A long line of ethical thinkers from Seneca to Peter Singer write of killing ‘defective’
children. They even see it as a wise and prudent action suitable for use as a policy
benchmark. Singer et al. seem to see child birth as a bit like getting coffee from a
vending machine. The babies are all infinitely replicable, some are just ‘better’ than
others. Preventing the birth of ‘defective’ children is only like blocking off a button
marked ‘weak coffee’ on the human slot machine. (And no wonder feminists object to
the way women are portrayed in the fertility debate.)