Is it ethical for us to have children?

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Personally I'm planning on not having a child if they are autistic. Nothing to do with the condition itself, and I don't care about its prevalence rate. I'd just rather not have my child go through the hell that is neurotypical society.

I see nothing wrong with autistic people having children.
There are no traits so wrong in me that I should not pass down my traits to my future spawn.

[I haven't been diagnosed, but I think I am, because everything fits]

My 3 kids are the best things to ever happen to me. By far. They are all more or less neurotypical. (There's a vein of ADHD running through the family if that counts) The two that are grown up are my allies in a way that no one else could ever be. They are awesome people. I have a teenager at home still, and his behavior is the most challenging of the three, at this time. He's a wild one. Kind of, like I was as a teen.

Still, he is the light of my life. I'll be really sad when he grows up and moves out. As it is I'm considering moving to where my adult kids live. Would like to see more of them.

eta: in case it wasn't clear, they are my favorite people in the world by a HUGE margin

A wise man once told me that children are just a bunch of freeloaders. He's still unmarried to this day.

Malthusian was wrong about the timing, but he was right in the general concept. And it's not about 'only certain people should reproduce' either. It's that overall, people are having too many kids, which is bad because all of these kids need food, clothing, and a place to live and work. People in Africa have a ton of kids per person, and they end up cutting down miles of jungles and forests for farmland to feed them all. People in America can't get away from the over consumption they are into, wrapping everything up in plastics and constantly clearing out woodlands and wetlands to build houses, using enough chemicals on crops to ensure a lot of it escapes from bugs and pests to feed the growing population. We give kids tons of cheap plastic toys made in China and out of petroleum products, ultimately for them to end up in a landfill (along with other stuff that we can't be bothered to repair or tossed away because of 'planned obsolescence') when they get tired of them and move onto the next fad.

It's not people in a sense, it's that we simply can't keep creating more people in a huge degree and not expect some ugly consequences to eventually happen. Even if we were 'green,' there is still a limit to how many people can be born without running out of resources. It's not space in the planet (so forget about that old saw about all the people of the planet fitting into Texas) it's having enough land to grow food, fresh water to drink, and enough places to live. And that's not including land to grow clothing fibers and areas to mine resources. Enough of this 'terraforming' by more and more people, and you risk squeezing out wildlife, destroying and displacing species that keep critical ecologies in balance, and dumping enough chemicals into the environment (because we looove our plastic and 'toys') that we begin to alter species and foul the general environment at the most basic level.

The planet is warming because of this, and there is are giant 'dead zones' in parts of the oceans where little can survive, because it's so polluted. There are also areas in it that are little more then plastic 'soup,' because all of the old eCrap and other things that stopped being fashionable last month, are now degrading in the ocean, their chemicals still embedded in them slowly moving up the food chain. Humans did that, not animals. And if we don't limit creating children for a while to allow us to restore equilibrium, then there won't really be a place for those children to live. It will be a heavily polluted and over-populated hellhole.

"Is it ethical for X group of people to have children?"

In what way is that statement different from:

"Do you believe in eugenics?"

I'm not writing this to be inflammatory... I really don't see the difference and would be interested to hear from someone who does.

i also have some very good genes, like low cholesterol and high intelligence. wouldn't want to miss out on the chance of passing those on.

Autism is not bad genes. First that is one not how genes work, and two autism is not a strictly bad thing, especially when you at the genetic basis for it, lots of traits considered "good" are found in families with autism. Now if you carry cystic fibrosis or another autosomal recessive gene, you might want to make sure your partner doesn't also carry it, but unless you carry an autosomal dominant gene like Huntingtons there is no reason not to have children because of a genetic disorder.

I guess you're right. I would never control another person though. It is against my philosophical beliefs to tell someone else what they can and can't do if they are not impeding the freedoms of others. I am more saying this on a personal level. Not personal for me exclusively per say, but more as a, "Should we be asking ourselves this on a individual level?"