Admittedly, I don’t post prolifically, but I read the posts here every day. A lot of times, the selfishness of parents comes up (i.e. “they’re selfish, I didn’t ask to be here!”), and I totally agree with such sentiments. In fact, I’m here to post a true story that, I think, highlights such selfishness in an obviously negative way. I should mention that I’m actually not the subject of this story; rather, it is comprised of bits and pieces of blog posts by somebody named Anne McCarthy, about her son James (presumably James McCarthy). It is deliberately told in a somewhat scathing manner, so of course it’s (somewhat) biased towards the view of selfishness; anyone wanting further info…well, I gave you enough info such that Google should be able to pull you the rest of the way through. Anyway:
One day, Anne and Daniel McCarthy wanted a child. They tried and tried, but no matter what, a child never came. So they came up with an ingenious plan: Daniel’s sperm would impregnate an egg from another woman, and that would go into Anne’s uterus. A whole bunch of time later, out comes a baby. With a million genetic problems. Turns out that this whole mishmashed plan fucked up real bad(did anyone see that coming?) and now they have a child with a thousand problems. He can barely walk, see, hear, or talk. He needs to be home-schooled, since apparently where the McCarthys live, alternative teaching and cooperative teachers are nonexistent. That’s not to say that the family is neglectful – Anne drove him to The Bronx (an astronomical drive) every single day for a year for alternative schooling. She now has to home-school her child, which, given all the disabilities, is going to be an absolutely monumental task. And that’s the story so far.
My only question: who the FUCK thought this to be a good idea? This…is selfishness beyond belief. Yes, the family is trying to mitigate the problems and do the best they can, but the bottom line is, some dumbfuck thought up the brilliant idea of some absurd concoction of external to internal pregnancy. And now, a pretty fucked up kid has to live with that decision. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if, in a few years, we see him trying to hang himself, shoot himself or do any of the other things people around here are looking into.
Somehow, I think adoption would have been less painful for all involved.
1 comment
Surrogate parenthood is a pretty common thing. I thought you were going to tell a story of callous, neglectful, and/or abusive parents that wouldn’t step up to the task of caring for their disabled child but that doesn’t sound like the case here. Rather it sounds like you don’t think that disabled people could ever be happy. Maybe I missed something? What mean-spirited thing have they done to this child? What necessities did they deprive him of? Bringing a kid into the world in and of itself isn’t an act of evil, even if something unexpected happens. It’s what you put the kid through after that.