The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 2 of 8)

p>Finally, I see a scenario in a few years, when if a couple desires to carry to term and to deliver a child they have been told is disabled that insurance companies refuse to carry coverage for. This is where we are heading. It won't matter if the couple sees all children as a gift from God, no matter the imperfection; it will be about the costs of having such a child. It will come down to profits lost. br> -- Beverly Gunn /p>

I live in Ontario, Canada, where at present we have a group of parents with autistic children demanding $60,000 per year, per child, from 'the public purse' -- i.e. their neighbors' wallets -- for the lifetime of each of these children, because the parents have decided or discovered that although they and they alone decided to give birth to these children, they can't or don't want to pay the freight, so the rest of us ought to be forced to pick up the slack -- for the child's lifetime.

As I am not one of those who has been brought up to believe I have a perpetual mortgage on my neighbor's paycheck, I would have difficulty in filing suit to force others to support a disabled child I knowingly brought into the world without the means to care for it. How would you suggest that such a child be supported after you forced me to bring it into the world?

p>I have frequently found that wealthy men have a talent for binding burdens on the backs of others and then going off in self-righteous satisfaction to their three-martini lunches on the taxpayer's tab. This sanctimonious plea to give birth to disabled babies and leave the question unanswered at whose expense seems to me yet another example of the same. br> -- Kate Shaw /p>

Faced with two sides of the issue. The sterilization, and defective abortion practices I find morally deplorable. But there is another path that will take 10-15 years to sort out. Given the pace of genetic science it will not be too long before predictions can be made by taking samples of the parents and delivering a prognosis of the chances for defects. If there are chances of defects the parents could opt for in vitro development and testing before implantation.

Is it playing God? Possibly. But I would have to defer to the parents and their wisdom on that issue.

p>But there is another player in this whole mix. When the predictive technologies become certain, what is to prevent an insurance company from stepping in and dictating whether they will pay for a full term baby? If they know that based on genetic paring of the parents that a full term delivery will be double the cost would they pay it? I predict they will not. Then what? br> -- John McGinnis

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