Fair enough. Making the best of things is completely admirable. And respecting those who do is completely admirable too.

Well, what is your point of view?

I have given you mine, what’s yours?

It is frankly not good enough to quote advocates for stupidity. For they are stupid.

The problem with this whole idea is, to me at least, not a cultural issue, it is an evolutionary issue. If hearing were not a survival trait, it would not have happened. It would have been suppressed in favour of some other sense, say a ’spidey’ trait. Either the ’spidey’ trait is impossible, or our entire history of hearing was a stupid diversion from developing other traits, or it was right for us

The militant assumption is that it is not right for us. If so, why did we spend millions of years developing it?

I cannot, frankly, get my head around their arguement.

It is all well and good to be militantly pro disabled people, it is a different matter to deliberately select for a disability. It is the child after all that would have to live with it.

Exactly, well put.

Why do they want to deprive the child of the opportunity to hear?

Thanks for the reply. I’d be interested to know how keen folk who lost their hearing after say, adolesence, felt about it. I would have thought that there might be a difference to be drawn between people who had lost their hearing and those that never had it in the first place. It is all well and good to be militantly pro disabled people, it is a different matter to deliberately select for a disability. It is the child after all that would have to live with it. And, as things usually go, the child will outlive the parents. Will he or she consider that carrying that disability was worth it?

Of course, if all deaf people see it as a blessing, then something weird is going on here.

ALS is serious by anybody’s standards – so are we saying it would be better for him and/or for us if Stephen Hawking had been aborted? I don’t know of any quotes from him, but the impression I get is that he is very much glad to be alive despite everything.

With respect this is exactly the sort of argument I dislike. No-one reasonable is saying Stephen Hawking should have been aborted. But would Stephan Hawking prefer an embryo with ALS over an embryo without it? Indeed should he have the right to pick an embyro with ALS over one without?

Stepping down from that, it is seems ridiculous to me that disabled folk would want to pass their disability on to others. If you can’t hear, for instance, you can’t know the benefit of being able to hear. Same with the deaf dumb and blind kid. Sure plays a mean pin-ball. But, is that it?

Sarah, there is also the Dis in Disability. I would not want a society based on the idea that the Ability should be restricted. Despite the case you try to make.

Just a couple of slightly tangential points. Firstly, spend a little time watching deaf people communicate – it’s about a lot more than signing – it is very tactile (watch deaf adults with a child), there is much miming and use of facial expressions. Nearly always laughter and certainly always smiles in my experience. Now watch hearing people communicate and try to imagine how it looks to a deaf person – their communication is very stilted, very impersonal (little eye-contact) undemonstrative, they appear to dislike any kind of intimacy and deal with their children largely by frightening them with noise. Hearing people must look pretty scary and I could understand if this couple felt they didn’t want a child of theirs condemned to live like hearing people (though I understand that’s not their point). My work colleague is probably the happiest person I know. The label ‘disabled’ fits him (and me) no more than it fits short, left-handed, shy or overweight people.

As Unity says defining ’serious’ is going to be controversial but I don’t think it’s the only issue. ALS is serious by anybody’s standards – so are we saying it would be better for him and/or for us if Stephen Hawking had been aborted? I don’t know of any quotes from him, but the impression I get is that he is very much glad to be alive despite everything.

Thanks for the post Sarah,

Pete

Even when trying to cross the road? People do not just use their ears to communicate.

If Lichy, Garfield, Hefferman and others who speak Sign Language don’t see themselves as having a disability, then do they refuse disability benefits? If they are not disabled, they have no moral claim to them.

So by deciding to have a deaf child over a hearing one, you are not just excluding them from the world of the spoken word, and music and so on, but you are likely to seriously damage their chances in the written world, too.

IMHO being deaf is a lot more serious than most hearing people (and many in the deaf community) make out, and I personally find it utterly grotesque that these deaf parents would choose to condemn their child to a world without hearing. We would not allow parents to hack a limb or two off their own child, nor gouge their eyes out, but that is exactly what we are advocating if we allow deaf parents to choose to give birth to a deaf child rather than to a hearing child.

I appreciate with disabilities that there is a fine line pre-birth between what is a defect and what is not, but again IMO this is so far over the line that there is no question that these parents are behaving utterly irresponsibly.

The only problem is that what constitutes ’serious’ is undefined and would only be sorted out by way of setting precedents through test cases, which is fine in law – in fact its one of the big plusses of the common law system – but leaves room for considerable confusion at the parliamentary stages

Persons or embryos that are known to have a gene, chromosome or mitochondrion abnormality involving a significant risk that a person with the abnormality will have or develop—
(a) a serious physical or mental disability,
(b) a serious illness, or
(c) any other serious medical condition, must not be preferred to those that are not known to have such an abnormality.

As I’ve already said, I can see this from both sides, because they don’t see it as a disability. If they did, or if they specifically wanted a child who could hear, I would be the first person not to agree with them at all!