[i_love_limes]

This has garnered quite a lot of reactions from the comments. I'd like to ask a genuine question about this, from the perspective of assuming that Nature is acting in good faith about this.

Let's say someone has calculated the polygenic scores (PGS) of Heteronormativity, meaning that a model, can predict with a decent level of accuracy that someone will or will not be straight from their DNA.

This, in an ideal world, would be good knowledge to have. You can raise you child knowing and accepting this reality.

In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies that don't pass the PGS to the vast majority of people who have this information.

So, in this case, where we have an oppressed group that can be oppressed further, is knowledge better than ignorance? It seems that many in the comments would say yes, and that the pursuit of knowledge is the clear winner, and anything else is merely the price of progress. Which I might ask, you would say the same thing if you were gay?

I want to make one thing clear, this is not a silly thought experiment. This is very possible right now with the advent of biobanks, GWAS tooling, and machine learning. Nature is thinking about these things when writing that up.

I presume that most of you would agree that releasing this information for anyone to know would have negative consequences, and should maybe be controlled. So, then, you fundamentally agree with Nature's stance, do you not? We're merely talking about where the line of publishing exists, not if one should exist at all? Are you not being a bit overzealous with your declarations of orthodoxy?

[goethes_kind]

I never understood this perspective, that aborting fetuses whose prospects are guaranteed to be worse, is somehow wrong or even oppression, and somehow oppression of a whole group of other people completely unrelated to the family. If me and my wife are planning a baby, that's between us. There is no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child who is going to suffer more than necessary due to being dealt the wrong cards.

>I presume that most of you would agree that releasing this information for anyone to know would have negative consequences, and should maybe be controlled.

No. What? Are you insane? If you knew that a couple were going to have a baby with whatever problems, and you did not inform them of this because in your mind, their decision might then somehow upset some other group of people who are neither the mother, nor the father, nor even the close family, then I would find that morally unacceptable.

EDIT: Although I disagree with your choice of example, I would also like to say, that I do think that there ethics is important in any profession, including in scientific research and publication.

EDIT 2: I think your reasoning and people who think like you comes from this (very American notion) of thinking that being homosexual or being deaf or being mute somehow makes you part of a "community". And then from this comes this idea of oppression when the community is deprived of one of their new prospective members. I find this whole thinking absurd.

[abdullahkhalids]

There is one very common case where people abort fetuses because of reasons that are not "saving the child from worse prospects". This is people not wanting girls because "girls are economic and social liabilities and boys are assets". In my country, sex-selective abortion has been so prevalent that doctors now don't tell parents the sex of the fetus. If they did, very quickly would there be a difference of millions between males and females in the population with all the social problems that brings about.

If somehow tomorrow, some research project resulted in a very cheap device, usable by anyone, that could tell the sex of a baby, I think one would have to at least seriously debate and ponder whether publishing such work is good for the country or not.

[laverya]

The more western equivalent of this is screening for Down's Syndrome.

In certain countries, essentially all Down's babies are aborted. (98% in Denmark, for example)

[iso1337]

I don’t know if you have relatives or children with Down’s, but it is no walk in the park.

Forcing parents to have disabled kids is not good policy either.

[ragazzina]

>all Down's babies are aborted. (98% in Denmark

98% of all babies with Down's syndrome, or 98% of all babies diagnosed with it? How popular is the test in Denmark?

[mensetmanusman]

The test is required by the govt.

[throwawayacc2]

> I think your reasoning and people who think like you comes from this (very American notion) of thinking that being homosexual or being deaf or being mute somehow makes you part of a "community". And then from this comes this idea of oppression when the community is deprived of one of their new prospective members. I find this whole thinking absurd.

Thank you for putting this into words. I share the same perspective but never articulated it so elegantly. You made my evening.

[dane-pgp]

> There is no outside group that has a say or is somehow being oppressed when we decide that we do not want a child

I guess you're counting the child him/herself as an "outside group" in this process too.

[trashtester]

Those who are pro choice tend to not care so much about the interests of the fetus. Interestingly, I suspect that same group might be inclined to see abortion due to the likely sexual orientation of the child as so sinful that it should be reason for denying the abortion...

[asoneth]

> If you knew that a couple were going to have a baby with whatever problems, and you did not inform them of this because in your mind, their decision might then somehow upset some other group of people who are neither the mother, nor the father, nor even the close family, then I would find that morally unacceptable.

In addition to the question of morality and autonomy, I think it's also worth considering the practical second-order effects we are likely to see once this kind of libertarian eugenics inevitably becomes easier. Industries like engineering and math will change once parents can avoid having children on the spectrum. Not to mention theater and fashion when parents can choose to have only heterosexual children.

Reminds me of the message at the end of Gattaca.

The biggest real-world example of societal change is probably the sex-selective abortion someone else mentioned which results in an excess of males in several regions of the world. A gender imbalance where males outnumber females by a significant margin seems to result in societal instability so it's not surprising governments work so hard to crack down on it.

