is they who have to live with that-personally I think if you want a child you have a child and you accept what you get and give it as much love as you can no matter what it decides to do, be, or think.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
13:56 / 10.04.02
A couple things:

It's important to remember that this couple did not actively splice genes in order to have deaf children. I'm a little rankled at the use of the term "designer baby" in the Annanova story. They chose to use sperm donated by a deaf person with a history of deafness in his family. There was a higher chance that their children would be born deaf, but it wasn't a certainty, and they did not specifically pick out a specific "deaf gene" in order to guarantee that their children would be deaf, though they did up the probability through their donor choice. I believe that one of the parents said, before one of their children was born, "If the child is a hearing child, they will be a blessing, and if the child is deaf they will be a blessing." A key sentence in this whole issue.

I wonder if Jeanette Winterson realizes she's comparing homosexuality to a disability when she equates the Deaf Lesbians' (as she condescendingly refers to them throughout her essay) desire for a deaf child to a straight couple's desire to look for a "straight gene" for their child. I understand the deaf couple looks at deafness as a culture, and of course there is also gay and lesbian culture, but I still take offense to her comparing homosexuality to a disability, which, as Winterson is a hearing person, I hazard a guess is how she looks at deafness. (As opposed to the way the deaf couple looks at it.) Uh yeah, internalized homophobia indeed.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
16:25 / 10.04.02
I may be projecting but it seems to boil down to that the parents seem to believe that if they have a hearing baby then it will live in a completely different world to them, be a complete stranger and they will never have a point of contact. Which, as anyone who's grown up in bi or multi-lingual families knows is patent bollocks.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
18:09 / 10.04.02
this may be for another thread, which i may or may not start, but tom said, about not letting a deaf man who has deafness in his familly for generations, have kids ----"Clearly we can't ask that of him. "

I ask this...why not?
why cant we stop the retarded and those born blind from having children and passing "defective" genes onto future generations?

I'm not saying anything about ethnic cleansing, before people start flaming me.
I dont think only "pretty" people should breed
I just dont see a reason to allow those with "defects" to continue those to another generation

Do we really have the resources, as humanity, to allow those that are unlikely to give back to society to drain our resources, more so than those are criminals even because they require special care?

I may be a facist, but i really dont think we can afford, in the coming 100 years, to allow more dead weight in our society.

hate me if you must, but thats how i see it
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:15 / 10.04.02
Just think, gentlemen...in as little as a few generations the sexual aggression of the Negro, the avaricious dishonesty of the Jew, the babylike helplessness of the blind, the treacherous obsequiousness of the Yellow Races, the disease-carrying lechery of the homosexual, the vicious fanaticism of the Arab *and* the shitty tunesmithery of Roger Waters...all may be but dark memories from a dark past.

Elijah, like your namesake you are indeed a prophet.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
19:30 / 10.04.02
Or, more correctly, an eejit.

But an eejit in two very different ways. Which is good. Multitasking good.

First up we have "i really dont think we can afford, in the coming 100 years, to allow more dead weight in our society".

Obvious response - you *are* the dead weight. You consume far more of the Earth's resources than could possibly be justified by the value of what you create. Do you, in fact, create anything? Do you produce anything of value? Food? Clothing?

It is possible, but unlikely. And in the meantime, your very existence hurts the world. The rush to cut the prices of the fripperies you consume wreaks economic devastation on developing nations. You consume an order of magnitude more energy and resources just keeping on keeping on than your counterpart tilling the fields in, say, Mali.

And yet, guess who is breeding too fast, guess who there are too many of in these little right-wing paradigms, guess who is "misbehaving"? Well, let's just say it tends not to be the Paler Nations. So I'm not exactly predisposed to follow these better world through selective euthanasia plans very comfortably.

Second up, "I'm not saying anything about ethnic cleansing, before people start flaming me.
I dont think only "pretty" people should breed
I just dont see a reason to allow those with "defects" to continue those to another generation".

