Down Syndrome and Eugenics

[ex_restless]

Archbishop Chaput from Denver has written an excellent article in First Things titled Conscience, Courage and Children with Down Syndrome regarding the high rate of abortions among those diagnosed prenatally with Down Syndrome, and what this reflects on us as a society. It begins:

Comments

[redstar826]

It's a thought provoking essay. This isn't an issue I've thought much about, so I won't comment further until I spend some time wrapping my head around it.

[karcy]

Although a lot of pro-abortion (as opposed to pro-choice) arguments are made on the basis that women who are going through these abortions are making very difficult, traumatic decisions in their lives, the reality is not quite so. A great number of abortions are done for the sake of convenience, not desperation.

[chordoflife]

Sadly, Karcy is right.

However, I'm not going to condemn someone who makes a difficult decision to terminate a DS fetus. I may not make that decision, but I certainly cannot say what I would do as a woman in that situation. Having met some parents who really struggle with their DS children, it's a very hard life parenting one. I'd like to think that the easy answer would be, well, just give it up for adoption if you can't or won't parent it, but I'm a male who does not have to deal with the burden of a pre-natal decision.

I applaud this article for putting a face on DS children.

[ex_restless]

I think we have to be careful using the language of "condemn." Not just in this argument, but in general. Condemn means something very, very different than making a judgment as to what is the right or wrong decision.

That said, I think beyond just putting a face to DS children, this article goes to the heart of what it says about us as a society that we are moving more or less towards a eugenics type mentality, that children merely born with birth defects are not worth having. It is not a condemnation on the person, but it certainly is an indictment on society as a whole.

[redstar826]

Sounds like somewhere in all of this, there is an argument in favor of making health care more accessible to everyone. I would guess that for many folks, having a child with any serious disability is a HUGE expense. The writer starts to go there when he mentions that services for the disabled vary from state to state, but then he moves on without proposing any sort of solution.

[lordhellebore]

The real choice is between love and unlove, between courage and cowardice, between trust and fear.

Wonderful emotivism, it's touching, I'll give you that.

Until the good man has taken care of a special needs person for years himself, or at least lived in a household with them, he should be careful, though. Yes, of course, he's a church official, it's his obligation to point out such things, etc. etc., and I can even see his point. I think everybody can. But it's still so easy to talk about something you will never have to experience.

[susannah]

I think I agree with you. The voice belongs primarily to the people who've actually been in this situation, and made the decision one way or the other, with the agonising beforehand, or the years of dedication, love, hardship and reward involved

[karcy]

"compassion in these dreadful, huge decisions."

But the point that I was making is that many of the decisions made to abort are not dreadful or huge. Down's Syndrome might be scary -- there are just as many people who abort because it was simply a 'bad time to have a baby'. It's linked to the kind of detachment people feel towards a foetus; that it is somehow a 'potential human', and not a life in itself.

While I consider myself pro-choice because I don't believe in banning abortions, there's no real reason to mollycuddle people when they are at the risk of making wrong choices in their lives. It's fundamentally and morally wrong, because it is enabling someone to do something wrong. At some point, compassion has to stop, especially when it comes to situations when you end up feeding someone morphine because it makes the person happy, or giving alcohol to an alcoholic because quitting is harder.

Pregnancy is always scary; I had a pregnancy scare once, too, and I was determined to abort. Parenting is always scary. While there is a

[ex_restless]

I'll make a similar comment here that I made to chordoflife: the archbishop is not himself, nor is he asking us, to make a judgment on a family who makes such a decision. That's not the point here. Judgment makes no appearance in the article - or rather, judgment of persons makes no appearance. But that should never preclude us from making a judgment on the attitude and values as a society that are highlighted in the reality of Down and abortion. As I said to lordhellebore, this really isn't an abortion debate at all. Abortion is ultimately tangential to the article, and the fact of abortion in this case is not raised for the purpose of discussing abortion, but rather for the purpose of highlighting a disturbing reality of our societies, which is this inhumane premium we place on a specific measurement of perfection. It's not so much that abortion is happening generally, but rather that it happens overwhelmingly in cases such as these because Down babies are labeled as "undesirables," and what that labeling says about us as a people.

[anti_nietzsche]

Great article, Michael, keep it going!

[alasthai]

There is an extended series of articles in the Guardian, on this issue:
NHS failure on Down's screening kills healthy babies;
The lives of babies with Down's syndrome are not worthless;
Delayed motherhood behind increase in Down's syndrome babies, research says;
The upside of Down's syndrome;
The human cost of screening for Down's.

What I like most about these are the words of those who are involved with people with Down's, and particularly of those who are parents of people with Down's, talking about how valuable their children are.