Parents Who Intentionally Have Disabled Children: How Should A Liberal State React?

A person in a free society will naturally want to explore and understand their identity, to try to be the person they feel they really are, or can be.

Parents usually want to raise their children to share many elements of their cultural identity.

But what if the “person you want to be” is a result of delusions caused by a mental illness, even if the person doesn’t agree they are mentally ill? What if this “self-actualisation” would result in self  harm and becoming a burden on society?

What if the “elements of their cultural identity” the parents want to give their children are actually disabilities?

When should a Liberal society override people’s freedom and forcibly prevent such actions? How far should it go in this prevention? In which circumstances should it punish people?

There are cases where the answer is clear. If the parents have grown up in families exhibiting generations of incest, which they now believe is normal or part of their “culture”, we should still remove the children and deal with the adults through the legal system, although the upbringing of the adults may give reason for mitigation. Just because incest is a cultural norm in certain highland tribes of New Guinea, doesn’t mean relativist arguments re harm translate to modern societies.

Female circumcision is common in parts of East Africa. That doesn’t mean we should allow it here because it’s part of “religious” or “cultural identity” … and any adults involved in such an act should be vigorously prosecuted.

What if two deaf parents deliberately have a deaf child, or conceive a child knowing there is a 50% chance it will be born deaf? If it’s their own child, conceived through natural means, is this even immoral? Many would say “yes”. If so, should it warrant intervention from the state?

What if they are lesbians and must actively seek out a deaf sperm donor to achieve their goal? That’s not hypothetical: an American couple, Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough actually did this, twice. Disturbingly, they are both mental health professionals.

According to the article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Duchesneau and McCullough are part of a subculture in which deafness is the defining and unifying feature of their culture and does not view deafness as a disability.

The first part is quite reasonable. The second is delusional, to the point of causing actual harm.

Duchesneau stated that “she grew up feeling that she was flawed”. Clearly she is not the only one and clearly this type of experience during formative years has caused many deaf people to form and mutually reinforce the delusion that deafness is not a disability in order to avoid feeling negatively about themselves.

We should not pander to clearly absurd assertions in order to protect some people’s fragile self esteem.

Unfortunately, deafness IS a disability, caused in many cases by a genetic flaw. Hearing is a very important and highly successful evolutionary adaptation. Deaf people are not some alternative genetic line. There is something wrong with them: they can’t hear. That’s not something you should deliberately cause your children.

Loony, far left, identity political arguments along the lines of: “They are part of their own culture which understands them” are false. The children are part of the wider world, the overwhelming majority of whom can hear. Had they not been born deaf, they could have joined it, yet still had meaningful relationships with their parents. But Duchesneau and McCullough have deliberately prevented their children from ever being fully part of that world. They will never hear speech, music, or the 360 degree soundscape of normal life in the world around them. That, in my opinion, is at best insanity. At worst, it is criminal child abuse.

But now they have had the children, who are already deaf, what can, or should a Liberal state do?

This is not a case of ongoing abuse. The issue regarding either intervention or sanction is that the damage was done at conception and there is no evidence suggesting any further harm (other than whatever rubbish the children’s parents may fill their heads with – but they don’t need to be deaf to do that).

What sort of sanction, if any, would be of benefit to society?

Should the state remove the children from their crazy parents? What would that achieve? Where would they be placed? With another deaf couple? With a couple who can both hear, but know how to sign? What would be the point, other than a demonstration of state authority?

Should the parents be charged? With what? Child abuse? Intentional endangerment of a child? Maybe, but then what happens to the children?

What should the state’s attitude be toward parents deliberately or recklessly conceiving children with other genetic abnormalities, such as congenital blindness? What about cystic fibrosis?

Deliberately conceiving a disabled child places an extra burden on the state, as all disabilities require extra support services. That, coupled with the harm to the child should be sufficient for society to want to prevent these nutters from doing it again.

My natural feelings are that people like this are insane and need to be prevented from having more disabled children.

But how to stop them?

What if there is a court order, or law preventing people from deliberately conceiving children with disabilities? What if people such as Duchesneau and McCullough ignore it? Are they then to be prosecuted? Jailed? Should they at least be made to compensate society for the fiscal burden they have deliberately placed on the rest of us? Could you allow such children to sue their parents for maintenance and punitive damages for reckless or intentional infliction of distress and harm?