Defects. Like being an eeejit? Forty years ago, if the technology had existed, children with a better-than-evens chance of being gay would have been terminated. Sixty years ago, maybe children who were predisposed to look "Jewish". A hundred years ago, same paradigm, left-handed people would have been obliterated. Two hundred years ago...well, let's just say that the quiet sterilisation of black people with "rebellious" genes would have been an absolute fucking godsend. But now, since we are at the end of history and everything, we can determine exactly what is good and bad, and which parts of the gene pool will never come in useful in the future and should be discarded. That's great! No more useless, defective freaks like Stephen Hawking or that blind cunt John Milton.

Ach, it's no good. Actually too numpty-heided a belief system to deal with except in small doses, or nausea sets in. Maybe later.

Oh, Loz - WTUR, I'm not sure being deaf and speaking French are necessarily the same. Although I for one would breed 'em both out of the human race.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
19:47 / 10.04.02
haus, i luv ya cause i have no idea when you are being sarcastic

but really, heres the story behind my feelings:
when i was a kid my mom had a friend named lisa, who had a child named stanely
stanley was very very "wrong". I say "wrong because, as a kid, i was not privvy to the actual terminology for what his issue was.
basically, he couldnt talk, he could hardly move, and had to be spoon fed and diaper changed. I can't believe that his, or his mothers quality of life was very good for his 9 years on this planet. I cant help but think that had there been a way to know if he was going be born the way he was that his mother may have chosen not to have a child at all.

Now---you have people who have genetic "defects" wanting to have children that are like them. As has been pointed out, i find this both foolish and selfish. Not only are you setting your child up to be at disadvantages in life and in some cases dooming them to have less than 15 years of life.

It may sound terrible, you may hate me for it. I'm not talking about wiping out species, im talking about eliminating people who would were they never born, wouldnt live a lesser life, and would not sap our lessening resources without giving anything back.

sad, but true
 
 
Fist Fun
20:17 / 10.04.02
the disease-carrying lechery of the homosexual

Two people on this thread have indicated a willingness to screen the sexuality of their children...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:41 / 10.04.02
I don't hate you, Elijah. I just think you're an idiot. Reread my post - assuming you actually read it, since you have failed utterly to answer or indeed address any of the questions it raised. See if at any point I say "please, tell me a sad tale about a boy called Stanley". Did I do that? No.

Obviously, if I had known you had based your entire philosophy on a youthful meeting with a child of a friend of your mum's, I would have bowed before your wisdom.

Meanwhile, you are also talking about "eliminating" *the blind*. Read your own post. The blind. Now, ask around. Go up to a few blind people. Ask if they would on the whole prefer never to have been born, what with being non-viable and a drain on the world's precious resurces and everything. G'wan.

While you're here, could you explain how you are not a drain on the world's lessening resources? Only I went to Oxford and everything, and am clearly a *lot* brighter than you and, you know, taller, good cheekbones, superior genetic structure in general and...well, I just don't see what you're doing to justify the resources you consume. Care to share?
 
 
Tom Coates
21:13 / 10.04.02
I don't know what I think about this thread at the moment. I don't want to characterise people's positions innaccurately, so I'm going to create positions that I think problematise the simple distinctions that are being drawn on each side. I don't think it's an idiotic position to suggest that genetically based diseases or hereditary birth defects could be removed by screening and / or abortion. It happens already and I don't believe it's immoral. Individual choice on the parents' part allows this to happen. I do think it would be a bad thing if homosexuality was 'bred out' though. Is there a place where one could clearly mark a line here, or is anything between the two necessarily going to end up with the cleansing of the 'morally' undesirable?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:15 / 11.04.02
Well, as I mentioned above in my highly performative response above, drawing that line is inordinately complex, and predicated on the idea that, whereas nasty medieval cultures like the 1950s would have bred out "innocent" genetic characteristics like homosexuality, we are now so ethically and socially advanced that we can judge precisely what should or should not be eradicated from the gene pool, and which "sufferers" would a) rather not live, and b) consume precious resources. Which strikes me as somewhat hubristic...
 
