sorting

The Japanese obstetrics and gynecology association is currently making a guideline upon introducing a new type of prenatal diagnosis which will enable pregnant women to check their baby's disorder with a simple blood test.

I will probably ask for it if I ever become pregnant, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to have to choose what to do with my baby if she/he turned out to have a disorder.  I personally think prenatal diagnosis was one of the things that shouldn't have been developed.  If there were only one choice - to give birth and see, no one would have to face the difficulty of deciding whether or not to kill her baby.

I saw a brief documentary on Nobuyuki Tsujii (a blind pianist) just thirty minutes ago, and his beautiful music made me think about all this.  No one knew what he would become, but if his parents had decided not to have him, the world would have been a less beautiful place without his music.

Of course it's not that simple.  I could never imagine how difficult it is to bring up a disabled child.  Not every child with a disorder is born with a talent that would feed himself a lifetime.  But if we kept sorting babies according to their disorders, the world would keep losing its tolerance towards diversity.  It would be so much better if we could make a society where everyone - disabled or not - could live without worrying about how to support themselves after their parents die.  Though I know it's difficult because the disabled are, after all, the minority.  And the prenatal diagnosis would probably put them in a worse position.

Still, living with the wrong genes doesn't automatically mean it will make you unhappy.  It's just... challenging.  Tests only tell us about genes.  You never know if the child is going to be unhappy.  Our happiness can't be defined by our genes.

Or maybe it can.  Some people have happy-prone genes while others don't.  So are we supposed to sort our babies according to that happy gene?  Is it really the happy gene that keeps you happy?

Either way, if you haven't heard Nobuyuki Tsujii's piano, I absolutely love this piece: The Angel's Wing of Rockfeller Center