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Are attempts to have impaired children justifiable?

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Department of Philosophy, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia 3010; k.anstey@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Keywords: Artifical insemination; disability; selection; deaf; culture; parents

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Recently, a US couple deliberately attempted to ensure the birth of a deaf child via artificial insemination.¹ In opposing this action, I wish to focus on one argument they employ to support it, namely that in trying to have a deaf child, the women see themselves as no different from parents trying to have a girl. Girls can be discriminated against the same as deaf people and "black people have harder lives", one of them argues. They compare themselves to a minority group.²

In using this argument to justify their attempt to secure the birth of a deaf child, they make four claims:

1. It is not wrong to deliberately try to have a child who is expected to experience harm when the harms the child will experience are socially imposed.
   
2. As a group experiencing socially imposed harms, the deaf are to be understood as a minority group.
   
3. Women and people . . . [Full text of this article]

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