I knew this was going to be unpopular when I wrote it. And of course I didn’t write it to be popular, but to air an alternative viewpoint to that being presented. I wrote an article about a little girl with sirenomelia (fused legs) in Peru, who doctors are doing a complicated dangerous surgery on. I wondered out loud whether or not it would be more humane to spend the time and money on giving better lives to people who have a fighting chance, than on people who have medically very slim chances of surviving at all. Of course this is going to piss people off. But this kind of response is just over the top, in my opinion; a woman named Anne wrote:

Obviously you never had children. A parent will fight for his child and will not give up especially if he/she’s mentally 100% normal. Perhaps medicine should sterilize people like you who have your “mentality.”

I was quite plain in that post about not having children, and not being able to imagine how difficult such a situation might be. I also explained that I didn’t advocate eugenics, and that I wasn’t even totally sure in what I was saying, but that I was trying the idea out, because what they are doing with this girl as is makes me somehow uncomfortable.

And then somebody says I should be sterilized.

Great, exactly. We should sterilize anybody who dares to actually say what they are thinking or feeling. We should euthanize anybody who calls into question prevailing attitudes and who tries to examine alternative ways of interpreting and handling the complexities of life. Perfect.