If you have a few moments (it's a short piece), I urge you all to listen to this story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=93661785

"Woman Stymied in Drive for 'Beautiful Viking Baby'"
Simon Says - by Scott Simon

(I am a longtime listener of NPR (mostly World of Opera), but if this is the kind of journalism they represent, I want NOTHING to do with them in future!! Friends, we have nearly reached a point where it's criminal to give birth to European baby!)

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL NPR MEMBER STATION AND LET THEM KNOW OF YOUR DISSATISFACTION!!!!

This story purports to be about the new U.S. federal health regulations that prohibit the import of European sperm because of a supposed increased risk of contracting mad cow disease. (There have been no reported cases of a link between the two; it's simply a precaution .)

Instead of discussing this issue, Simon (perhaps of Jewish or German lineage if one goes by his surname), goes off on a tangent, calling a woman's morality into question because she wants to give birth to a baby who looks like her.

He prefaces his piece by stating that "there's nothing more personal than children" and that he's not in a position to criticize her choices, but like a true hypocrite, he proceeds to malign and criticize her!!

The woman in question is an American, Julie Petersen, who has chosen to go to Denmark to conceive a child from an anonymous donor. She already has one baby by the same donor, who is described as a "tall, blond Danish engineer."

Simon says that some of the quotes attributed to Ms. Petersen about her decision to seek out European sperm "made him squirm."

Petersen is of Swedish and Norwegian heritage. She wants a baby with a gene pool similar to her own. She wants a baby who looks like her and wants to share her heritage. She also wants to give her child a full-blooded sibling.

Simon says, judging by her statements, that "he doesn't know if that kind of reasoning is racist, but it's certainly preoccupied with genetics and bloodlines."

He then says that it makes him "feel creepy."

Then he states that "who's to say that a baby she could a adopt from Guatemala or a baby conceived by a father who's Irish and Navajo can't share in Julie Petersen's interest in Scandinavian heritage?"

Simon believes that Petersen wants a "sophisticated doll" that will look and act like her, and that she'll be unreasonably upset when her little Viking grows up and listens to Hip Hop music, likes Bollywood movies, and dyes her hair purple.

He finishes his broadcast by stating that he understands that "strong physical preferences, I won't call them prejudices, are part of romantic attraction," but Julie Petersen's "exacting criteria" make him wonder whether she "really knows who and what children are" and whether she's capable of really loving them!

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Ridiculous!! If she specifically wanted sperm from an Asian man or wanted to adopt a baby from Africa, no one would accuse her of being racist!! If she's going to pay to use a sperm bank, why shouldn't she get exactly the sperm she wants? It's a grotesque logical fallacy that Simon would attach wanting a baby with similar genetic traits with racism!! He is a disgrace to the profession of journalism!!!!! He subverts what she actually said and makes it seem as if she views child-rearing as cold and clinical. Don't you love how he suggests that she should adopt a Guatemalan child or contribute to the disigusting act of race-mixing by propogating with a Irish/Navajo monstrosity? I have very little faith left in society...