The Secret Ghetto of Mass Effect 2

I just finished playing Mass Effect 2 the other day.  My Shepard was like a mother to her crew.  She was compassionate and hopeful and deeply wanted to help put her crews demons to rest.  She wanted to make sure my squad had no regrets before going on their suicide run.  Even though we lost 2 squadmates (Katsumi to an engineering blast and Thane trying to secure a door that just wouldn't seal)  She and I know we accomplished so much.

There's a bit of dissonance between me and her.  While I know that it was my hand guiding her, and that I was shaping her, the bigger than life ordeals and questions she faced are some I'm grateful that I've never had to address.

I won't lie; I loved Mordin Solus.  He was charming, focused, and caught me off guard from time to time.

Mordin is one of the scientists who unleashed a genophage that sterilized most of the Krogan race (Krogan's being the big tanky warrior race in the Mass Effect universe).  The Krogan Species had a history of overbreeding and and mass extinction before they were exposed to the rest of the galaxy.  It was feared that they would create a massive war.  The genophage was deemed the best proposed solution for the entire galaxy, including the Krogan race.

In Mass Effect 2 you can visit the Krogan homeworld where Mordin can address the implications, both moral and practical, of his work.  Here, I will address some issues the characters seem oblivious to, despite that the Krogan's themselves bring it up:

• The females are separated into their own clan.
• The females are the ones who were sterilized.
• The males fight over the right to breed with females.

The issues that Mordin and Shepard address are about the species as a whole.  They do not address how it has affected their civilization, or how female Krogan's are treated like a resource to be preserved rather than members of the society.  In the game you will never meet a female Krogan, and the game explicitly says that you never will.

Mordin's actions were a blatant violation of human rights that the game.  He took a distasteful situation and implemented as distasteful solution he felt was in the best interest of everyone, but his actions led to the ghettoization of half the species:  the same half of the species whose bodies were violated.

I'm ashamed that I tried to ease his mind rather than condemning his actions when I had the chance.