A plea to the press on Clause 14 (HFAE Bill)

I know it sells papers… gets ratings… draws crowds… and there’s nothing better than a bloodfest to get the juices flowing… but this (highlights added)

“Concepts of equality and parental choice sit uneasily when the result means deliberately creating a baby with a disability…” (Moral Maze)

and this

“Unlike the couple who are currently fighting for the right to ensure they have a deaf child through IVF… ” (Daily Mail)

Is plain mis-representation.

The question is not a case of preferring a deaf embryo over a hearing one… It is simply a case of NOT aborting a fetus that is deaf, deselecting a gamete that might be deaf, or rejecting a donor who might carry a ‘deaf gene’.

Dear press… Can you not see the debate is not about Deaf people engineering-in deafness, but about those with some kind of authority based in public acceptance and submission deciding to reject human beings based solely on their ability to hear and on the disadvantages that they might inevitably ‘suffer’ living in a society that has consummately failed to understand them.

Dear press… you have been sucked in… and you’re playing their game… and you’re lending them the support upon which their fragile authority continues to thrive.

For 200 years and more, Deaf people have been fighting to try and explain themselves to those same authorities who have single-mindedly refused to allow Deaf people to present their point of view without being talked-over, interpreted, re-presented or explained away.

And now, as we watch, it is happening all over again… rather than entertain a challenge to what is considered normal, healthy, whole… and perhaps discover themselves prejudiced, bigoted and less than the liberals that they would wish to be they would rather silence opposition to their control of what is considered ‘normal’ by eradicating them at their point of origin (ironically, to save them from a terrible disability)… or silencing them and not allowing them to speak.

Please don’t play their game by granting them the moral high ground… please join in forcing them to explain themselves.

Who is it really playing God?