 
Tom Coates
09:01 / 11.04.02
Yes but we DO draw the line on lots of moral issues that have a fuzzy focus, surely? Like the age of consent? Why is this different?
 
 
odd jest on horn
09:33 / 11.04.02
this point has been brought up before but not been tackled by those who do see a difference:

what is the difference between a deaf het couple choosing to have a child and what this couple did?

and do people (apart from Elijah, who has made his views very clear on this matter) think that since we have the technology to screen out people with down's syndrom we should? have those who think so, ever met and talked and walked the dog with someone who has down's syndrom?

my sister-in-law works with autistic people (some retarded too, others very intelligent but severly autistic) but every single of them deserved to be brought into this world unlike some politicians i could name. they are all people. real people. whom you may not be able to interact with when you don't know them, but if you've worked with them for years, you'll see little bits of their personality shine through and it's all worth it.

my best friend has a mom who is deaf, she has a husband who is deaf. they have a kid who is deaf and others who aren't. everybody knows sign-language and everybody is happy, so in that way it could be considered selfish, since you can have a perfectly good relationship with a hearing child, even though you're deaf. the multilingual argument is a very persuasive one. why couldn't their kid be a part of their culture, and be a bridge into the hearing culture. here a kid who had a deaf mom and knows sign-language is working in a kindergarten, taking up deaf issues, speaking to the kids in sign-language, being an interpreter for deaf kids in the kindergarten etc. i think it's a wonderful opportunity to have a hearing kid, even if you and your spouse is deaf.

rambling, but on topic :-)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:37 / 11.04.02
But it *isn't* a moral issue, or more precisely it does not have to be a moral issue as much as a purely practical one. As a liability to healthy society, the blind, or deaf, or the Cystically Fibrotic should not be allowed to be born. Likewise, as a liabiity to a healthy society, homosexuals or the left-handed or uppity blacks should not be allowed to be born.

I don't see how there is necessarily a moral component there at all.
 
 
gozer the destructor
09:44 / 11.04.02
and do people (apart from Elijah, who has made his views very clear on this matter) think that since we have the technology to screen out people with down's syndrom we should?

i have always been a big fan of the theory that most people are lacking a chromosome and how much better the world would be if more people had that cool chromosome...
 
 
The Planet of Sound
11:45 / 11.04.02
Elijah, in my first post I referred to 'dubious eugenics'; ie selective breeding for any purposes. The interesting aspects of the story, to me, are that it turns any of our 'Gattaca' style preconceptions about selective breeding on their head, and brings the infinitely complex area of definitions, personal preference, (dare I say?) 'humanity' into the genetics debate. It seems to me that you're advocating eugenics... are you aware of the political implications of this? Much as I hate to agree with Haus, I'd have to ask, as he has, how on earth does anyone make the decisions? How do you define a 'defect'? How do you define a genetic 'advantage'? Richard Dawkins writes at length about the impossibility of identifying, in an infinitely complex world, what genes/traits will be advantageous in terms of survival.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
11:58 / 11.04.02
actually haus, i just read your second post where you title me an idiot for my personal ideology
see, i was posting the same time as you were, right as i was leaving work, where i help human wastes of time make sure they have their happy little computers working. One could say i contribute more to my society in this way than a farme in botswanna.
Having read your article i understand your point of view, I also understand that in the process of bringing your point of view to my attention, you also felt the need to insult me, which causes me to wonder about whether i should bother continuing to communicate with you.

My personnal opinion is that most of humanity should not be here, i include myself on the kill list. What it comes down to is that i think the world would be better off if we could eliminate things that are OBVIOUSLY detrimental to healthy development, if you disagree fine.

Personnaly, i dont think gattaca was much different than now, just that being genetically "clean" was what divided people, not money. But that also would be another thread.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:44 / 11.04.02
Ho hum.

