human-shield-gaza (Photo credit: ` ³ok_qa³ `)
Well, a few weeks ago I became a Daddy, and it’s wonderful. And my son is healthy, which I’m so grateful for.
At our first ultrasound scan, the doctor asked if we’d like to see if the kid was going to be born with Down’s Syndrome, and then explained that the primary reason for the test was to determine whether killing the unborn child would be the right thing to do. That is, the purpose of finding out is not to prepare the parents.
He obviously thought it would be fine to kill an unborn baby, and I reckon it would be for one of the following reasons:
Not a human being
Well, that’s ridiculous. I saw the ultrasound; he certainly looked like a human, and he has human parents…how is he not a human?
The baby’s too small to be a human
At the 12-week scan the baby’s unimaginably small so this seems an obvious argument, but is just downright silly. My newborn’s way smaller than me but does that mean he’s somehow less human? Is Peter Crouch more human? What a joke.
He’s not developed enough to be a human
Again, how ridiculous. A human’s physical peak is in the early twenties, and the intellectual peak is in the 50s. I’ve no idea where the emotional peak is, but I’m pretty certain I’ve not reached there yet. Is there somehow a scale of how human I am based on my age? Or do people become less human once they get through being middle-aged? The answer’s no, by the way.
His environment is not the natural enviroment for a human
In other words, being in the womb stops you being a human. A US senator (I think) once defended stem cell research because ‘human beings aren’t made in a petri dish,’ but this simply doesn’t make sense. This morning I woke up and got out of bed, but I didn’t suddenly stop being me because my environment changed. Similarly, nothing happens physioligically to suddenly make a newborn baby a human where a few minutes earlier they were a few inches higher up the birth canal. Your environment doesn’t define you.
He’s too dependent to be a human
He needs the umbilical cord and everything else to stay alive, and therefore isn’t a human…are you kidding me? Imagine an elderly man who’s smoked his entire life so needs a respirator – is he really less of a human? Of course not.
Conclusion
My son wasn’t just a clump of cells in the womb, and magically a human now. He was a human throughout pregnancy, and still is now. Abortion should be approached the same way that anyone would approach killing any other human being, regardless of their size, level of development, environment, or dependency.
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The personhood of the foetus is not the only factor used in deciding whether an abortion is “right”. In the case of terminating due to Down Syndrome or other disorders, it can be more about compassion — knowing that Down Syndrome is a serious disorder with many disadvantages, some parents feel it would be irresponsible of them to allow the child to grow up with something as “awful” as that. A lot of parents seem to think that disabilities in their children are complete tragedies (look at the hysteria over autism, and compare how autistic adults feel about that). Some, like the philosopher Peter Singer, claim that parents have a moral duty to protect their children and future children from genetic diseases.
I don’t think that makes it ethical, but attributing it all to dehumanizing the unborn is likely not going to provoke useful dialogue with the other side. I think conversations need to had about the rights of people with disabilities and education about how they’re not the end of the world (people with Down Sydrome don’t necessarily suffer reduced quality of life).
I see what you mean (and I fully agree with your action plan!) but I’m afraid I just don’t buy it. The following are phrases I’ve never heard from supporters of abortion:
‘I’m happy to murder children if there’s a chance they’ll cause inconvenience to their mother at some point in the future.’
‘Disabled children are probably better off if we kill them, so it’s better to kill them as early as possible.’
These are obviously very harsh statements (so I’m sorry if I cause offense with them – genuinely not my intention), but if an abortion supporter truly believed that the unborn were persons, surely they’d have to say they agreed with them?
“‘Disabled children are probably better off if we kill them, so it’s better to kill them as early as possible.’”
I’ve heard that one, though usually characterised as “the lives of disabled people are not worth living”, and that having an abortion as early as possible is the way to minimise their inevitable suffering. As you might imagine, it generally comes from people who are not disabled themselves and cannot imagine life with a disability (beyond “hard”, which is obviously correct but “hard” things are in no way intrinsically not worth it).
I agree that it’s not typically brought up in the general public debate though — but I think the public debate is largely not about these kinds of concerns, and real abortions often don’t reflect the public debate. If the pro-choice arguments were a true reflection of the nature of abortions, you’d expect many more rape victims to be having them (most don’t), and you wouldn’t find so many women who felt like they “had no choice” (so much for pro-choice, right?).
FWIW I had the 12 week scan done myself, not because I would want to kill a disabled child but because I want to be as prepared as possible before the birth of my child, regardless of what that entails.