House of Eratosthenes

The couple, who have three sons and still grieve for a daughter they lost soon after birth, are going to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to win the right to select sex by IVF treatment.

They say they want the opportunity to have the baby daughter they were tragically denied.

An independent panel, known as the Patient Review Panel, recently rejected the couple’s bid to choose the sex of their next child using IVF.

They have gone to VCAT in a bid to have that decision overturned.

VCAT recently ruled that it has the power to review the Patient Review Panel decision. It will hear the couple’s case in March.

So determined are the couple to have a girl that they recently terminated twin boys conceived through IVF.
:
Victoria’s Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 bans sex selection unless it is necessary to avoid the risk of transmission of a genetic abnormality or genetic disease to a child.

All IVF clinics in Australia must stay within National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines that say sex selection should not be done except to reduce the transmission of a serious genetic condition.

Australian IVF pioneer Gab Kovacs – not involved in the case – said he could not understand why the couple should be banned from having a girl.

“I can’t see how it could harm anyone,” he said.

“Who is this going to harm if this couple have their desire fulfilled?”

Other than the plain fact that it diminishes all of humanity when babies are served up in a made-to-order smorgasbord, I guess yeah it’s completely harmless.

How absurd. You have the parents and the pencil-pushing busy-body bureaucrats in their little yelling match, and here’s God way off in the corner of a room, murmuring “is it all right if I get a vote in this?”

Yeah, yeah…I know…sky fairy, doesn’t really exist, you’re stupid if you think He does, yadda yadda yadda. Well, isn’t there something jacked up about it when, if you want to think it’s really a decision between the parents and the bureaucrats because there’s no such thing as God — you must necessarily believe in the “mass of cells” mythology, that fetuses don’t count until such time as they get squeezed out and turn into babies?

How about if you believe that children are their own people, and they’re not property, and some great wrong is being done any time they’re treated like belongings owned by the parents. Isn’t there a terrible problem being posed for that mindset if the kids are made-to-order, by process of elimination in this way? Reminds me of a “thought for the day” I saw somewhere: If a gay gene is ever discovered, would our progressives support the “choice” by parents who aborted a gay baby?

There is one other aspect to this story that needs to be pointed out; easy enough to pick up on this on a subconscious level, but very few people will stoop to the low level of pointing it out. Well as usual, I’m hear for ya:

The “Replacement Clergy” thing. IVF is to be allowed, abortion is to be allowed…we need progressive societies that are open, tolerant, permissive, respectful of choice. The framework has been cobbled together, the mindset diligently pursued and where does it all end up? These parents that have been-through-so-much that need to have their choices respected, and so forth — are left to quibble endlessly with government bureaucrats. “Keep your laws off my body and get your government out of my uterus” indeed. Oh, the irony.

Thanks to Cassy for snagging this.

Once there was a society that, based on what it thought was good and right, designed a system of government that would best preserve and encourage those things.

People from all over the world who wanted to were welcomed to come join that society and assimilate themselves into it.

But over time, malcontents within who really didn’t like that society, combined with efforts from others from outside who didn’t like that society and power-hungry narcissists within that society — exploited the tolerance of that society and subverted that tolerance from bottom-up tolerance of people who wanted to come assimilate to a top-down structure where the government began to dictate what society should look like.

Any time people from the majority, original society tried to assert its values, it was denounced as Hatred, even though that very society’s openness and embrace of anyone who wished to join it allowed its enemies to gain that very foothold. It went from society accepting those who wanted to join it, to that society being forced to accomodate any other society’s ideas and ideals.

Over time, the original society, along with its ideals, were slowly supressed out of existence.

And in the end, another oppressive totalitarian regime would rise, like a dark, evil Pheonix — from its ashes.

It’s a sad story. I hope the ending is different.

Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only? Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.
- philmon | 01/14/2011 @ 12:53
“…it diminishes all of humanity when babies are served up in a made-to-order smorgasbord…:

Well, except Michael Moore. I think that’s actually his personal vision of what Heaven looks like.
- Rich Fader | 01/14/2011 @ 15:38
I must’ve put this on the wrong post. Or I was high. 🙂
- philmon | 01/14/2011 @ 15:41
“Who is this going to harm if this couple have their desire fulfilled?”

I seem to recall hearing this same question asked during the advancement of gay “marriage.” What people don’t realize is that civilization and morality aren’t wiped out in one fell swoop, but brick-by-brick.

Funny you should mention God. I happen to think that our increasing permissiveness and sense of relativism is going to bring down His wrath upon us all.
- cylarz | 01/14/2011 @ 20:42
Over time I have begun to see that even if there isn’t literally a floaty, wispy bearded guy floating through the Universe, the wrath of the darker side of our nature that the “Sky Fairy” represents the flip side of?

Yeah. Definitely. It’ll get us.

And if there is… well, “Him” help us all.
- philmon | 01/14/2011 @ 21:06
I don’t think of God as an old man sitting on a chair up in the clouds, myself. That’s mythology and popular culture. There was an interesting article on cracked.com (yeah, the humor magazine) recently which pointed out that it’s popular culture, not the Bible, which has given us common conceptions. For example, we think of the devil as a guy with horns and a pitchfork, right? Well, the Scriptures actually never tell us what he looks like.

And I think this is the issue with people calling God the “sky fairy” or whatever other irritating thing I hear from atheists. He’s not up in the sky; He’s right here, in your face, up close and personal. The Bible is actually pretty clear about that.

Not to distract from your valid point, Phil…you simply reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to say for awhile.
- cylarz | 01/14/2011 @ 21:20
And good points they are, cylarz.

My thoughts over the years on the subject have gone beyond religion and into the realm of theology, myself — nothing I’ve “studied” under the tuetelage of any person …

They say we are created in God’s image. I observe that our souls are like a piece of God within us. This is how He is always watching. This is how he is here, there, and everywhere and also in our faces. This is what it is about us that is immortal — whatever that turns out to mean in reality. And this is the part of us we must respect the most. When we don’t respect it, the light dims, and we are less worthy vessels.

And no, clearly, there is no physical form for us to see, hear, or touch. We do have symbolic conventions, though. And they are handy. But they are not physical reality.
- philmon | 01/14/2011 @ 21:28

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Twin Boys Aborted for Being Boys
Friday, January 14th, 2011