I didn't feel the need to insult you, Elijah. I did insult you. It was part of a process where I built up to the idea that you were, as a Westerner, detrimental to the health of the world (rather more so, say, than a farmer in Botswana), and that as somebody with a less desirable genetic profile than I and less of a right to occupy this Earth, you should probably not exist. It was a rather stylish little piece of thematic development which appears to have sailed over the intended recipient's head and struck the far wall with a resounding crack.

The point was one of what is "OBVIOUSLY" detrimental to healthy development. I would, for example, posit that the research Stephen Hawking has contributed to the world is rather more likely to be beneficial to it than anything you or I have produced lately. Depending on whose computers you are servicing - the Authority? - I would further suggest that Paradise Lost may well also be of more value from another point of view (Milton - blind. Weak-gened mofo) than the ability of shiny computers to facilitate the continuing consumption of the resources of the globe (and it is the globe, not an individual "society", if we are talking about resources). Also, not being Teiresias I cannot tell you what technologies will come into being to cure and/or facilitate the lives of people you would like to remove from the gene pool. You know, like hearing aids? ViaVoice? Shit like that?

And by the way, why do you say "title me an idiot for me personal ideology" as if it were a bad thing. Your personal ideology is not uncriticisable for being personal - if you want that, start a "Daily Ideology" thread in the Creation and fill it with badly-punctuated psephology. If personal ideology is self-contradictory, based on unsound premises, and has the look of the numpty about it it seems almost rude not to mention it.

Now, if you "understand" my point of view do you have any meaningful response to it apart from "how dare you disagree with me! That's insulting! I'm breaking friends with you!"? Because otherwise there really is no point in "continuing to communicate", such as we were.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
13:00 / 11.04.02
I'm not insulted you didnt agree with me
I'm insulted that you took the easy way out of a quasi intelligent debate by becoming insulting.
If i disagree with any number of the gay community on the board i dont resort to calling them a fag to get their attention before explaining my point of view. I dont think you would either.
would you call me a kike if we disagreed on a point of religeon?
I would hope not
so thats where my personnal issue lies

back on topic
I can see why people would not agree with my point of view, and i can appreciate that. My views are not going to change in the near future, if ever.
I apologize for my part in the thread rot

ENG
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:03 / 11.04.02
I can see why people would not agree with my point of view, and i can appreciate that. My views are not going to change in the near future, if ever.

*grits teeth*

Then...what....are...you...doing....in....a....discussion....forum?

Plus, there is a difference between calling someone a kike, a fag and an eejit. See if you can work it out.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
13:39 / 11.04.02
I think one gray area with this couple is that they do not look at deafness as a disability, they look at as more of a cultural birthmark. So, when you argue your point in this debate, perhaps it would behoove you to ask yourself in which way you view deafness.

I take big issue with you saying that Stanley kid's 9 years of life weren't worth living, ENG. You don't know what it was like to be him and you don't know what it was like to be his mother. And let me tell you something: I'm probably biased, because my youngest brother is autistic, and also has a congenital heart disease. He's pretty high functioning but even still, with both diseases needless to say both he and everyone in my family has been challenged by his problems.

But you know what? Even though I have some pretty awful memories of him being in the hospital while I was a young tyke, and even though the autism can make him a real pain in the ass to be around sometimes (like when he needs to hear you give him the same answer to the same question repeatedly for up to 30m to an hour), I absolutely adore my little brother and find him quite a joy to be around most of the time, and I wouldn't want him any other way. And if anyone ever told me he was a waste of life I would personally and gleefully kick their ass, physically and verbally.

That's one situation, and yours is another, and we have personal opinions on the matter. But the point is it is incredibly insulting, as well as short-sighted for you to view someone who has different physical challenges than you do as a waste.

