Soccer Mom: Unplugged

According to the UK's Daily Mail, "The ethical storm over abortions has been renewed as it emerged that terminations are being carried out for minor, treatable birth defects."  Babies with minor deformations like club foot, webbed fingers, and extra digits are being killed in late term abortions.  In one case, a 28 week old child was aborted because the babe had a cleft palate.  28 weeks old.  Old enough to smile, flinch in pain, yawn. 

From the article: "Pippa Spriggs from Cambridge, whose son Isaac is celebrating his second birthday in July, was dismayed when as scan showed her baby had a club foot.

'Abortion certainly was not openly advised but it was made clear to me it was available,' she said.

'In fact he has been treated and the condition has now slowed him down at all.'

Julia Millington, of the Alive and Kicking Campaign, said: 'It is all about our perceptions of perfection.

'Increasingly things are moving along the lines where nothing is good enough.

'It seems we can no longer tolerate any imperfection.

'Babies are at the mercy of ultrasound scans and what they may disclose.'"

There can be no denying that the sadness and sense of disillusionment at discovering one's baby is imperfect is real and painful.  Another harsh reality is that no matter how perfect your newborn's body may look on an ulltrasound, they will still be imperfect.  They, like us, are mortal and full of human frailties.  And while the initial awakening to that fact may be disheartening, there is also an overwhelming hope that fills us when we realize that in spite of imperfections, or maybe because of them, we love our children even more than we ever thought possible.  Attempts to design your family by eliminating the weak is no more than "culling the herd"  and it reduces you from parent to ranch hand.   It also shortchanges you of one of the most exalting of parental experiences - loving the child that is hard to love.  If you are can't feel enough love for a child with a club foot to let him live, what will you do with a teenager who rebels and screams "I hate you"? 

Designing families through selective abortion may create a great Christmas photo but it also devalues human life.  And it leaves one to wonder if, like so many designer items, the babies that make the cut to and are born to parents who've selectively aborted in the past, will end up as merely decorative trinkets instead of adored treasures.

It's a brave new world out there, folks.  And the name of that world is Gattica.

Oh no!  Not the blue-eyed boy, he'll clash with my handbag!