Worse than eugenics
by Dennis Sewell, Catholic Herald:
Myths about Down’s syndrome lead to thousands of abortions every year. A new proposal will make it even harder for parents to resist social pressure.
“If it were made possible, do you think Down’s syndrome should disappear from society?” Put in this stark form, the question pulls you up short. When it was posed in precisely those terms to the Dutch geneticist Hans Galjaard, a former member of the Unesco bioethics committee, it drew an equally direct reply: “Yes, that was one of my motivations,” he said.
Galjaard was talking about a new, non-invasive pre-natal testing technique. The Government is considering incorporating it into its routine screening regime during pregnancy, making this a matter of some urgency. In recent weeks campaigners have been lobbying Westminster with the aim of persuading the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, not to proceed.
The elimination of particular diseases and afflictions has long been held up as a noble aspiration in medicine and science. And ridding the world of smallpox, malaria, yellow fever and so forth is surely a clear-cut case ethically.
For Richard Dawkins, it seems, Down’s syndrome is much the same. Two years ago, in one of his periodic Twitter brouhahas, he responded to a woman who had tweeted the admission: “I honestly don’t know what I would do if I were pregnant with a kid with Down syndrome.”
“Abort it and try again,” Dawkins replied. “It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
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