Baby's Love Cancer!

I'm on a charity committee at my company, and last night we decided how much to give each organization that applied for a grant from us. Everyone makes their case and there is much discussion and arguing. It's all kept very civil and polite. But how can you be polite when you morally object to the very premise of one of the organizations?

That organization shall remain nameless, however, the point of the organization is to educate and assist people who have been diagnosed with cancer and still want to have the option to have children following their cancer treatment.

So, you're taking people who already have cancer and you're harvesting eggs or vialing sperm so that these people can later reproduce . . . and have a kid who will be genetically predisposed to have cancer also! Wow, thanks mom and dad, that's some gift! You're already bringing the kid into the world with one strike against them. Way to go!

How about educating these people on the fact that since they have cancer they are bad for the gene pool and should, oh, I don't know, maybe adopt one of the countless unwanted kids who might otherwise end up thrown into our shitty foster care system--where, after most likely being beaten or molested by a series of fine people, the child eventually will give up hope and turn to a life of crime and/or substance abuse? (You can put it in nicer terms when you tell them, of course.)

Here's why: Because people want their OWN baby. Because people feel some kind of primitive animal belief that their DNA is so amazing that it absolutely must be carried on. Which is clearly bullshit or else you wouldn't have cancer, now would you?

Would you love a child less if it were adopted? If it didn't grow up to look just like you in 20 years? If it didn't squeeze out of your own womb?

Pregnancy only lasts nine months. The whole point of raising a kid isn't just to say you punched one out of your vagina and were done. Birthing a baby is the easy part. The purpose of having a child is to raise a decent human being. And what lesson are you teaching your kid from the very start: That rather than help out a child who is already here and needs a loving home, you were so selfish that you needed to have your own progeny even though that offspring will most likely have to face the same life-threatening, painful disease you had to.

Chemo is so much fun you just have to share it with your kids!

Yeah, that's just good parenting.