Parents have children thinking they will share many things with them: a love of books, perhaps. Some ethnic traditions.

What about a permanent disability? That's the question that's electrifying the the UK right now, as two Deaf parents, artist Tomato Lichy and theatre designer Paula Garfield, argue that they wish to have another Deaf child someday and a proposed ban against using any but "perfect" embryos in fertility treatments violates their rights and sends a bad message about the quality of life of Deaf Britons.

I generally hesitate to get involved in bioethical discussions because there are so many sides and every situation is different, but personally I find parents wishing to teach their children the coping strategies they have had to use in the world is far different from, say, breeding kids for speed or trying until they are sure they got thered-headed girl she'd always hoped for, although I have heard parents and future parents express similar wishes.

I have always found the unity and culture of Deaf people enviable, though of course, if my parents had had mobility impairments, a nearly-impossible situation as it was would have been been rendered hellish. But I often wish they had been prepared for my atypical arrival instead of shocked.

I can think of no better parents to prepare a Deaf child to live in a hearing world than these people and I hope the British government considers this.(What if they get hit by a bus? What if you do?)

I love hearing. Music is wonderful, but I understand a brisk run is too and I'm never going to know. I understand the government's wish to minimize painful consequences from reproduction, but I don't think parenting works like that.

It seems to me, whatever methods you use to bear a child, it's always a leap of faith. Many of us would not be here if crystal balls and cost-benefit analysis had been available at the time of conception, and no government can eliminate all impairments.(Whether it should try, I leave for braver minds than mine.)

My impairment is not genetic, but possibly the cervical abnormality that set everything in motion was. On both sides of my family complicated births abound...should my mother not have tried?

Single and in my mid-thirties,I am rapidly approaching the point where the decision to have no biological children will be made for me, both by general inclination and by my being unable to stay paired off more than a single year in my adulthood to date.There are, of course, some mixed emotions about that. As a disabled woman to whom much has been denied, it's hard to let any power go. But it's not as if I can write my ovaries a letter to the editor and keep them open indefinitely, and overall, I think it's better that my theoretical children are spared a mother that has the general autonomy level of...maybe a seventh grader, especially since my mother has never wavered in her assertion that she has done her baby-raising time.(I can almost picture a world where all that stuff looks different, but it eludes my fumble-fingered grasp.)

So I resent the government for trying to interfere in future Lichy-Garfield birth, especially since they are likely to find adoption a hard road as well.I hope not...may their home always be filled with little signing fingers.

--Erika Jahneke