Why We Urgently Need to Change the Culture's Attitudes Toward Disabilities
This is an awful story, but I think it is relevant to the underlying cultural struggle about people with disabilities reflected in the brouhaha set off by the Palins' embrace of their son, Trig. In the UK, a mother is charged with murdering her 4-year-old daughter because she was "embarrassed" by the child's disability. From the story:Joanne Hill, 32, planned the murder after her husband refused to allow their daughter, Naomi, to be adopted, it was alleged. A jury heard how Mrs Hill struggled to cope caring for the youngster, who suffered with cerebral palsy. She wore callipers to help her walk and had poor hearing.
People with disabilities have always been marginalized and sometimes killed. In ancient Rome, for example, they were exposed on hills. Less than 70 years ago in Nazi Germany, babies (and adults) with disabilities were murdered by doctors who called their eugenic genocide a "healing treatment."
Opening the case for the prosecution Michael Chambers QC told Chester Crown Court that Mrs Hill was "ashamed and embarrassed" of her daughter's condition and murdered her in a "determined and planned act".
"Joanne Hill could not come to terms with the fact that her daughter Naomi was disabled," he said. "Instead of seeking help from the social services, she quite deliberately and consciously acted to kill Naomi."
In our "enlightened times" the same bigotry is becoming positively mainstream. Princeton University's Peter Singer and some other bioethicists argue that killing unwanted babies is perfectly fine since babies aren't persons. Babies born with disabilities and terminal illnesses are already being subjected to infanticide in the Netherlands--acts of murder under Dutch law that go unpunished, and which have been supported by prestigious medical and bioethics journals such as in an article published in the prestigious Hastings Center Report. Here in America, 90% of fetuses testing with genetic anomalies such as Down or dwarfism are not allowed to be born--a eugenics action sometimes encouraged by doctors and genetic counselors. In Canada, Robert Latimer murders his daughter Tracy because she had cerebral palsy and is embraced by many there as a loving and compassionate father. Meanwhile, some people savage the Palins because they are affronted by Trig's presence in the world and a Canadian medical official worries that it could mean more parents deciding not to abort their disabled babies.
And so, a mother kills her child because she is embarrassed by her daughter's disability and we wonder: How would she ever come to hold such retrograde ideas?
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:22 AM
25 Comments
25 Comments:
James: Please don't post irrelevant comments to the post at hand. Thanks.
Whoa. That story from Canada is amazingly awful. So, of course, is the UK one. I hope the mother in the UK doesn't get off light because people sympathize with murdering a disabled child.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on, here. Innocent until proven guilty, right? If she did indeed do what is alleged, then she deserves our scorn and her just punishment. But lets at least wait for all the facts to come out.
WS: "Babies born with disabilities and terminal illnesses are already being subjected to infanticide in the Netherlands--acts of murder under Dutch law that go unpunished, and which have been supported by prestigious medical and bioethics journals such as in an article published in the prestigious Hastings Center Report."
Hastings publishes a lot of pro & con articles on these sorts of topics and if I recall correctly, there was more than one respondant that passionately disagreed with the 'pro-euthanasia' position (Including Callahan, I believe; will check on this). I don't believe it's accurate to state that the "pro" articles represent the official opinion of HCR any more than the "con" ones, unless you feel that the mere act of publishing an article constitutes an 'endorsement' for the views contained within. If so, then Hastings "supports" both sides of the argument.
This is another important 'baby/bathwater' distinction that doesn't undermine or water down anyone's opinion. Rather, it merely strives to represent the other side objectively and prevent supporters on either side from preemptively (& erroneously) dismissing the other side without knowing first-hand what they actually said or believe.
I relaize my post has been repeated in various forms on several topics, and I will not continue beating this particular dead horse in future posts. It's just personally frustrating to see this forum ocassionally distort, mischaracterize, & exaggerate views from the other side. I realize this blog is an editorial forum but editorials are only as strong as the facts they are based on. As someone who has had his views mischaracterized publically and certainly on more than one ocassion, you can perhaps sympathize with my position(?)
WS: "And so, a mother kills her child because she is embarrassed by her daughter's disability and we wonder: How would she ever come to hold such retrograde ideas?"
