Dude, why can't I just not read the comments when a paper like the NYTimes has an article about infertility? Why? It's downright masochistic.
However, I must say one thing: I find the commenters highly inefficient. They always spout the same thing, only varying the depth of ignorance and acidity of the vitriol. So I'd like to make a modest proposal.
I call it WOMBAT!
Instead of posting, say, "When will these women [it's always the ladies at fault, apparently] stop being so selfish in their desire for a baby who looks just like them and stop overpopulating the world and start realizing that God/nature/Darwin/Karl Marx didn't mean for them to have children. They need to stop being such horrible useless excuses for human beings and go and adopt one of the gazillion homeless orphans lying around on every street corner just waiting to be taken in a family," they should just post one word and one only.
Wombat.
We'll know what they're all about, and they can spend the minutes they now use insulting and misunderestimating a fifth of humanity doing something more useful. Like bleaching their teeth or waxing their hamsters' toenails.
4 comments:
I find a lot of these people come from (more or less) ideologically sympathetic planets (obviously not including this one). They think that excessive medical intervention is harmful and should be avoided (couldn't agree more) or have concerns that artificial reproductive technology is morally questionable and may result in the death of children (definitely possible) or that IVF parents are "playing God" and trying to create the perfect child (this view stems from total ignorance of ART as it actually occurs, of course) or that our culture has become obsessed with children to the extent that they are commoditized and/or used as status symbols (I agree, but think the fertiles are the real culprits here) or have a great concern for the poor and orphaned children (what could be more noble?).
And then they channel these ideological notions, laser-like, onto the lives of actual men and women, who are really suffering, and whom they don't know (or have chosen not to acknowledge they know, in view of the statistics), with all the subtlety and nuance and emotional maturity I brought to bear when I was arguing about politics as a junior in college. I was 19 then, and I feel I had an excuse, but still, by any fair measure, I was immature.
In short: I support the WOMBAT proposal. And look at my poor hamster, toenails still unwaxed...
(Hehe. Your word verification is "nalis." So close to "nails"...)
...Or procreating. Ugh. I like your solution. :)
Amen, sister! Wombat it is.
Hear, hear! Yes, I clearly should be weaving my Hellbound handbasket as I didn't even once stop to consider adopting one of the millions of needy orphans hanging out at the sign post on our corner, not even after Jesus himself stopped by to let me know I was NOT ALLOWED to play in the gene pool anymore.
Wombat.
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