Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Just In Time For Halloween -- A Horror Story
Al Mohler writes
There is a sense in this that is comforting. Any parent that would elect to abort a child based on birth defects, particularly defects as innocuous as Down Syndrome, cited most heavily in Mohler's piece, would be really bad parents. But the narcissim and devaluing of human life here is so heart-rending that the comfort lasts for only nano-seconds. It's as if God's image resides only in the completely healthy.
I'm emoting here when I should be arguing. What is truly, truly troublng is that the medical system promotes these things largely out of financial concerns. Birth defects are a drain on medical care resources, so they don't really want them. They have literally put a value on life.
Never make Nazi comparisons is a good rule of arguement, but the line between this practice and the eugenics of the Nazi's is pretty doggone thin.
Patricia E. Bauer, a former reporter and bureau chief for The Washington Post, warns that prenatal testing techniques have shifted the medical question from an ability to abort babies judged to be defective to a duty to abort. She's right of course, and the shift in this logic is inevitable. Once human dignity is redefined in terms of "acceptable" and 'unacceptable" babies, it is only a short jump to the argument that no one should be allowed to impose a "defective" baby on the society.What do we call this? -- "abilityism?" It is acceptable to discriminate on genetic defect lines, but not on racial ones? But isn't race determined by genetics, so how long before we start defining "defective" on race lines. Yeah, I know, some bigots already do, that's my point.
There is a sense in this that is comforting. Any parent that would elect to abort a child based on birth defects, particularly defects as innocuous as Down Syndrome, cited most heavily in Mohler's piece, would be really bad parents. But the narcissim and devaluing of human life here is so heart-rending that the comfort lasts for only nano-seconds. It's as if God's image resides only in the completely healthy.
I'm emoting here when I should be arguing. What is truly, truly troublng is that the medical system promotes these things largely out of financial concerns. Birth defects are a drain on medical care resources, so they don't really want them. They have literally put a value on life.
Never make Nazi comparisons is a good rule of arguement, but the line between this practice and the eugenics of the Nazi's is pretty doggone thin.
