Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Introducing... mini-me

Benjamin Jack Glasser was born on Sunday May 26, at 1:26 PM. He weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces, and was 20 1/4 inches long. Both mother and child are in good shape, and I'll be home from work all week.

Some fundamentalist on the Motley Fool took the opportunity to make a crass dig about abortion:

Congratulations on becoming a father! Glad God saw fit to allow him to enter the world!

But at what point did Benjamin become a "mini-me"?

If he had died six weeks ago, would he have been just a non-Benjamin, "mini-non-Kazim"?

Would you have lost the son you have now, or just some fetal tissue?

I replied:

If there had been a miscarriage a few days after conception, as is common with very many births, we would have lost the son we have now.

If we had not chosen to have sex on that particular night, we would have lost the son we have now.

In either case, we might have had a different son or daughter on a different date. And we would love him or her just as much.

But he's here now, and he's the one we love now. Hypothetical situations don't apply anymore. If we hadn't intended to have a son or been prepared to care for one, then we wouldn't have. But we did, and we do.