Here’s a twist on the controversy surrounding genetic testing of embryos: A deaf couple wants the right to use the screening process to choose a deaf baby.

The couple have become icons in a deaf movement which sees this impairment not as a disability but as the key to a rich culture which has its own language, history and traditions: a world deaf parents would naturally want to share with any offspring.

Moreover, they argue that to prefer a hearing embryo over a deaf one is tantamount to discrimination.

Although the original wording of the U.K.’s Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill would have prevented Paula Garfield and Tomato Lichy from intentionally choosing an embryo with the abnormality, a proposed amendment would give them that right. Lichy believes that “being deaf is not about being disabled,” but critics argue that “deliberately bringing a child with a disability into the world when one without could be born verges on the morally repugnant.”

What’s your take: Should this couple be allowed to choose a deaf embryo, or is doing so morally repugnant?