Tuesday, January 11, 2011

What happened to unconditional love?

Last weekend I read an article about a Victorian couple who aborted twin boys conceived through IVF because, actually, they wanted a girl. Now they're campaigning for their right to use IVF to choose the sex of their next baby.

Apparently the couple, who already have three sons, suffered the loss of a baby girl who died soon after birth. Now they're so obsessed with having another that their psychological health depends on it.

To be honest, I don't think any level of trauma could justify killing baby boys purely on the basis of sex. It's not so different from genocide. I'd even go so far as to question whether a couple whose psychological health depends on getting their way are fit to be parents at all.

And since when does wanting something badly mean you have a right to it? Since the rise of advertising, perhaps...?

I sincerely hope the Victorian Civil Appeals Tribunal stands up for the true victims in this case - not the parents who will do anything to satisfy their own selfish desire, but the boys who will be killed in their dogged pursuit of a girl.

4 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure even a casual observer can see that there is absolutely no question about the state of these people's psychological health. Adding a girl to the family won't fix what is already so very broken.

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  2. It's a strange thing isn't it. Looking at history, we go from a high infant mortality rate, which thanks to modern technology and medicine, gradually gets lower and lower. Then we can even be told the gender of our children before they're born. Next we want to be able to select the gender. Now we want to kill them before they're born if they're not the gender we wanted.

    When did we change from being grateful our child, regardless of gender, was born safe and healthy, to checking the gender and discarding the ones we don't want.

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  3. In Australia we can discard our babies for all manner of social reasons. From memory only 2% are for health reasons, the other 98% of abortions are done for psychological (read: social) reasons. And in Victoria it's legal to "abort" a full-term baby. When a society allows babies to be thought of as disposable until birth it's not surprising that gender selection seems like a valid reason to abort.

    I intentionally find out the gender of my babies in utero - not so I can reject them though. I try to show the world their humanity by introducing them as a boy or girl with a name and a unique identity.

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  4. Shelley, I think you sum it up well in this sentence: "When a society allows babies to be thought of as disposable until birth it's not surprising that gender selection seems like a valid reason to abort."

    If this particular couple wins this particular case, it won't be the start of a slippery slope - we're already on it.

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