Would you cripple your child?
Would you choose to give a child a disability? The question seems preposterous, but as Slate pointed out, a recent academic paper reports that parents at three percent of U.S. fertility clinics did just that.
Are you planning on having a child? Worried about your family’s history of cystic fibrosis, or hoping to protect the next generation from Tay-Sachs or spina bifuda? It is now possible to do genetic testing for a number of diseases well before birth. Genetic screening of embryos at fertility clinics is becoming popular – since the clinics create a number of embryos and only implant one, it is relatively easy to test and select the healthiest of the lot.
But as Slate bluntly points out, not all parents are looking to prevent their children from suffering a debilitating disease. Many parents simply want to balance their families, adding a girl if they already have boys. But in a more shocking twist, deaf parents are asking to have deaf children, and the blind may be purposefully giving birth to the blind.