An article a couple of days ago in the NYT raises all sorts of ethical issues about birth and disability.  It draws from a piece in the journal Fertility and Sterility and describes a particular medical procedure:

The article reviews the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or
P.G.D., a process in which embryos are created in a test tube and their
DNA
is analyzed before being transferred to a woman’s uterus. In this
manner, embryos destined to have, for example, cystic fibrosis or
Huntington’s disease can be excluded, and only healthy embryos
implanted.

Yet Susannah A. Baruch and colleagues at the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University
recently surveyed 190 American P.G.D. clinics, and found that 3 percent
reported having intentionally used P.G.D. “to select an embryo for the
presence of a disability.”

In other words, some parents had the
painful and expensive fertility procedure for the express purpose of
having children with a defective gene. It turns out that some mothers
and fathers don’t view certain genetic conditions as disabilities but
as a way to enter into a rich, shared culture.

It’s tempting to
see this practice as an alarming trend; for example, the online
magazine Slate called it “the deliberate crippling of children.”

    Wow that is rough: "deliberate crippling."   My first thought is that, in a way, there is something good here.  People are positively valuing disability.  Since we – or most of us – almost always go too far in devaluing disability, perhaps it is not so bad that this practice pushes against an enormous social tide.  Anything that changes our perceptions of disability for the better is good.   If Aidan taught me anything, it was that disability, while certainly difficult at times, does not mean ceaseless tragedy.  There was much that was beautiful and valuable in his life.

     But there is something else that bothers me in all this.  Why are some parents so obsessed with controlling every facet of their child’s life?  This seems to be all about control, and perhaps a desire to reproduce ourselves in our children.  Why can’t we keep more of an open mind, accept difference when we encounter it and see the beauty in all things, even unexpectedly disabled children?

     My Taoist senses start tingling with these sorts of issues.  If the control is mostly to dispel the anxieties of parents, then it is certainly not going to work in many cases.  A parent so controlling as to micro-manage the genetic profile of a child-to-be will likely never be satisfied with what a child is or becomes.   

     A Taoist would counsel "nothing’s own doing."  Let the child be, let its genetic processes develop without interference.  If he or she is disabled, it is not the end of the world, nor, as some disabled parents would have it, paradise on earth.  Rather, we should simply accept disability as an inevitable and essential element of humanity.  It is what humankind has always included.  And to try to abolish it or control it or even purposefully produce it, distracts us from our first human duty of accepting and loving disabled children and people.