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A “selfish choice” or a “gift from God”?
It’s all about survival of the fittest, writes Nicholas Provenzo of the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism. He argues that mothers, like Gov. Sarah Palin, have a moral obligation to abort if they discover their child has Down syndrome, because resources spent on a lifetime of care could be directed to more worthwhile causes.
Because a person afflicted with Down syndrome is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all) and requires constant care and supervision, unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child’s life upon others. …
So while anti-abortion commentators such as Michael Franc of the National Review sees Down syndrome’s victims as “ambassadors of God” who “offer us the opportunity to rise to that greatest of all challenges,” for many, that opportunity for challenge is little more than a lifetime of endless burden. In this light, it is completely legitimate for a woman to look at the circumstances of her life and decide that having a child with Down syndrome (or any child for that matter) is not an obligation that she can accept. After all, the choice to have a child is a profoundly selfish choice; that is, a choice that is an expression of the parent’s personal desire to create new life.
Meanwhile, a mother who made the “selfish choice” to have a Down syndrome baby blogs about the unglamorous but glorious task of giving birth and raising her daughter, including the day she was told the news by her doctor:
She said that the results had come in and she was sorry to say that the baby was positive for Trisonomy 21. I sat down and just said “okay.” It was as if the breath had been sucked out of my chest. She let the pause continue for a few minutes and then proceeded to tell me that since I was now 19 weeks, she needed to tell me about my “options” if I was interested in terminating the pregnancy. I immediately said that “There are no options, she is our baby and she is coming as is.” The doctor let out a relieved breath and said, “Well, I am very glad to hear that.” I couldn’t help but instantly feel sorry for her. What an awful job she has, not only to tell people this kind of news, but to have to discuss the alternatives. Although I knew that there was no other decision, my mind did run past the thought of “Is it cruel to give her a life with pain?” The decision was to walk in Faith that our baby was a gift from God, whether or not we understood the gift.
back to top39 Comments to “A “selfish choice” or a “gift from God”?”
How ignorant! Does Nicholas Provenzo know anyone with Down’s syndrome?
We’ve been good friends with a family who had a daughter who has Downs. She is the sweetest and most thoughtful girl you will ever meet. We watched her grow up to eventually get a job and move into her own apartment. She needs some assistance, but there are many people around to help her.
So how exactly was letting her live immoral?
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Since when are Downs’ Syndrome children experiencing a life of “pain?” Trig Palin doesn’t seem to be in pain to me.
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Mr. Provenzo must not know that adoptive parents are out there for Down’s Syndrome children.
I’ve thought this through a couple times, and what I come back to is, if one of my current children was in an accident or got disfigured, or mentally disabled for some reason, would I kill them because they were not longer fully functional?
Of course not. You love them all the same. In the case of a child born with a handicap, whether mental or physical or even emotional, you adapt to what God gives you. Or, you can make an adoption plan and allow someone else the blessing–as they see it–of raising your child.
Perhaps Mr. Provenzo is too young to know any better.
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the language coming from the fittest is the same language that comes from abusers; it is the same irrational thought, “whatever stands in the way of me controlling people is wrong…”
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Eugenics and selevtive breeding is at the heart of Mr. Provenzo’s argument.
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“resources spent on a lifetime of care could be directed to more worthwhile causes.”
We all need some care. Since when is helping to take care of a human being not the most worthwhile cause?
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Is Nicholas Provenzo unaware that Adma Smith’s field was moral philosophy?
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This guy is just a couple of mental steps away from firing up the gas chambers.
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These are not OUR choices to make. God has already determined the outcome; if He chooses us for the task of rearing a developmentally disabled child, then we do it. We don’t have the authority to decide who lives and who dies, and for what reasons. How arrogant!