A: I will be shocked if she isn't found to be severely mentally ill.
O: That Hastings Center published the pro Groningen Protocol piece gives it great respectability.
To illustrate why this is so wrong: the HCR would NEVER publish a racist piece no matter how well written, or the credentials of the authors. Becuase racism is wrong.
Publishing the piece says that, unlike racism, that infanticide is a respectable issue.
As Richard John Neuhaus once said, bioethics is the process by which the "unthinkable" becomes the "debatable, its way to becoming the justifiable, until it is finally established as the unexceptional." THAT is precisely what the Hastings Center Report is doing with infanticide in publishing that piece.
Are you saying that passive censorship (I.e. NOT publishing controversial articles about already-existing or pending practices) better serves the public interest? How exactly?
The slippery slope argument is not persuassive when presented so generally, like Neuhaus does. Give examples. And realize that in an open society, exposing controversial ideas also serves to mobilize opposition groups. Censorship seems an intolerably high price to pay just to be spared ideas that one finds offensive. Scary, in fact.
WS: "To illustrate why this is so wrong: the HCR would NEVER publish a racist piece no matter how well written, or the credentials of the authors. Becuase racism is wrong."
in '07, SLATE.com published a series of very controversial articles on IQ & race by William Saletan. Many folks found Saletan's article offensive, if not overtly racist. (I didn't; just poorly researched.)
IO just did. Infanticide, unthinkable after WW II, is now debatable, thanks in part to the HSR, on its way to the justifiable.
Meanwhile, dehydration, unthinkable in the 1980s, is unremarkable.
Actively killing newborn infants is just "controversial." Well, heck: Perhaps the Hastings Report should publish a "pro" piece (along with a "con" piece for balance, of course) on actively killing healthy, unwanted five-year-olds, or college professors, or blacks, or any other nameable group. Or maybe pro and con pieces on pedophilia. It would be "censorship" not to do so, right? It's just a matter of airing both sides of a "controversial" subject, right?
Nothing's off-limits.
CAn either of you even give lip service to the reasons the authrs give in support of the Groningen Protocol? Not agreement. Not sympathy. Just restate one or two of THEIR reasons in their words, not yours. I don't support GP but I at least understand some of the medical reasons given in support of it.
You can't win arguments simply by tarring the opposing messenger or inappropriately simplifying their arguments. If that's what SHS is all about - stifling debate on topics YOU feel are too taboo to even discuss, then opinions like mine are obviously not welcome - merely tolerated.
O: I wrote an article on the GP in which I described their position. http://www.cbc-network.org/enewsletter/index_2_20_08.htm
The justification is the same one we saw in Germany: It is a "healing treatment" (see Lifton, THE NAZI DOCTORS). It is alleviating suffering. It is to alleviate a life that would be unbearable to live.
It is the promotion of the quality of life ethic that leads to bigotry against people with disabilities.
Wesley speaks well for himself and this is, of course, his blog and not mine. For myself, I consider the Groningen Protocol utterly beyond the pale and believe it should be looked on with horror by all men of good will. Could I do the argumentative thing in which I give their "arguments" and respond? Certainly. I'm a fairly well-published analytic philosopher. I do that kind of thing all the time--give opponents' arguments and respond, that is. But doctors' murdering infants is absolutely horrific, and I would no more pretend that it is some sort of respectable position to be treated as merely "controversial" than I would do the same for an argument that parents should be able to murder their infants at will for non-medical reasons. Not that I am in any way implying that Wesley has done so by writing his article, to which he has linked. Not at all. I'm simply coming out here in response, Oka, to your implication that if one heaps scorn and shows absolute, rejecting horror of the GP one is somehow being irrational and bigoted. If everything is supposed to be open to debate, if everything is something that we take seriously as a possibly-moral option, we are lost and damned as a people. I believe that there are things you, Oka, would not treat as open possibilities, ethically. I don't happen to know for sure what they are, given your "now let's not be too hasty" approach to the GP, but I'm sure there are such. So you should drop the meta-level implication that everything should be treated in the same way and that no proposal, however horrible, should be dismissed out of hand. It tempts me to start quoting Jonathan Swift!