That said, nobody is special. I'm not special and you're not special. And yet, at the same time everyone is, regardless of what they look like and what they can't do. And to try and define who should be on the "kill list," as you call it, is again, dangerously short-sighted, superficial and subjective.

I like where alas has gone in her arguments here. We need to be more inclusive, and in a way, what this couple did was incredibly brave. I don't know if I agree with what they did, but I do think they have a point.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:39 / 11.04.02
Right. I am very carefully not calling you an eejit. However, "eejit" is a *value judgement*, whereas "kike" and "fag" are terms of abuse based on things about a person that they cannot change (anyone who wishes to suggest there is no way out of the black hole of eejitude is just being morbid, IMHO). Like deafness.

Please, God, somebody say something. I feel like I'm trapped overnight in the world's smallest amusement park.

Thanks, Cherry, I love you sufficiently.
 
 
Tom Coates
13:53 / 11.04.02
But it *isn't* a moral issue, or more precisely it does not have to be a moral issue as much as a purely practical one. As a liability to healthy society, the blind, or deaf, or the Cystically Fibrotic should not be allowed to be born. Likewise, as a liabiity to a healthy society, homosexuals or the left-handed or uppity blacks should not be allowed to be born. I don't see how there is necessarily a moral component there at all.

I'm going to take this message on face value - ignoring its potential other objectives. The definition of 'healthy society' is clearly a difficult and dangerous one and prone to exactly the abuses that you describe. Illness or impairment is also dangerous ground, but it is a criteria that is regularly used with regard to quality of life / financial cost of maintaining life / emotional consequences of maintaining life. Immoral gay people and troublesome black people may be unhappy but individually there is no reason (except the social desire) to consider them impaired, ill or a financially / emotional drain.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
14:09 / 11.04.02
But Tom, this couple doesn't consider their children to be impaired by their deafness. Now that I'm thinking about autism, there is also a movement among autistic people to not be thought of as impaired, that being autistic gives you a different way of viewing things that is important to society.

Certainly at least as far as the autistic folks go Temple Grandon is considered a genius in her field (which has to do with making cattle machinery, don't ask me too much about it because I don't understand it really) and a large part of her genius in the field is due to the fact that her autism gives her the ability for tremendous focus that "normal" people don't have. I know here in Chicago the CTA has a program where they employ autistic people to man the "how do I get from here to there?" phone lines, because so many autistic people are obsessed with either roads or train lines that not only do they enjoy the work but in general do a better job than non-autistic people do.

So then we get to a larger question: what is impairment? Are these folks who want to see some disabilities "reclassified" as a cultural identity practising political correctness gone maaaad, or do they have a point?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:24 / 11.04.02
Immoral gay people and troublesome black people may be unhappy but individually there is no reason (except the social desire) to consider them impaired, ill or a financially / emotional drain.

Well, yes. At present.

However, fifty years ago I can say with reasonable confidence that the abolition of homosexuality would have been considered not only morally but also socially and economically advantageous, homosexuals being responsible for time taken off work, crime and the propagation of diseases that incapacitate our workers, as well as medically impaired and doomed to a life of misery.

Two hundred years ago, many a harried imperial officer or slave owner might have sighed that the presence of disobedient black people was disadvantaging the productivity and thus the viability of the society he inhabited.

My question is, how can we now be sure that we have reached a level of social and judgemental perfection so highly-developed that we can judge exactly what should and should not be screened out on a societal level.

If somebody decides to abort a child because it has a high likelihood of Crohn's disease, or for that matter of being straight, that is their personal choice. ENG is talking about a structured process of obligatory termination, which attacks (apart from anything else) a woman's right to choose from the other direction; a primarily male government and scientific community deciding when and how parturition can occur.

Other than that, might be worth a vide of Planet's citation of Dawkin's principle that we cannot tell which genetic features are going to be useful in the future, so it might be wise to play it wide genetically...one could certainly posit a future society in which the ability to walk was almost totally unnecessary, but a genetic trait associated with the genetic set of paraplegia might have become vital...
 