[macspoofing]

>In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies that don't pass the PGS to the vast majority of people who have this information.

Are you sure about that? We have a pretty good way of predicting the sex of the fetus and somehow our misogynistic and sexist society doesn't have a mass problem of aborting females.

>So, in this case, where we have an oppressed group that can be oppressed further, is knowledge better than ignorance?

Abortion is oppression?

Today, in most regions, you can abort a fetus for any reason ... even terrible reasons. Are you advocating for abortion controls so that abortion is only done for the 'right' reasons?

>I want to make one thing clear, this is not a silly thought experiment. This is very possible right now with the advent of biobanks, GWAS tooling, and machine learning.

If it is possible today, where are those mass abortions?

>I presume that most of you would agree that releasing this information for anyone to know would have negative consequences, and should maybe be controlled.

You assume you can hide this information. Why do you assume that?

And no, I don't agree that it should be controlled.

[ZeroGravitas]

> We have a pretty good way of predicting the sex of the fetus and somehow our misogynistic and sexist society doesn't have a mass problem of aborting females.

But we do...

> The natural sex ratio at birth is approximately 103 to 106 males for 100 females.[37][38] However, because of sex-selective abortions, the sex ratio at birth in countries with high proportions of missing women have ranged 108.5 in India to 121.2 in Mainland China.[6][18] As a result, counts of missing women are often due to missing female children.[18] It is estimated that the cumulative number of missing female births due to sex-selective abortion globally is 45 million from 1970 to 2017.[38]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women

[macspoofing]

>But we do..

Who is 'we' here? USA? Canada?

[ZeroGravitas]

> >In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies that don't pass the PGS to the vast majority of people who have this information.

Same "we" as the line you responded to, and your own response.

[macspoofing]

>Same "we" as the line you responded to, and your own response

Is it the same? If China has a problem with abortion of female fetuses and I said "we" don't have that problem...does it sound like the same "we"?

[ZeroGravitas]

> >In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies that don't pass the PGS to the vast majority of people who have this information.

> Are you sure about that?

So you asked this question to someone who said "In the world we live in", you actually meant "Are you sure that this thing that does happen in the world we live in will also happen in some unspecified nation that I live in".

I don't think that's what you were asking, but if you where, why would you ask that?

[UIUC_06]

you said "If it is possible today, where are those mass abortions?" and he gave you the answer, notably China, the largest country in the world.

So now you're saying you actually meant just North America?

[macspoofing]

>So now you're saying you actually meant just North America

I said "our society" isn't performing abortions on female fetuses - so clearly I must have meant China and India - the two societies that are?

And yes, I want to know why "our society" isn't.

[UIUC_06]

OK, well, I guess you're right that "our society" does not value boys over girls as much as China and India. I don't really see the relevance if you're arguing "no, sex-selective abortions will not happen."

[gweinberg]

Obviously not. In those countries it's the male fetuses that are more likely to be aborted.

[timmg]

> In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies that don't pass the PGS to the vast majority of people who have this information.

If you think that aborting babies, in general, is not immoral, then I, personally, don't see this as a problem.

Let's try a different thought experiment:

If you were doing IVF because you wanted one child. And you had two embryos. So you knew you would discard one. And you found out one of the embryos was going to be born blind. Which would you discard?

Most people (I think) would discard the to-be-blind one. You could argue that that is ableist. But another way to think of it is: you had a choice to decide if your child can see. You chose to give them sight.

[dane-pgp]

> But another way to think of it is: you had a choice to decide if your child can see. You chose to give them sight.

Yet another way to think of it is: you had a choice to decide whether your blind child should live. You chose that they should die.

Your desire to only want one child in this circumstance is not free of ethical implications.

[timmg]

Of course. My first sentence was a disclaimer saying it only makes sense if you don’t think abortion is immoral. (I don’t think it is immoral.)

[TheFreim]

In this scenario the "oppressed" group could only be "oppressed further" if you assume the position that abortion is killing a person, otherwise you wouldn't be able to call it a further oppression since nobody came into existence to be oppressed. I don't see how, if you assume the common pro-choice paradigm which usually coincides with the views you express, this could be considered wrong.

[i_love_limes]

Is this a real opinion? My god.

Thinking that aborting female embryos because they will be considered less important in society is wrong, AND think that removing a women's right to choose entirely based on religious teachings is wrong, AND thinking that forced sterilization of a whole cultural/ethnic group is wrong, are not incompatible.

Where are you getting these opinions from? I'd honestly have a hard look at where you got these thoughts from, they are pretty backwards, and not morally considered at all.

[ISO-morphism]

I appreciate the question you posed in your original post.

I'd challenge you to engage with GP rather than deriding them. Your comment comes off as a selfish display of moral superiority that shuts down discussion and serves to further polarize. GP pointed out a perceived logical inconsistency in moral reasoning, by definition this is morally considered. I don't think they're acting in bad faith, and while a more inquisitive tone on their part may have avoided heated responses, I don't think GP's line of thought is beyond the pale. I hope we can try to follow where those opinions come from rather than talking past each other.