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xion: Provenzo isn’t arguing that parents like your friends are doing something immoral, since they clearly have the means to support their Down’s child. His argument is geared towards someone who hypothetically does not have the means to do so. A single mother, for instance. While Provenzo might be okay with “the rest of us” subsidizing a poor mother’s non-Downs child, since there is at least the possibility that he/she will mature into a “productive” member of society, the same isn’t true for most Down’s kids.
njlawyer: Provenzo didn’t say “life of pain”; he said they need constant care and supervision. While this isn’t true of all Down’s folks, it is true of most. Basically it’s like having a perpetual six year old. That said, I don’t think the “burden” of having a perpetual six year old, financially at least, is all that high.
michelle: There are adoptive parents willing to accept Down’s kids, yes, but there are not enough of them to support the number of Down’s kids that are currently aborted if all of them were given up for adoption.
klasko: I have zero problem with selective breeding, as long as it isn’t compulsory and doesn’t involve abortion. For instance, a married couple who undergoes genetic testing and discovers that they’re both carriers for some inherited disease might decide to adopt. That’s selective breeding.
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Frightening and chilling. Calls to mind the Nazis campaign to euthanize all the “useless eaters” in Germany.
And didja know that the Nazi minister of public health was a penpal to PPFA’s founder, Margaret Sanger?
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Boy, where to start?
First, the irony: Mr. Provenzo’s job is to generate words for a think tank. But he thinks someone with Down’s working in a restaurant is “marginally productive (if at all)”?
Second, the selfishness: This illustrates what Gary North used to say, “Godless conservatism doesn’t beat Godless liberalism.”
Third, the clueless arrogance: This guy sounds like a pampered undergraduate of the privileged class. Some live, some die, and he’s pretty sure he knows who belongs in each group. Has he seen Hitcock’s Rope? [If you haven't, you must.]
Fourth, the faulty logic: Provenzo thinks Down’s children should be aborted because they cost too much. Well, if the problem is cost, address costs! Starting with the declaration “Down’s patients have expensive lives” does not lead to “they should therefore be bumped off before breathing.”
I’m beginning to spit, so I’ll stop.
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I can only think of Matthew 25:40:
“The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’
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The Senate just passed a bill directly related to this issue.
http://brownback.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=303489
Les Prouty
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Lester – excellent Scripture -
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I think we should vote Provenzo and others of his ilk out of the gene pool…
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Mr. Provenzo has reduced morality to utility. A pox on him.
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Down’s Syndrome, while relatively common, is hardly the worst predictable genetically mediated defect. There are some truly terrible ones. Perhaps Stu Bob can provide a few. He should know ‘em pretty well.
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Sawgunner: I googled the Sanger penpal stuff, and didn’t find much to substantiate the claim. The man we’re talking about is Ernst Ruden. Many sites state that Ruden submitted articles to a publication put out by PP from the 1922-1940, but there is no indication that Sanger and Ruden exchanged personal correspondence. Do you have other information?
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Actually Stubob let’s talk about your directive to “address costs”. We can start with Down’s for which the public schools pay hundreds of millions in special ed dollars. Or the hundreds of millions in costs for institutionalizing those sufficiently affected to constitute a constant danger to themselves or others. Or just the enormous financial burden to parents with affected children and constant worry about what happens to their child after they die.
Who here among the Christians advocates massive increases in government expenditures to pay all of those costs? Heck, who here regularly complains about all that wasteful special ed money. Are you prepared to fund a decent livable income to all people with Down’s unable to work?
Just raise your hand and say yes and then call your congressperson and state legislators and demand appropriations to increase special ed funding.
That’s right, I didn’t think so.
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There are certainly plenty of bad, inherited diseases. Rather than worse cases, though, I wonder what our Mr. Provenzo does with lesser problems. How bad does a problem have to be before it warrants abortion? I could argue that there’s a societal cost to poor taste and prohibit tacky people from having children. Don’t try to tell me that tackiness isn’t heritable.
Or, what about breast or ovarian cancer? We can test for gene mutations, the presence of which confers a greatly increased risk of these diseases. Cystic fibrosis? I’d bet that the average lifetime medical expenditure for a CF kid is higher than a Down’s baby.
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Way to go Lester. Glad to know you are not a member of the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism. Since when do atheist lefty murderers think they are capitalists?