Lydia: Blogs like this are open forums where posters can express themselves however they wish.
You don't feel like doing "the argumentative thing" here? Fine. I am merely expressing my view that several SHS topics and corresponding comments make me question how fully posters understand (or in some instances WANT to understand) these particular cases & issues. I never accused anyone of being bigoted, nor do I think that expressing one's viewpoint with strong emotion necessarily undercuts its rationality. But if, as you imply, some things are so clearly wrong that should not be "open for debate" at SHS, then you should consider asking posters like me to leave. Since Wesley has not done so, I will assume that he doesn not share your opinion on this matter.
I was also not aware I was making any "meta-level" request for moral relativism. Just stating that the way in which some opinions are expressed are (including yours) are counter-productive; they don't inform and they don't persuade. But this approach carries the presumption that everyone here agrees with you. (They don't.)
You really think that these doctors are baby murderers? Fine. I'll assume then that's exactly how you would express yourself to them directly if given the chance -- say at an academic conference. After all, if murder is murder, then scorn is certainly the minimally appropriate response, correct? But if by chance you WOULDN'T express yourself like that directly to these particular individuals, then why do it here?
"But if, as you imply, some things are so clearly wrong that should not be "open for debate" at SHS..."
I think some things are so clearly wrong that they should not be treated as open questions and as merely "controversial." Whether that means that the pernicious and contemptible "arguments" that people bring forward to defend them should or shouldn't be aired on a particular blog is going to depend on a lot of things, like context, framing, the blog owner's preferences, and so forth. Where I believe WEsley and I firmly agree, as indicted by his above comments, is that infanticide is not merely "controversial" and that the Hastings Report should not have given it the prestige of treating it as an open question. There is that "terminal nonjudgmentalism" thing that Wesley so often talks about.
Would I call a man who had actively murdered a baby with a lethal injection a baby murderer? I mean, what sort of question is that? You're telling me infanticide is something _other_ than baby murder? Yes, I guess that shows where you are coming from. If you met a child murderer being treated as a respectable person at an academic conference--say, that fellow in Canada who put his daughter in the cab of his truck and gassed her to death, whose name escapes me at the moment--would you call him a child murderer to his face? If you met one of the Nazi doctors who did the same, being treated as respectable in some social context, would you? I suppose there might be some social constraints that would prevent you from doing so, but he certainly _is_ a child murderer whether you would happen to walk up and call him one or not. And so, of course, are doctors who commit active infanticide. What else is active infanticide?
This gives me the chills: "Now, now, you can't really think that Dutch doctors who lethally inject infants are murderers, can you?"
Well, yes. Obviously. I can, and they are.
"You're telling me infanticide is something _other_ than baby murder? Yes, I guess that shows where you are coming from."
I said nothing of the kind, and your knee-jerk inference about my beliefs says a lot about where you are coming from.
No, I just asked you a simple question about how you would express yourself to these doctors in person. And you didn't answer it.
Did appreciate your first paragraph although I still disagree with your and Smith's tendency toward censorship. That Hastings did choose to publish it demonstrates that at least to some, this is an open issue. Thus, their duty to report on the ongoing debate. That position legitimizes DEBATE, not any or every side of any particular debate. Once again, another 'agree-to-disagree' issue. We're obviously not doing a good job of convincing each other to change sides!
Well, first of all, it is a fallacy to reason thus: "If Lydia would not say in person to a doctor who had committed infanticide at an academic conference that the doctor is a baby murderer, then Lydia must not really believe in her heart that infanticide is baby murder, and she should not refer to it as such in a blog thread."
Second, by my recollection (I don't have time to go through the whole thread), you, Oka, used the term "baby murderer" here before I ever did. I consider it sort of redundant. "Infanticide" just happens to be a Latinized word for the murder of infants. The difference between Anglo Saxon words and Latin-root words makes no difference to what one is saying.
