Midwives have been told about the benefits of “close relative marriage” in training documents that minimise the risks to couples’ children.
The documents claim “85 to 90 per cent of cousin couples do not have affected children” and warn staff that “close relative marriage is often stigmatised in England”, adding claims that “the associated genetic risks have been exaggerated”.
ITT: Blatant ableism disguised as concerns.
Should you be allowed to have children if you are a known carrier of some bad but not inmediatly deadly risk gene like fragile x, chorea huntington, mucoviszidosis, diabetes 1 (let’s ignore the worsening of fragile x and chorea huntingtion across generations for a moment)? Should you be allowed to have children if you have trisomie 21, or some other mental disability? If you say no i think you are ableist and can’t comprehend that people with special needs are still people that can be happy and can have desires. If you say yes why can’t two cousins have a child? What if they have two forms of birth control and just want to fuck? What if they are the same sex? I my experience most people who are against two cousins having sex do not give a flying fuck about some theoretical chile but just think it’s icky. Which is a fair feeling you are allowed to have but should not be basis for a law.
Having children with disabilities via voluntary incest is a choice. Same with having kids with a terrible genetic disease. It’s also questionable how good a parent, if not person, you are for willingly wanting to bring in someone who will suffer into the world. Especially when there’s adoption available. If you can use technology to prevent a literal disease, that’s different.
People who get kidney failure or lost an arm definetly didn’t make that damn choice.
If anything is ableist it’s your opinion; people with disease or injury don’t want to have it, or made the choice to have it - let alone have they’re loved ones get the same thing. It’s about not judging the person’s potential abilities in specific areas or mistreating them despite the disease.
But advocating for the spread of the disease is fucked up. Your logic is no different than advocating a blind parent should have the right to blind their child intentionally.
The issue I have with your argument is you can use the exact same argument for sibling incest. If two cousins can have a child, and we’re dismissing the birth defect risk argument, then why can’t a brother and sister have a child? What if they just want to fuck? What if the entire family is into the aristocrats style gang bang?
Your argument doesn’t draw a line between cousin incest and parent-child or sibling incest. If one is okay then the other should also be okay and I don’t know about you but I’m definitely not okay with the latter. I’m not saying you’re in the wrong but I do disagree with the argument you made for it.
Parent-child incest has the power dynamic issue. It’s basically impossible to consent in that relationship. As to siblings, I’d argue that the logical conclusion is that it is probably okay, unless there’s a limit to how much birth defect risk is allowable, which as noted above, comes with other issues.
What law makes it illegal?
This. I haven’t seen an argument about incest that doesn’t immediately devolve into eugenics, or talking about power imbalances that aren’t present with adult cousins
Found a cousin fucker.
Solid observational skills! They have, however, failed you. Just because someone is pointing out that certain arguments don’t actually hold water doesn’t mean they engage in the activities the arguments are against.
I just don’t care if two cousins wanna fuck because the arguments against it are things that I’m actively opposed to, or don’t apply to the situation.
You’re not as persuasive as you think you are…and you’re not fooling anyone.