an argument for abortion

...not from me, folks! From Richard Dawkins, great evolutionist popularizer in England:


Dawkins makes the following remarks about abortion:

"And there some terrible diseases whose heritability score is one,
meaning that in an identical twin dies of the disease, his twin is bound
to die of it, too. When it becomes feasible to screen for such nasty
genes in the DNA of embryos, the moral case for selective abortion will
become overwhelming."

"Sufferers from such inherited diseases sometimes object, on the grounds
that selective abortion would have deprived them of existence. All of us
have to thank a ludicrously improbable chain of past events for our
existence. If a different sperm in your father's ejaculate had won the
race to the egg...did your parents or grandparents meet each other as a
direct consequence of the Second World War...? Many people could answer
yes. Do you, then, see this as grounds for objecting to to the
suggestion that wars should be abolished? Of course not: the idea is
absurd."

The "Richard Dawkins: You Ask the Questions" interview was done by Mark
Sappenfield of the Independent, February 20, 2003.


The interview is now for sale at
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=379807