Tuesday, January 14, 1997
ABORTION:
Extinction possible if parents don’t want a homosexual childBy
Tom Sena
"Well!" I fumed as we emerged from the movie house, "I guess as
far as Star Trek’s concerned, there are still no gay people in the
24th century."
Greg and I had just seen "Star Trek: First Contact," and as we
walked out into the December night I pointed out in exasperated
detail that every other minority group was represented among the
crew of the Enterprise except gays and lesbians. Not that we needed
to be popping out from every control panel or beaming down on every
transport just to make a point, I acknowledged, but we needed to at
least be there.
Greg flashed me a mischievous smile and replied, "Well, who
knows? Maybe we’re not there. Maybe they finally found the gay gene
and we were all eradicated before the days of Kirk and Spock."
He chuckled at his own joke, but suddenly he sobered. "You
know," he continued thoughtfully, "it is possible, isn’t it? I
mean, if science could isolate the gay gene, we could be engineered
out of existence  maybe in the next 30 years instead of the
next 300."
And of course, we could be. The discovery of the "gay gene,"
which most of us are convinced exists, will be a double-edged sword
for gays and lesbians when and if it happens. On one hand, it would
demolish forever the argument that gays "choose" their orientation
and are thus undeserving of protected minority status like African
Americans or the handicapped. But on the other hand, if the exact
cause of our sexual orientation could be determined, it would be no
time at all before science offered a "cure" for homosexuality
 perhaps not for those of us who are already legally
recognized as persons in our own right but certainly for
prospective parents who might be "at risk" of giving birth to a gay
son or lesbian daughter. And if the cure turned out to be too
expensive  well, there would be another option for parents
who didn’t want the responsibility of bringing a "different" child
into the world. Thanks to Roe vs.Wade, they could always choose
abortion.
What’s that you say? No woman would choose to abort a child
simply because of his or her sexual orientation? I’m
"fearmongering" in an effort to drive a wedge between gay activists
and the pro-choice movement? Not at all.
I’m simply a gay man who’s looking the facts squarely in the
face and inviting my brothers and sisters in the community to do
the same.
If some women are already having abortions because the child
they’re carrying is of the "wrong" sex, do you really think that
women in the future will hesitate to abort a child because he or
she has the "wrong" sexual orientation? Remember, one of the
grounds on which pro-choicers justify abortion is that every child
should be "wanted." You don’t want a gay child? Fine! You can get
rid of it.
And such fears are anything but exaggerated. For example, John
Fortunate in "Embracing the Exile," recounts that after a young man
named Tim came out to his parents, "His mother approached him. She
put her arm around his shoulders. Tim took this to mean that she
was going to accept him. ‘Tim,’ she said, ‘I’ve made only one
mistake in my life.’ Tim asked her what she meant. ‘Twenty-two
years ago,’ she said, ‘I should have had an abortion.’"
This is no isolated instance. In the now-famous report on teen
suicide that Dr. Louis Sullivan suppressed during his tenure as
United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, there is an
account of a gay teenager who was thrown out of his home when his
parents discovered his sexual orientation. When he tried to
reconcile with his parents by calling them from a pay phone, the
boy’s mother told him point-blank that had she known when she was
carrying him that he would grow up to be homosexual, she would have
aborted him then and there.
A rare case, you say? Enlightened, liberal and well-meaning
parents wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing? It’s comforting to
suppose so, but I wouldn’t bet on it. In fact, some might very well
decide that aborting their unborn gay child would be in the child’s
best interests. As one woman I know put it: "Why should I bring a
child into the world whom I know is going to have to deal with all
this bigotry and hate? Why bring up an innocent child to face that?
So, yes, I would have an abortion if I knew my child would grow up
to be homosexual."
In other words, "Trust me, dear, you’re better off dead."
Given the hard facts, the great question becomes, what are gays
and lesbians going to do now to prepare for a time when a woman’s
"right to choose" becomes a hunting license to exterminate our
kind? For that time may well be coming  perhaps as soon as
within the next two or three decades. Do we really think that we
can educate society out of its anti-gay prejudices by then? Or do
we as a lesbian and gay community need to reconsider the whole
issue of abortion?
After all, if a woman’s "right to choose" is absolute, then a
woman is free to have an abortion for any reason  even
through blind, irrational anti-gay prejudice. If gays and lesbians
want to object to aborting the gay and lesbian unborn on grounds
that we are persons of worth and dignity who have a right to grow
up and lead productive and fulfilling lives, then we have another
issue to confront. Because if we have a right to life, doesn’t
every other unborn child have that same right?
In the end, gays and lesbians may find that for us, the issue of
abortion boils down to a choice between defending the lives of all
unborn, or sanctioning our own extinction. As science closes in on
the gay gene, "going boldly where no one has gone before," it may
be that more and more "pro-choice" gays and lesbians are going to
start listening to the arguments of their pro-life brothers and
sisters and then say, "Beam me up, Scotty."