> Thinking that aborting female embryos because they will be considered less important in society is wrong, AND think that removing a women's right to choose entirely based on religious teachings is wrong, AND thinking that forced sterilization of a whole cultural/ethnic group is wrong, are not incompatible.

You assert this as if it is inherently true, which isn't going to do anything against a logical challenge. There is a widely-held line of reasoning that your first two statements contradict.

In the pro-choice position that women have a positive right to abortion, many people in attempting to understand that position interpret the moral grounds for it to be that the fetus is not a person - it does not have a right to life, therefore terminating its life is moral. That interpretation of the moral justification doesn't come from nowhere, I've heard it in person from people arguing in good faith. Your original post suggests that disseminating information that could cause more women to elect for abortion is morally wrong because it harms marginalized groups. This undermines the moral grounds for abortion as the individual negative right to life is widely held to be the most basic of rights, to be universal to persons, and so if the fetus is to be considered a member of a marginalized group, working backwards it must necessarily be a person and necessarily have the right to life. Therefore it is illogical considering only these three factors to hold all simultaneously: (i) a fetus does not have a negative right to life, (ii) a woman has a positive right to abortion, (iii) a fetus can be a member of a marginalized group of persons, as (iii) contradicts (i), leaving (ii) unjustified.

That line of reasoning is consistent. It flows forwards from individuality, that group rights are derived from individual rights, the personal right to life, and that personhood is a necessary condition for membership in a group of persons. It hinges on the assumption that the moral justification for abortion is that a fetus is not a person, and does not have a right to life.

One legitimate rebuttal to GPs probe, and defense for your 3 assertions, is that there is an alternative moral justification for the pro choice position. It's not that a fetus does not have a right to life, but that a woman's rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination, or some other factors, supersede the fetus' right to life. There are more, but "your thoughts are backwards" isn't one of them. That's exactly the imposition of dogma that other commenters are fretting over.

I'd be curious to hear your opinion on the recent case of a pregnant woman in Texas pulled over in the HOV lane who argued that due to the state's legislation limiting abortion, the fetus inside her should qualify as a person and so she is justified in driving there.

EDIT: typo

[UIUC_06]

> from the perspective of assuming that Nature is acting in good faith about this

Wrong. Unless you consider "good faith" saying what they really mean, in which case, yes, it IS good faith.

> I presume that most of you would agree that releasing this information for anyone to know would have negative consequences, and should maybe be controlled

No, most of HN's readers would not agree with that. A good many of us, maybe even most, would agree with the Bible, John 8:31-32:

And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

[gadders]

It's an interesting thought experiment. However, a lot of scientific discoveries have the possibility of being used for good or ill. Why single out this one?

Scanning of foetuses allows you to spot any issues to help keep the developing baby healthy, but is also used to abort female foetuses in some places.

Or what about nuclear physics - you get a decent energy source (subject to green objections) but also nuclear bombs.

I think until a scientific discovery is widely known, you never know what uses for good or ill it would be put to. Supposing the technology you outline above plus gene editing cured heart disease or cancer?

[n4r9]

That's a great example, much better than the one I thought of.

The line has to be somewhere, right? Even if someone dismisses your example, you can make it more and more extreme to the point of "if this knowledge becomes public, a maniac will 99% likely destroy the rest of the earth".

[intimidated]

Which is more likely:

1. These censorship policies will be used to save the world from 99% certain destruction at the hands of a maniac.

2. These censorship policies will be used to crush evidence that [GROUP X] is overrepresented in [FAVORABLE SITUATION Y] due to [FAVORABLE TRAIT Z], thus legitimizing policies unjustly punishing [GROUP X].

Even if you think this censorship is righteous and good, how will you deal with folks no longer trusting the scientific basis of what you claim? Why should anyone believe there is no genetic difference between [GROUPS D and E] when you're confessing that you'd never admit it?

[bombcar]

Once you realize that censorship is a defensive action, not an offensive one, it becomes clear.

You don’t censor to get more people on your side. You censor to defend the people you’ve already collected (ie prevent losing them to the other side).

[n4r9]

Which of the guidelines do you think would prevent the discovery of genetic differences between two groups?

[zajio1am]

> In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies that don't pass the PGS to the vast majority of people who have this information.

Does it matter? Neither fetuses nor abstract population groups are moral agents, only individual people are. Therefore, selective abortion of any kind (that does not cause potential offspring to be worse of) is morally neutral act.

[brushfoot]

> In the world we live in, this would be used to abort babies

It would also be used to support babies. Parents would be motivated to move to communities with support, education, affirmation.

Any helpful tool can also be harmful. The solution to misuse isn't enforced ignorance, it's education in virtue.

[bilvar]

I think we should terminate all pregnancies, as the baby could become a racist. We should be able to deprive the KKK community of all future members.