In the last issue of Commonweal, my fellow columnist Barbara Whitehead wrote [1] about the ambivalent reactions of now-grown children conceived by artificial insemination -donor. The Linacre Centre, a Catholic bioethics institute in England, has just announed the publication of a book entitled Who Am I? [2], which also outlines the largely negative reactions of people who came into existence in this way.

Whitehead suggests that this data may give us reason to "hit the breaks" --. It's not clear what she means, but it may include banning such procedures.

I understand the concern with AI-Donor, but I am also concerned with the form of the argument. These children have problems with their lives -- but the alternative for them isn't life with both their natural parents --it's non- life -- non-existence. They wouldn't exist if these procedures hadn't been performed. In essense, to run this particular argument against AI-D, we're running something that looks an awful lot like a wrongful life argument.

This argument based on experience is a dangerous argument. Not necessarily incorrect , but dangerous. It's something that can easily be turned in directions that I don't think the Linacre Centre would endorse, nor Whitehead. What would they say if someone gathered together a collection of people who lived with various disabilities, who said that they found life difficult -- as a means of arguing that women over 35 should be discouraged from having children? What would they if someone talked to a bunch of people who came from big families, who said that they missed unique parental attention? More prosaically, what would they say if they gathered together a bunch of teenagers who said that their lives were diminished because they weren't at the socio-economic level of their peers? Furthermore, in a society that counts abortion as one of the morally available options, finding out you're pregnant under one of those conditions may give you a good reason to have an abortion. My view: Arguments are like snakes. Unless handled carefully, they can come around to bite you.