Given that it’s often not certain that a genetic mutation will be passed on, how to construct such a body of law? Would it only apply in cases where the probability is sufficiently high as to render the conception reckless? How would that probability be quantified in cases of complex, spectrum type disabilities?

The above assumes the parents are sane, but mental illness is a spectrum and culpability can sometimes be a grey area. Should people who deliberately conceive children with disabilities instead be scheduled under the Mental Health Act?

How could that ever work in practice? Would they have a court appointed medical guardian for the rest of their childbearing years? Would they necessarily be deemed insane for the entire period? What if they recanted?

How could such a guardian prevent a future pregnancy anyway? More importantly, what could be done once a pregnancy occurred? Would the guardian force an abortion? Why would this reasoning then not extend to people who discover they are carrying a severely disabled child, but want to carry it to term?

Now we’re so far from Liberalism that a few deliberately created, disabled children may be preferable to the totalitarian alternative.

This post is so far, mostly a series of questions because like me, you’re probably thinking that there’s something wrong about people deliberately conceiving disabled children, but can’t see any way to prevent them from doing so which does not descend into a draconian legal labyrinth.

I sort of like the principle of allowing deliberately conceived disabled children to sue their parents, but as soon as you start thinking how it would work in practice, it begins to lose its appeal.

Who would actually bring the lawsuit? What would be the test for material harm and suffering? How disabled do the children have to be? Could the right extend to children who are identified as disabled in utero? That would be an interesting test for litigious and religious America.

Certainly, children should be able to sue their parents for sexual abuse, if a criminal conviction has been recorded. But what about suing for neglect, or abandonment? Perhaps, again, only in the event of a criminal conviction.

So, lots of questions, but few practical answers. However, we need to be asking these questions outside of philosophy courses, because these aren’t hypothetical situations. As described above, people are doing these things now. Some problems are best solved by groups, rather than a few people reasoning from a set of premises. This is an example of such a set of problems.

Here’s one along the same lines which is more clear cut, since it involves intentional self harm:

Despite there being nothing physically wrong with her, 58 year old Chloe Jennings-White wants to have an operation to render her permanently disabled. Although no sane doctor in the UK, where she was born, or the USA, where she now lives with her wife, would perform such an operation, she claims to have found a foreign doctor who will sever her sciatic and femoral nerves.

Firstly, any doctor who would perform such an operation on a clearly mentally ill person should not only be permanently deregistered, but charged and jailed.

Chloe Jennings-White’s mental illness has been described as part of the wider class of body integrity identity disorders, in which sufferers feel for example, that they are in the wrong type of body, or that they do not need the use of their legs, or they should have a limb amputated. Some people proceed to self harm, some do not.

How should a Liberal state respond to assertions by Chloe Jennings-White that she has “tried to have accidents so she could lose the use of her legs” or that she intends to travel overseas to have the disabling operation?

Should she be scheduled on clear evidence of attempts to self harm and the intent to do so again?

Yes, she should.

In practice, that does not necessarily mean forcibly institutionalising her. It could mean appointing a court ordered guardian, who has the power to admit her into psychiatric care. This is typically what happens in cases of anorexia.

In Chloe Jennings-White’s case, she should also have her passport cancelled and be placed on a border watchlist.

Some readers are probably thinking that if she succeeds in rendering herself disabled, she should not receive disability support. But she’s probably already on it, on the grounds of mental illness.

Suppose someone ignores a sign and dives into shallow water, making themselves para or quadriplegic. It’s their own fault and recklessness is usually treated the same as a deliberate action in judging culpability. But they still get disability support services. Chloe Jennings-White is less culpable than the reckless diver, because her actions result from mental problems. So, it's difficult to say she does not deserve disability support.

Frankly, her wife is partly to blame for enabling this behaviour. How to manage this mental illness clearly requires specialist knowledge, however I suggest that behavioural therapy along the lines of: “I know you can walk, so get up, do your own shopping and cooking, or you’ll starve” might be an experiment worth trying.