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So, Arcadia, you’re suggesting that Christians on this blog oppose the funding of reasonable special education for Downs Syndrome and other disabled children. I, for one, have no problem paying reasonable taxes for special education and suppose that most on this blog have a similar view, contrary to your dyspeptic view. You’d complain if you were hung with a new rope.
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More importantly, Arcadia, your post leans toward the very heartlessness and cruelty that you seem to think the province of Christians.
Wow! It scares me to think of people like this in control of anything. It won’t be long until we get that “perfect” world where those who don’t fit in either won’t be born or will be done away with.
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“He argues that mothers, like Gov. Sarah Palin, have a moral obligation to abort if they discover their child has Down syndrome, because resources spent on a lifetime of care could be directed to more worthwhile causes.”
I wonder what he thinks we should do, then, with people who acquire certain terminal illnesses, like AIDS maybe.
Not only this, but it seems to me that the resources many people spend on vice or even entertainment could be better spent, as well. Ah, but there’s the real question this fascist needs to answer: who gets to decide what causes count as “more worthwhile” than others? Which special group gets to prioritize causes for us?
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Once a woman becomes pregnant, there is no moral obligation other than to have the baby. I agree with the sentiment that people in certain economic situations probably ought not to have children–but once a pregnancy occurs, the only choice is between giving life and taking it.
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TRS,
Arcadia assumes a lot. It is cynism without knowledge. You’ll notice he never answered our posts yesterday when he did the same thing.
As to the subject at hand, of all the down syndrome people I know, all of them work, some live on their own. I would call any of them unproductive.
It would be interesting to see what Mr. Provenzo’s standards are for abortion. And why not euthanasia if human life is so cheap to him?
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Arcadia: Contrary to what most people think, the majority of people with mental retardation do not have Down’s syndrome. Down’s is often cited as the most common cause of mental retardation, but there are 1.5 million children and adults with MR in the U.S., and only approx. 350,000 people with Down’s. So, the cost of special ed would not be significantly reduced even if the every Down’s baby were aborted. Down’s sufferers also rarely need to be institutionalized because they’re “a threat to themselves or others”. While it is true that some Down’s folks are profoundly mentally retarded, usually they’re mild to moderate, which means they don’t require institutionalization.
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Agree with KRM. The ovens are fired up and some folks have a duty to move on eh – for the good of society of course. This comes straight from the Nazi playbook. Who’s to say God doesn’t use these people to mold and shape society? We will be judged by how we treat the least of these…..
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BuddyGlass wrote to me: “njlawyer: Provenzo didn’t say “life of pain”; he said they need constant care and supervision.
I didn’t say Provenzo said it. Actually that mother did. She thought her child would have a life of pain but still had the child. Whether a perpetual 6 year old or high functioning doesn’t entail pain, and I was surprised that this woman had fallen for society’s “verbiage.”
Constant care and supervision? I’ve had this conversation with several of my single friends. We are convinced that when we are old and gray, people like Provenzo will decide we are worthless and will kill us off. It’s funny, but as I watched my mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s in her last two weeks of life, there were moments when I wanted the resuscitator used to ease her breathing difficulties when they occurred (she nixed that). I didn’t want her to struggle, and I wanted to keep her with me even though I understood in my head what was coming and that it was inevitable. How easily Provenzo can make the decision to kill. He is indeed one mental step away from the Nazis.
This whole topic saddened me.
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Provenzo.. hmmm I thought I recognized the name.
Folks, this is Ayn Rand territory, far from the balmy shores of Adam Smith. “Capitalism?” Snark, uh no.
He’s pretty much demonstrated why the libertarian ethos of Rand should be rejected.
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“Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.” (John 12:4-6)
The slippery slope of abortion and euthanasia keeps getting steeper and more slippery. It’s increasingly the same story for the elderly, but a little more subtle. Nursing home patients who are a little too high-maintenance for the chronically understaffed facilities occasionally tend to die mysteriously during the night. Our younger generations have been brought up in the public schools to believe that we are just a more highly evolved species of animals has been taught that there is no more value to a human life than to a cat or a dog. If that were true, abortion and euthanasia for the imperfect and the unwanted would be the answer and there would be no eternal consequences at the judgment seat of Christ for the taking of innocent human life.
