Hey readers,
It's Sigal Samuel. Have you ever taken one of those cheap DNA tests, like 23andMe, only to get way more than you bargained for? Or maybe one of your relatives spit into the test tube — and ended up landing you with some major family drama?
That's what one reader is dealing with in today's edition of Your Mileage May Vary, my new advice column offering you a different framework for thinking through your ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions.
This unconventional column is based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other.
Have a question you want me to answer? Fill out this form here or shoot me an email: sigal.samuel@voxmedia.com.
Anyway, back to it: Here's a Vox reader's question, condensed and edited for clarity.
My grandmother had a teenage pregnancy she hid from her family before giving birth in secret and immediately giving the child up for adoption after birth. I accidentally discovered this after I received a message on an ancestry DNA website from someone closely related genetically to me. She told me she knew barely anything about her birth parents and was desperate to just have an answer. I accidentally exposed this secret to my mother and grandmother by asking if anyone knew who this person who messaged me was.
My grandmother was horrified, and wants nothing to do with her. How do I respect the choice my grandmother felt she had to make at that time in her life and protect her peace, while also acknowledging that this person should be able to at least know who the people who created her are and prominent family medical history? I feel guilty for exposing this secret accidentally but now I feel like I have an obligation to protect my grandmother and offer this person some peace of mind.
Dear Caught-in-the-Middle,
Your question reminded me of an idea from Bernard Williams, one of my favorite modern philosophers. He said that someone facing a moral trade-off can make what is, all things considered, the best decision, and — even though it was the right call — find that it still results in some cost that deserves acknowledgment or feels regrettable. Williams called that cost "the moral remainder."
Regret is a trickster of an emotion. We're used to viewing it as an indication that we've done something wrong. But as Williams explains, sometimes all it means is that reality has forced upon us an incredibly hard choice between two options, with no cost-free option available.
Your grandmother is not in the wrong for giving up her child all those years ago — or for wanting to keep her distance now. As you said, it's the choice she "felt she had to make at that time in her life." Pregnancy outside of marriage, especially in her generation, often came with a massive serving of shame, and the fact that she felt the need to hide it from her family and give birth in secret suggests this was a pretty traumatic experience.
It's understandable if she's scared to reopen that trauma now. She has a right to decide if and how to process it — a right to self-determination.
At the same time, her grown child is not wrong for wanting answers today. The desperation felt by this newfound relative of yours is the "moral remainder" of your grandmother's decision.
As technology shifts over the generations, moral norms shift along with it. When your grandmother gave up the baby for adoption, she had no idea DNA testing would become commonplace — but it has. And as cheap testing kits like 23andMe have exposed all kinds of family secrets, more and more kids who'd been kept in the dark are making their experiences known.
Some were never bothered by their obscured origins, but discover an extra measure of joy and connection once they meet long-lost relatives. Others say they always suffered from an uneasy sense that they're different from their siblings. Still others say it's important to know your biological family's medical history, especially with the advent of precision medicine.
All this has led to an increasing belief that children have a right to know where they came from — a right to self-knowledge.
Take it from Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance, who found out as an adult that her beloved father was not her biological father. She writes:
The secret that was kept from me for 54 years had practical effects that were both staggering and dangerous: I gave incorrect medical history to doctors all my life. It's one matter to have an awareness of a lack of knowledge — as many adoptees do — but another altogether not to know that you don't know. When my son was an infant, he was stricken with a rare and often fatal seizure disorder. There was a possibility it was genetic. I confidently told his pediatric neurologist that there was no family history of seizures.
Some bioethicists, like Duke University's Nita Farahany, are also building this case. Following the famous proclamation from Ancient Greece — "Know thyself!" — Farahany argues that people have a right to self-knowledge, including when it comes to medical information. She writes that "access to that essential information about ourselves is central to the self-reflection and self-knowledge we need to develop our own personalities." It helps us shape our own lives and empowers us to make choices about our future.
That means that self-knowledge is actually a subset of self-determination — the exact same value that your grandmother is asserting. And it seems only fair for us to acknowledge that if your grandmother is entitled to that, then so is her child.
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