Better off Dead
Synova on Feb 02 2008 at 6:36 pm | Filed under: Eugenics, Health Care, Law, Synova's Page
Kim at Wizbang links to this story about eugenic thinking in Brittan.
The comments came as the Lords debated an amendment, [...] that would have protected unborn disabled children from abortion after the 24 week gestational time limit. The amendment was defeated by 89 votes to 22.
Under Britain’s abortion law, children judged to have some form of disability, including such comparatively minor disabilities as club foot or cleft palate, can be aborted up to the time of natural birth.
The comments are amazing.
Referring to two children she knows who were born prematurely with severe cerebral palsy, Baroness Meacher said, “They were natural births. Those two children cannot breathe naturally; they have to be helped to breathe. They will never talk. They lie on their backs and can do nothing.”
“My belief is that there are children, born at those very early ages, who are not viable people. It would be in their best interests to have been aborted.”
She said, “I want to speak about the rights of the child. The Mental Capacity Act refers to the child having capacity; if they do not have capacity, it is important for the professionals to consider their best interests.”
“There rests my case. We need to consider the best interests of these babies.”
Better off dead.
It’s a hard question as we deal with medical technology that can keep people alive who would have died at birth not too many years ago. But as much as the arguments (at least the ones quoted in the article) seem to have focused on the extreme cases, the law provides for marginal cases or correctable conditions. And, really, even if a person knows that their baby most likely has a disability they usually don’t know for sure or how severe until after the child is born.
And please explain to me what is the difference between an abortion before natural birth at nine months and an abortion after natural birth at nine months? Ethically. What is the difference? Being concerned about the eugenic tenor of these sorts of arguments (Is someone better off dead than alive with down syndrome? Better off dead than with a cleft palate? Are all those with cerebral palsy better off dead?) is not being concerned about some brave new eugenic world that can’t happen.
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Macabre argument from Meacher. How can death ever be in someone’s “best interests”?
If you want to kill the physically and mentally disabled, at least be plain about it. Don’t try to sell it to me as if you’re doing them some kind of favor.
My best friend from high school had a severely disabled baby. In her case it was a pre-birth injury… so the child was entirely healthy until the day before he was born and wouldn’t have been part of this sort of situation. But what she said was, as much as she wished, every day of his life, that he wasn’t born with the disabilities he was born with, she never wished he hadn’t been born.
It really is alarming in so many ways. I was offered tests for various things when I was pregnant with my youngest and refused them because I really did not want to know or be faced with that decision. It’s *hard*.
The notion isn’t actually Meacher’s. For some time now Peter Singer, Princeton University professor of bioethics, has been promoting the idea of terminating the lives of disabled children as late as 28 days after birth:
And it’s a practice that is not unknown in Europe already:
When the state is all-important, one’s usefulness to it becomes a deciding factor in whether or not one lives. In some cases, the only factor.