Eugenics With a Smile

When I was younger, I used to wonder how people who lived in Germany let the Holocaust occur. Over the years, I have come to believe that it was a series of small steps which seemed somewhat reasonable at the time, combined with a sense of "that doesn't apply to me" when many things came up, and finally, a tendency to believe those in authority.

Today I think I saw up close and personal how things like the Holocaust get started.

Peter Singer gave a talk today on a local campus. His topic was "Medical Decisions in Life and Death". After watching him today, I don't think that the devil wears Prada. Instead, he wears a rumpled shirt, smiles, is generally pleasant, and advocates for things like puppy dogs and poor people, right before he tries to convince the audience that some people are more valuable than others, and killing babies is OK if their parents decide it's the right thing to do.

OK, maybe Singer isn't the devil. But it was somewhat chilling to see students sitting in the audience quietly listening while Singer glibly tried to show that the definition of death is shifting and arbitrary, and that what we should be using to determine whether someone's life is worth living is Singer's somewhat nebulous definition of "personhood" which depends not on brain activity but on the ability of the person to be self reflective. Since he doesn't believe that humans are self aware before they are several months old, they are not persons, and therefore it's OK to kill them, especially if they are disabled.

Singer started by questioning the definition of death, then used selected quotes from (and pictures of) George Bush to (not so subtly) suggest that those who oppose Singer's definition of death and personhood are right wing religious wackos. Singer then quickly reviewed several cases where people with persistent vegetative states had their feeding tubes removed, and suggested that there was no difference between removing the feeding tubes and letting them die, and actively killing them. He finished by talking about assisted suicide, and how Oregon's law is leading the way forward.

There was time for questions at the end, and after waiting a respectful 4 seconds (so it wouldn't appear that I was gunning for him) I went up to the microphone to ask him a question. I was hopping mad, and I could hear my voice shaking just a bit. I asked him how he could place so much importance on preventing what he terms speciesism (discriminating against other animals merely because they are members of different species) while he so freely engaged in disablism by advocating that parents should be able to decide to kill their children up to several months old just because they (the parents) decided selfishly that their own lives would be better, and that the child's life was not worth living. After all, when disabled adults are surveyed, the majority of them report being happy. Singer was not fazed at all, and thanked me politely for the question. He then proceeded to respond with a bland recounting of why babies weren't persons (because of the lack of self response) and how we should respect the parents' wishes. He then moved on to the next question.

I looked around the room at the audience, which was composed mostly of students. Some seemed to get the point I was making, but most just sat there.

And I think that's what happened in Germany, too, when people heard that the Germans were killing the disabled, and later the Jews.

For a much better account of how Peter Singer is up close and personal, read Harriet McBryde Johnson's account of her time with Singer here.

What goes around, comes around

If you were to bring up the subject of eugenics in conversation, I would suspect that many people would have to stop and think a bit about what you were referring to. Of those that actually were conversant with the concept, I suspect that most would associate it with the quest for racial purity taken up by Nazi Germany. Few, however, would think of the United States.

Yesterday morning I was in a local bookstore and was browsing thru the book “Choosing Naia”. I am drawn to reading stories of people’s journeys, and this book is a good one that chronicles an interracial couple’s raising of a daughter with Down’s Syndrome. The couple recount how they had taken a screening test for genetic abnormalities (including Down’s) which had come up negative. They go on to say that even if it was positive, they were going to use the information to prepare themselves to deal with it, and not to abort the child. This is backed up by the fact that when the mother again became pregnant, they decided against any prenatal testing, deciding that they already knew they could deal with whatever happened. At one point they had a slightly uncomfortable conversation with the mother’s parents centering on abortion and its use in preventing the birth of children deemed to be defective.

When I came home from the bookstore I read a piece on Autism Vox talking about genetic testing, and how some tests have intimated that they might be able to screen for autistic like behaviors.

While in college I was dimly aware of the eugenics movement in the US, but always thought it was mainly something that happened somewhere else (i.e., Nazi Germany). I’ve been reading a lot lately about prenatal testing being used to encourage parents to abort kids with Down’s Syndrome, as well as many people wondering if this is the future that will be pursued when/if definitive testing for autism surfaces. George Will has written about this subject here and here. I’ve also started looking into the history of the eugenics movement in the US, as I believe that it may have some bearing on how people still act today.

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. The term eugenics was coined in England by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, in the late 19th century. Early proponents focused on selective breeding as a means towards this end. In the 20th century proponents included such prominent people as Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Alexander Graham Bell.

Another more ominous form of eugenics included forced sterilization laws. The first law successfully passed in the US was in the state of Indiana in 1907, which was followed by laws in California and Washington. Eventually 27 states passed laws that were aimed at forced sterilization of the mentally retarded, the blind, deaf, criminals, and epileptics. Different states had different variations of the laws, and as many as 65,000 individuals were sterilized against there will under these laws. Although after WWII this practice faded greatly, there were still a number done into the 1960’s, and even sporadic cases as late as 1981. During the 1970’s Native Americans underwent forced sterilization, which was encouraged by government policies.

Abortion was legalized across the US in 1973. Prenatal testing enables testing for things like Down’s Syndrome and Spina Bifida. With the onset of non-invasive prenatal testing, some estimate that as many as 80-90% of fetuses with these two conditions are aborted, and many feel that the “right” to abort a disabled child has become one’s “duty”.

The OB-GYN societies of both the US and Canada are both recommending prenatal testing for Down’s syndrome for all pregnant women, not just women over 35.

So basically there has been an uninterrupted period of time from the 19th century until now where eugenics has been practiced in some form (selective breeding, forced sterilization, abortion) in the US. It’s not a new concept, but something that has been with us for a long time. And it is so entrenched in our subconscious that most people don’t really blink when they encounter societal attitudes that encourage “weeding out” so called “defectives” among us.

Joe is 208