Next year, my firstborn is slated to attend Sante Fe High School here in Edmond. Nothing particularly extraordinary about that, but the school did make the news in a weird sort of way yesterday:
A local biology teacher’s multiple choice question about abortion is upsetting students’ parents.
Edmond Santa Fe High School officials confirmed Tuesday several biology teachers at the school gave their students a “non graded exercise” – a discussion starter – on human genetic disorders.
Oh, noes! Time for ethics. Here is the question in question:
You’ve found out that the child you (or your wife) carries has the gene for dwarfism. A new therapy exists that may repair this gene before the child is born. What do you do?
a. Allow the child to be born with the gene, and we will accept the child as is.
b. Attempt the new therapy to repair the gene.
c. Terminate Pregnancy.
From my perspective, none of these options are clearly immoral or obligatory, but I expect it should make for decent conversational fodder.
Two types of adults took exception to the first question on the sheet: conservative Christians who objected that the first question implies women should be able to choose to terminate their pregnancies, and progressive feminists who objected that the first question implies men should be able to tell women not to terminate their pregnancies. (There is just no pleasing some people.)
So long as controlling parents and ideologues insist that minors are incapable of moral reasoning beyond the boundaries of some approved moral system, we’re going to get this sort of blowback every time that a student brings home an exercise designed to stimulate discussion on socially salient moral issues.
This is why we cannot have nice things.