Next, it is silly to try to pretend that you were not making an argument. You were indeed. You were arguing that if some doctor who has committed infanticide were so respectable-seeming, or treated as so respectable, or the social context so overwhelming, at an academic conference that I did not refer to his face to what he had done as "baby murder" that I should not refer to it as "baby murder" on a blog and, by implication, should not take the position I have taken here about the status of infanticide and the Groningen Protocol as beyond the pale for being treated as a respectable position. Now, that is nonsense.
Next, there are indeed imaginable circumstances, fairly easily imaginable ones, at an academic context, in which I could end up telling a doctor who had committed infanticide and who announced it to me proudly that he had committed murder. That does not mean that I would go running about at such a conference looking for an infanticidal doctor whom I'd been told was there in order to go out of my way to tell him he had committed murder. But if I ended up at a dinner with someone whom I didn't know and he calmly announced, apropos of some conversation, "I have carried out the Groningen Protocol and have lethally injected a severely ill newborn infant, but I do not consider that to be murder," in which I would tell him that I do, indeed, consider that to be murder. This seems to me such a self-evident statement that I should not even need to make it, but if someone were showing a great deal of chutzpah and trying to use social pressure to get me to seem not to condemn the murder of newborn infants, it would certainly be my intention to resist such pressure. _However_, if I were to wimp out, purse my lips angrily, and say, "Please pass the salt" instead, it would not follow that I could not in good conscience argue that infanticide is beyond the pale on a blog. And for that matter, probably shunning would be one of the best ways of showing disapproval in such a context--rising from the table without a word and leaving, and refusing to have anything further to do with a man who boasted about his murder of infants and who attempted to pressure people to show approval by silence. The best response would depend on a lot of factors.
Finally, it seems to me that your whole line of approach here, Oka, shows how wise Wesley is to condemn the Hastings Report's mainstreaming of infanticide. What then happens is that people who actually _commit_ infanticide end up being treated as respectable members of society, and people like you get to use that as a form of probing pressure on other people to "admit" that they wouldn't call them murderers to their face, which is supposed to have some sort of implications for the debate. Thus does social respectability make the actions themselves seem respectable.
Lydia: I am not guilty of the fallacy you cite. I never maintained that individuals can't think one thing and say another, or that one can't express strongly held moral opinions in a respectful way.
All I asked was whether YOU would be respectful in that circumstance, and if so there, why not here? My points are about respectful, intelligent, constructive dialogue. Your responses do not indicate that you grasp my intent; probably my fault at this point given how many opportunites I have had to clarify this. Or else, that you do not think that civility in word & tone is an important consideration. Obviously, I disagree.
Whatever the case, let me state clearly that my point above does not question whether you actually believe what you say you believe - I could have no possible reason to doubt this.
I won't post again on this thread but will continue to read yours and appreciate the time you've given to this discussion, even though we remain at odds.
Oka
PS You didn't use the term 'baby murderer;" you said "...doctors' murdering infants is absolutely horrific." You used the verb, I converted it into noun form.
PPS Wesley: this is your forum. Feel free to tell either or both of us 'thread hijackers' to shut up at any point ;)
I don't agree that telling a person who has murdered somebody that he has committed murder is always wrong under the heading of "disrespectful" or "uncivil." There are two possibilities, depending on how we define "respect" and "civility." We could say that telling a person that he is a murderer is never civil or respectful, but that it is not necessary, in that sense of those terms, to be thus always civil and respectful to those who have committed murder. If calling a spade a spade is by definition "disrespecful," then sometimes it's okay to be disrespectful. Or one could hold that there are circumstances in which that sort of truth-telling is called for and that under those circumstances one could indeed "civilly" call someone a murder.
I presume, Oka, that you believe that some things are murder. So imagine someone who has committed something _you_ would call murder. Make it very heinous, so that there is no doubt that you would call it murder. Perhaps a Nazi war criminal or a person who plotted and led lynchings of blacks in the Old South. Now imagine that through some bizarre set of circumstances there are enough people who approve of his action that he isn't in prison and that he is treated by others as not having done anything wrong. Suppose that you end up in conversation with him in some genteel setting without knowing who he is, and that all of this comes out. Imagine that he says, "I don't consider that it was murder, because ________" fill in the blank. Perhaps, "Because I don't think blacks are persons on a par with whites" or "because the Jewish Problem required a Final Solution," or whatever. Then would it be "disrespectful" in the sense of being _wrong_ for you to stand up and say, "Well, I could not disagree with you more strongly. I think that what you did certainly _was_ murder"?