For a family to care for a child with Down’s syndrome or for a dementia patient is a huge challenge, yet a very rewarding one. Our capacity to love and care for those most in need is what defines us as human beings and as believers. As Jesus put it, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13:35) A caregiver’s responsibility is to fight for life and let God be the referee who declares when the fight is over.
“But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” I Timothy 5:8
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“Just raise your hand and say yes and then call your congressperson and state legislators and demand appropriations to increase special ed funding.”
I have, I do and I will.
Your presumption says little about others, and much about you, sir/madam.
It would be neat and clean if your projections could be borne out by fact, but as they aint, they isn’t. Consider revising your mind for your own betterment. Show us a concerted effort on the part if Christians to rescind or diminish the supports provided the least among us and you might have a point.
Until then, your bitter complaint is maintained by no more than conceived fiction.
SG
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A caregiver’s responsibility is to fight for life and let God be the referee who declares when the fight is over.
Nicely said. When we act this way, we imitate Christ, our advocate against the Accuser. Provenzo, OTOH, speaks words straight from the Accuser’s heart.
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Adios: I’m not sure what questions you have in mind–I do generally respond more than most here, but let me know which ones you seel I missed. I also shoot my mouth off more and as a minority view do get a lot more challenges than most…
That having been said, I am going to try to change the subject a bit. According to the Post, some scientists claim they have found a less dangerous way to induce adult cells to “revert back” to pluripotent stem cells. The article did not address the question of whether these reverted stem cells would be capable of growing into embryos, but the implication is certainly there.
So, the questions then become, if such cells, which would certainly be “grown” in batches are capable of maturing into fetuses, a) should they be created and b)can they be used for research purposes. They are not, strictly speaking, the product of sexual reproduction, but if they have the capability of growing into fetuses.
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Arcadia, that’s a highly, highly “speculative” question. I doubt we’ll ever be allowed to create new humans in such a way. But adult stem cells have already proved to be more useful than embryonic ones, so people who fight for embryonic ones almost seem to be fighting for it because it’s morally uncomfortable.
Great posts, Stubob and LL Mac. Stubob, your voice on this blog is invaluable, and I’m glad you chimed in on this thread–you always cut right past the nonsense to the heart of the matter, and do so with medical understanding AND understanding of the human choices patients make. God bless you as you use the gifts He has given you to heal, communicate, and encourage others to righteousness.
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Cheryl: It is not the case that adult stem cells have been “proven” to be categorically “more useful” than embryonic. There are significant differences between the two, leading to possible different uses.
http://www.stemcellresearchfacts.com/pros_cons.html
Note that the above site is anti-embryonic stem cell research. They do point out that there are various therapies that have been developed around adult stem cells and basically no therapies around embryonic. But that does not mean there aren’t uses that *could* be found for embryonic stem cells for which adult stem cells would not work.
*At the moment* adult stem cells are more useful. I’ll agree with that. And I also think the utility of embryonic stem cells is sort of irrelevant, given the moral implications of gathering them. But that’s not to say I don’t think they might some day be “useful” for certain things.
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We are supposed to try to imitate Christ, not play God.
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Buddy Glass,
There may indeed be such a distinction. But since (as I understand it) a lot more focus has been put on embryonic cells and so far they’ve produced nothing positive, and since morally acceptable adult cells have shown to be useful, it’s a distinction without a difference. In other words, to pursue the mere hypothetical that comes with moral problems, as much as or more than we pursue morally acceptable options that actually have already proven to be useful, shows a certain level of amorality it’s rather hard to fathom. I doubt the average “man on the street” even knows that adult stem cells have already been used successfully, but every medical person working on embryonic stem cells has to know that. For some of them at least, it’s like they’re doing it to justify doing something they innately know is wrong, or to try to turn abortion isn’t a good thing. My suspicion is that God will not be mocked, and He won’t let this lead to useful breakthroughs…but He often allows us to follow our own sinful desires, so my hunch may be wrong.
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