It would have been unimaginable in the past that people would already be able to tell the gender of their children while still being in pregnancy. In a similar sense let us imagine for a moment a future where your family physician would be able to analyze your complete genetic makup and tell you with absolute certainty whether the child(ren) you are about to conceive (before the egg has even been fertilized) would suffer from some terrible affliction or not (e.g. Hallopeau–Siemens syndrome). In this fictional world of ours, the doctor can also tell you the number of children you will conceive (twins, triplets, etc.).

Now imagine you and your spouse are considering to have a baby. You visit the doctor to see if the baby you will eventually birth would be healthy or not. And to your dismay the doctor informs you that the baby would not be healthy.

Now you must decide – given this piece of information would you have the child or not?

Now imagine another scenario where when you visit the doctor the doctor tells you that you wil be having twins! But unfortunately again, only one of them will be healthy.

Again, would you have the twins or not?

Now imagine a third case where the doctor tells you that you will be having triplets. But again, only two of them would be healthy.

Would you have the triplets?

You might have guessed where this is going. It doesn’t matter if people conceive one, three, or a hundred children, the decision of conception doesn’t change for most when one of them is guaranteed to be unhealthy.

The people who find themselves saying no in all cases out of empathy for the one sick child may be surprised by the idea that there is virtually no difference between this fantasy world and the real world when amortized over their progeny – even if one’s children are perfectly healthy, the percentage of their progeny that will suffer from horryfying chronic conditions would always be non-zero in the limit.

The question remains – would you conceive your progeny?