About the terminating of pregnancy, I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic, the mother tuberculous. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth was also tuberculous. What would you have done?" "I would have terminated the pregnancy." "Then you would have murdered Beethoven.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "About the terminating of pregnancy, I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic, the mother tuberculous. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth was also tuberculous. What would you have done?" "I would have terminated the pregnancy." "Then you would have murdered Beethoven." in the context of "Rhetorical dialogue attributed to Norman St John-Stevas (who apparently got the idea from Maurice Baring) in Peter and Jean Medawar, The Life Science (Harper & Row, 1977), p. 64. The Medawars give the following counter-argument:
   The reasoning involved in this odious little argument is breathtakingly fallacious, for unless it is being suggested that there is some causal connection between having a tubercular mother and a syphylitic father and giving birth to a musical genius the world is no more likely to be deprived of a Beethoven by abortion than by chaste abstention from intercourse or even by a woman's having a menstrual period; for by either means the world may be deprived of whatever genetic make-up conduces to the development of a musical genius." to mean that wisdom is timeless.