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Debatable is written by the Otago University Debating Society, which meets for social debating every Tuesday at 7pm in the Commerce Building. This week’s motion is “We should allow disabled parents to select embryos that will produce disabled children”. Will Cheyne argues the affirmative while Clare Burn argues the negative.
Affirmative
Why is it that society classifies certain conditions as disabilities? What gives society the right to define being deaf or blind or having dwarfism as disabilities that are somehow to be protected against? I would never seek to trivialise the genuine hardship that some people suffer as a result of their disabilities, but people suffer genuine hardship as a result of all sorts of other issues that we don’t call disabilities. We let poor people have children, people who are in prison can have babies; all of these situations may potentially cause hardship to babies but that doesn’t mean the government steps in to stop parents having babies in these situations.
 

This debate exists on two levels. Firstly, is there anything wrong with having a disability, and secondly, should parents have the right to influence the future of their child? As probably became obvious from my introduction, I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with having a disability. A number of disabilities make people different, but not necessarily worse off. Claiming that society has some sort of obligation to stop people being born deaf or blind implicitly devalues the role that these people play in our society.

 
So, given that there is nothing wrong with having a disability, we then progress to the next question of whether a parent has a right to select for this outcome. There are a number of reasons why a parent may want a child that is more like them. The family dynamic may be easier if all members of the family share the same disability, for instance in a deaf household all members of the family could share the same mode of communication without anyone feeling left out. Furthermore, there is a very strong deaf community; it is not at all strange that deaf parents may want their children to be a part of that.
 

Parents’ freedom is increased when they have this right to choose, so they would be better off under this policy. In our modern society that recognises diversity and the rights of people with disabilities, children will be no worse off. In fact children could well end up better off with the closer, more cohesive family unit that would result from parents being able to select for their children having a disability.

– Will Cheyne 
 

Negative
The question is not whether parents are more comfortable with their children sharing their disability, but whether they have a right to impose that disability on their children. While people born with these conditions learn to live with and embrace them, the utilisation of genetic screening technologies to select for children with these conditions is unfair and unethical.
 
This debate centres around two issues – whether it is damaging to “give” a child deafness (for example), and whether parents should be allowed to make this decision. Is the fact that there is nothing inherently “wrong” with having a disability sufficient to make selecting for such disabilities right? Will’s rationale is that in the cases where conditions have resulted in the development of strong community ties – like deafness - a child that does not have this condition would be disadvantaged in some way. By suggesting that the deaf community could exclude and disadvantage a child purely on the basis of ability, the affirmative implies that the deaf community itself is uncomfortable with different hearing abilities and would discriminate against hearing children, hardly fostering the acceptance he claims to support.

 
The risks involved with the selection of children with genetic deafness are significant. Non-syndromic deafness has no medical presentation apart from loss of hearing, but syndromic deafness is associated with kidney and heart problems, thyroid enlargements and arthritis. Surely voluntarily exposing your children to such risks is unfair and unethical – especially when the only foreseeable benefit is the sharing of a trait between parents and children. These risks have a negative impact on the quality of life of the child and present a challenge to the state, which must bear the brunt of the financial fallout as the result of a parental decision. Parents have a right to be involved in the lives of their children, but not where this is potentially damaging to the child.

 
“Because my parents are deaf” is not a legitimate reason for a child to be deaf, regardless of how proud of it the parents are. To force something upon your child simply to share your experience of that condition is simply unfair, especially in a situation where a hearing child would function just as well as a deaf child. A hearing child could learn to sign to communicate with their parents just as well as a deaf child. The ability to hear does not exclude them from any vital family bond and, in fact, opens doors for other forms of communication, benefiting these children in the same way that bilingual children benefit from speaking more than one language. The ability to hear is not something your parents should be able to choose to deprive you of.
 
– Clare Burn