 
Morlock - groupie for hire
17:15 / 11.04.02
Fair enough, and I certainly wouldn't dare argue in favour of any kind of system of genetic screening. On the other hand, what I can't get my head around is whether it is a good idea to encourage a disability at conception.

I can see that it might be easier for a deaf couple to raise a deaf child, but to rig the odds like this? Dunno, but a scenario that keeps springing to mind is that the child could have been born with perfect hearing. Would the couple then have considered surgically knackering the childs hearing? Not the same thing, but scarily close. After all, the child will not miss it if it is done early enough.

*sigh* feels like drawing lines in the sand with the tide coming in.
 
 
The Planet of Sound
11:37 / 12.04.02
A good example of the kind of principle Dawkins talks about is vegetarianism; seen at the early part of this century as an abominabole 'fad' (see writings by Orwell), linked to unhealthiness, economic disaster, etc. (Trait leading to vegetarianism; empathy?).
Imagine, in our hypothetical future world, a situation where a BSE type virus/prion has decimated the world' meat eaters; the once criticised trait has turned out to be the 'survivor' gene/memeplex.
This kind of mutation (of memes and genes) could be an integral human survival/success pattern. It's worth noting that mutated (Deformed? Runt?) infants in the animal kingdom are often killed by parents or siblings; a trait that humanity admirably seems to have evolved out of. This process of mutation of memes and genes (random adaptability?) would also explain many of the traits that exist in individuals but seem abhorrent or inexplainable to a majority of society.

While we're getting scienifictious about it, how about a John Wyndham style scenario where some stellar sonic boom renders the world deaf? (Might happen...) Who are going to be the ones who adapt easily to these circumstances?
 
 
Shortfatdyke
11:49 / 12.04.02
a couple of other points here. first of all, when i worked for mencap, there was - even amoung the able bodied workers - of 'YUK', at the thought of 'disabled' people having a sexual life/desires. deafness is seen rather differently to, say, a more physical disability, but it's still an issue, i think.

i spoke to an ex of mine last night, who's hearing impaired. not that she's spokesperson for the whole deaf community, of course, but i wanted to know what she thought. she understood where the couple were coming from but said, "it will be good for *them*, but i'm not so sure for the child...."
 
 
Chuckling Duck
17:14 / 12.04.02
We, and virtually every other species on earth, owe our existence to the half-assed eugenics of sexual selection. A leading theory regarding the evolution of homo sapiens’ brain is that it, like the peacock’s tail, is the result of runaway sexual selection for socially adept mates.

In other words, there’s really no new issues involved in this debate. People have always been selecting the traits of their offspring . . . by selecting their mates. Can we really criticize someone else for making a calculated decision rather than a irrational one?

Well, we can disagree with their decisions, certainly. But in my opinion, it’s a woman’s right to control her reproduction: when she’s fertile, what sperm she encounters when she is, and whether or not she has an abortion. My only caveat is that the woman should be prepared to provide for whatever children she has until they reach adulthood.

It’s good that we’re debating these issues, but I don’t think that the law has any business poking its nose into this area.
 
 
alas
02:54 / 15.04.02
My only caveat is that the woman should be prepared to provide for whatever children she has until they reach
adulthood. It’s good that we’re debating these issues, but I don’t think that the law has any
business poking its nose into this area


Well, not to raise the whole welfare question again, but while I agree that women should be prepared to provide for children, our (US) current social/economic system doesn't do a very good job of ensuring that women's work is valued and remunerated at a rate that allows for this kind of "preparation" and it also does a horrible job of ensuring that children born in this country will be able to get medical care. Especially if they are "disabled."
And while the state has any responsibility to help provide for the education of future citizens, then it will perceive itself as having a right to nose into these things. And it costs all of us much less to give children good medical care and access to good nutrition than to pay for neglect later. (truth in advertising: radical individualism is a male fantasy, methinks.)
 
  

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