I respectfully request that all people who share the values that lead us to support these issues, to please act on them in unison. LET’S TAKE ACTION TOGETHER.
Call your legislators AND SEN TRAVAGLINI on Monday at 617-722-2000, as well as take action online now–links below, in order to:
and
Establish a consitutional right to comprehensive affordable healthcare for all, including future generations (remember, we had a universal healhtcare law passed in 1988 but we never actually got universal healthcare). This constitutional language also provides the legal framework needed to set clear and publicly accountable standards as we create an equitable, affordable and well organized healthcare system.
—
Sincerely yours in solidarity and in health,
Ann Eldridge Malone, RN
I think Hillary clinton is right that it would be far easier to get the practical security and protections and benefits that same-sex couples deserve if we called those usions Civil Unions. Calling them marriages would make it near impossible to ever get federal recognition, and as long as other states aren’t recognizing Massachusetts same-sex marriages, they don’t really give the couple the protection of marriage anyway. But if we called them civil unions, and made them substantially different from marriages by withholding the key right of marriage (the right to conceive children together), then we could probably secure federal recognition and 50 state recognition much easier.
<
p>
Don’t be moonbatty about the official name, and don’t be moonbatty about insisting on conception rights. Be practical about securing protections that will really make a difference to actual couples, protections that are being denied right now and causing real suffering to real people.
What, exactly, are “conception rights?” I’m not aware that this is a right that can be given, or taken away, by the state.
At issue is whether or not to allow labs to attempt to create people using genetic material from two people of the same-sex. The procedure would require genetic engineering, and this imparts a huge safety risk, as well as other issues.
<
p>
We do not have to allow labs to do this. We can and should prohibit attempting to conceive using anything other than a man’s sperm and a woman’s egg. We should conclude that same-sex couples should not have conception rights.
<
p>
Some people insist that same-sex couples should have the right to attempt to conceive together, in spite of the inherant risks to the child and in spite of the availability of other less risky ways to create a family, such as adoption. This would appear to be your position, that same-sex conception is a right and cannot be prohibited. But having such an extreme position, when the science is clear that same-sex conception is outrageously risky and inhumane and unloving, will prove to be very controversial, and will make it harder to achieve the more practical and uncontroversial benefits that most same-sex marriage activists have been asking for.
<
p>
On the other hand, giving up the demand for same-sex conception rights would create a distinction between the rights of same-sex and both-sex couples, and therefore create a distinction in the legal institution which protects and recognizes their committed partnership. Marriages would still be allowed to attempt to conceive together, but civil unions would not, they would be prohibited from attempting to conceive. This distinction would make it much easier to get federal recognition (in fact, that could be accomplished with the same legislation that prohibits non egg-sperm conception as part of a compromise), and would also allow civil union legislation to be passed even in the many states that have just passed laws and amendments prohibiting establishing civil unions. Those laws all prohibit creating civil unions that give the rights of marriage, but these civil unions would not do that, and so are not forbidden.
I’m not disagreeing with you in general, and I know nothing about the risks (real or perceived) with the sort of engineering required to make a square peg fit in a, uh, another square peg.
<
p>
However, the phrase in spite of the inherant [sic] risks to the child and in spite of the availability of other less risky ways to create a family, such as adoption is indeed a risky one.
<
p>
There are all sorts of diseases, conditions, syndromes, etc. that certain potential parents are incredibly likely to pass on to their children, either because of hereditary genetics or because of shared blood, flesh, and nutrients. Society doesn’t prohibit these parents from attempting to have children. Health workers may encourage these couples to forgo traditional childbirth for adoption, but they sure as heck can’t prohibit parents from passing along their genetic information and their bloodlines to their children.
<
p>
As far as I know, the state has only one policy about passing along genetic problems: you can’t marry your first cousin (or closer in bloodline). Even if you’re gay, incidentally.
True, there is an inherent [thanks] risk to all pregnancies, indeed to everything. But not only is there an order of magnitude difference (just one success out of 450 embryos created), and not only are the defects themselves probably going to be much worse and unknown to medicine, but there is a difference in kind, in manner, in public knowledge, and in implication of that risk.
The same man who would impart a perfectly normal risk onto his children should he conceive with a woman, would impart a HUGE risk onto his children if he tried to conceive with a man. And while it is hard to prevent a man and woman from conceiving together, it is easy to prevent a lab from doing all the complicated steps it would take to join same-sex gametes. It can’t happen accidentally, and it can’t happen just because two people love each other and act naturally, it can only happen with a team of experts acting with full malice aforethought, and that changes the way we have to look at the risk. This is purposefully, knowingly, intentionally putting people at risk, and going to a great deal of trouble to do it.
And the risk is out in the open, it is public. We know that the risk is huge because we know that both of the progenators [sic?] are both of the same sex. That is public information, whereas the risks of a male-female couple are private, if they are known at all.
It is a matter of principle that the chance of having healthy children is about the same for all people, not only because it would be impossible to correctly ascertain each couple’s liklihood of having healthy children, but because we recognize that there is a basic natural civil right for everyone to have children. But that basic natural civil right doesn’t mean that a lab can start trying to create people that couldn’t conceivably naturally exist if the proginators were healthy. Our basic civil right is to marry and procreate naturally.
Your concern about male-female couples being told that they may not conceive together because they are above a risk threshold is indeed a valid concern, though. But the scenario that would lead to that is if we had same-sex marriage but then didn’t allow those same-sex marriages to conceive children together. Then, all marriages would be equally subjected to that sort of risk analysis. Marriage needs to continue to proect a couple’s conception rights, we can’t start having marriages that labs turn away because of genetic risks.