"A very pregnant Marlee Matlin yesterday weighed in on the raging ethical debate sparked by a Washington Post Magazine article about a deaf lesbian couple, Bethesda mental health therapists Sharon Duschesneau and Candy McCullough, who tried to make it likely that their son Gauvin, now 5 months old, would be born deaf like them.

The 36-year-old actress -- the mother of a 6-year-old daughter and an 18-month-old son, with her third child due in July -- shook her head in open-mouthed shock when we told her about our colleague Liza Mundy's March 31 story, which has provoked international controversy about the morality of 'designer babies' who are purposely given a disability.

'You know what? It's the first time I've ever heard anything like that,' Matlin told us in sign language translated by her longtime interpreter, Jack Jason. Duschesneau, Gauvin's biological mother, chose a deaf man as her sperm donor to increase the likelihood that her child would be deaf, and Gauvin was born deaf on Nov. 22. 'My personal opinion,' Matlin said, 'is that I think it's probably important for God to make that decision as opposed to us.'

Matlin, the only deaf person ever to win the Best Actress Oscar (in 1987 for 'Children of a Lesser God'), was making a morning appearance in Washington with former senator Bob Dole on behalf a Sprint PCS fundraising campaign for Easter Seals and the National Organization on Disability.

'There are always deaf babies out there to adopt,' said Matlin, who as a baby suffered an attack of roseola infantum virus that left her deaf. 'There are plenty of deaf children out there who need to be adopted, so I think that's important to understand. There are 33 children born every day who are hearing-impaired, which is 12,000 a year. I don't know about having to actually create one. There are a lot of them out there who need homes, I'm sure.'

Matlin lives in Los Angeles with her husband, police officer Kevin Grandalski -- who, like their children, enjoys normal hearing. 'I have a girl and a boy and we don't know what this one is, although we do know that 'it' is very active,' Matlin said. 'Either they're hungry or they want to talk to you -- I have no idea what this one is trying to say.'" (Lloyd Grove, The Washington Post, April 11, 2002)