Again, you can either say it was "disrespectful" but allowable or that it was "respectful" in the only relevant sense (e.g., you didn't punch him in the nose or commit any other assault, you didn't scream). But in either event, giving the forthright name of "murder" to what he did is _obviously morally permissible_ if not downright morally required in the name of truth-telling on a vital issue in that scenario where you are thus implicitly challenged.
That is how I view doctors who commit infanticide, and that is how I view social settings where such infanticidal doctors are treated as perfectly respectable citizens.
Lydia: Thanks for clarifying your position. My remarks concerning respect & civility were intended to address to tone of SHS dialogues. My point in bringing up the hypothetical meeting with the G. Protocol enthusiast was to learn whether or not you would even be interested to learn what she had to say based on her first-hand experience before saying your piece. That's all.
I'll be happy to share my beliefs on Groningen in a future post.
As an ethicist, I am deeply interested and concerned with most of the topics Wesley discusses both here and in his books & articles. Suffice to say we disagree on a great number of issues, though I have discovered that some of our differences are more by degree than of kind.
In any event, I greatly benefit from many of the SHS exchanges because there are relatively few (for lack of a better word) 'conservative' bioethicists. My initial impression of Wesley Smith were conditioned by my former academic environment by and my peers. Fortunately I didn't fall completely victim to these pre-existing prejudices and instead decided to vist (and then contribute to) his blog. The Wesley Smith that I have encountered here is congenial, humorous, and magnanimous. To me, that speaks volumes about his character. I appreciate his tone and have attempted to reciprocate in kind, however inconsistently. (I am a pretty nice guy in real life, believe it or not.)
That said, I realize that I may be perceived as somewhat of a gadfly here, if not an all-out party crasher, intent only to play the contrarian and tweak those with whom I disagree. This is not my intent. I am here to learn.
Without writing a manifesto of my personal or professional beliefs, let me share that my wife and I lost our first child at 22 weeks. We also have a dear nephew (Luc) who was born non-breathing and who was resuscitated for almost 45 minutes and then sent to a neonatal ICU for weeks for treatment. Severe brain damage was likely. Yet, two years later he is alive and apparantly well. And no one is more grateful than his parents -- both liberals far to the left of myself and who never thought twice about discontinuing emergency treatment.
I also worked for several years with the ARC - mainly with dually diagnosed adults with severe to profound MR and multiple physical disabilities. I can't begin to tell you all of the heart-warming (and some heart-breaking) stories that I encountered in the course of my work. Though I was in a supervisory capacity, I spent 3-4 hours per day assisting our clients with feeding, toileting, and transfers in and out of whellchairs and vans. We frequently took trips into the community and did some significant work with augmentative communication devices. I treasure those days and especially treasure those people.
Whatever we may think about each other's beliefs, let us affirm that there is much that we do not know about each other and what brought us to those beliefs. I don't like Gov. Palin but it has nothing to do with Trig. I worked with folks like Trig and with parents like the Palins.
An important correction...
I should have said "they never considered discontinuing life support." "Never thought twice" inplies that they would have done it.
My bad.
The so-called eugenic abortions would seem to be favourable to eugenic infanticide, which in turn would be favourable to eugenic murder of persons. There are two ways to fix the problem of disabled children being born into families that hate them - you can change the attitudes of people, or you can prevent those children from being born in the first place.
And yes, I am a utilitarian and agree with Peter Singer that neonates are not persons.
I am a mother of a daughter with cerebral palsy. I cried when I heard this story. I am appalled at this mother and absolutely horrified. What must her child have been thinking as she was dying? My daughter had surgery at 4 to lengthen her tendons, and is a brilliant little 15 year old today who still happens to walk with hand crutches. She wants to be a lawyer and someday, run for the presidency. I can't imagine killing your child, disabled or otherwise.
love,me:Thanks for dropping by. You are so right.
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