It's been an incredibly hectic week -- with a busy, potentially hurricane-soaked weekend ahead. But despite the many distractions, I kept thinking about two pieces I read in yesterday's Washington Post. The first was about how Trig Palin is helping to break "the chromosomal barrier." As columnist Michael Gerson noted, Trig was another first in this history-making presidential campaign.
In addition to Barack Obama making history as the first African American to be nominated for president and Sarah Palin taking her shotgun to the glass ceiling, there was a third civil rights barrier broken at the political conventions this year.
Trig Paxson Van Palin -- pronounced by his mother "beautiful" and "perfect" and applauded at center stage of the Republican convention -- smashed the chromosomal barrier. And it was all the more moving for the innocence and indifference of this 4-month-old civil rights leader.
It was not always this way. John F. Kennedy's younger sister Rosemary, who was born in 1918, had a mental disability that was treated as a family secret. For decades Rosemary was hidden as a "childhood victim of spinal meningitis." Joseph Kennedy subjected his daughter to a destructive lobotomy when she was 23. It was the remarkable Eunice Kennedy Shriver who talked openly of her sister's condition in 1962 and went on to found the Special Olympics as a summer camp in her back yard -- part of a great social movement of compassion and inclusion.
Trig's moment in the spotlight is a milestone of that movement. But it comes at a paradoxical time. Unlike what is accorded African Americans and women, civil rights protections for people with Down syndrome have rapidly eroded over the past few decades. Of the cases of Down syndrome diagnosed by prenatal testing each year, about 90 percent are eliminated by abortion. Last year the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended universal, early testing for Down syndrome -- not just for older pregnant women. Some expect this increased screening to reduce the number of Down syndrome births to something far lower than the 5,500 we see today, perhaps to fewer than 1,000.
The wrenching diagnosis of 47 chromosomes must seem to parents like the end of a dream instead of the beginning of a life. But children born with Down syndrome -- who learn slowly but love deeply -- are generally not experienced by their parents as a curse but as a complex blessing. And when allowed to survive, men and women with an extra chromosome experience themselves as people with abilities, limits and rights. Yet when Down syndrome is detected through testing, many parents report that genetic counselors and physicians emphasize the difficulties of raising a child with a disability and urge abortion.
This is properly called eugenic abortion -- the ending of "imperfect" lives to remove the social, economic and emotional costs of their existence. And this practice cannot be separated from the broader social treatment of people who have disabilities. By eliminating less perfect humans, deformity and disability become more pronounced and less acceptable. Those who escape the net of screening are often viewed as mistakes or burdens. A tragic choice becomes a presumption -- "Didn't you get an amnio?" -- and then a prejudice. And this feeds a social Darwinism in which the stronger are regarded as better, the dependent are viewed as less valuable, and the weak must occasionally be culled.
On the same day, the Post carried a sad tribute to the father of an adult Down syndrome child who died trying to rescue his son. Not only did Thomas Vander Woude allow his son, Joseph, to be born 20 years ago, he gave his own life when danger struck two decades later. On Monday, Joseph was working with his father in the yard when he accidentally fell into the septic tank. While waiting for the rescue workers, Vander Woude jumped in the tank, submerging himself in sewage so he could push his son up from below and keep his head above the muck. When the rescue workers arrived, they pulled the two out, but Thomas was unconscious and efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. His son, Joseph, is reported to be in critical condition in the hospital with double pneumonia.
It's hard to reconcile these two articles and the vast difference in perspectives about the worth of children like Trig or Joseph. I grieve for what a double-minded culture we've become. We are pro-life when it comes to baby seals or endangered species, but not when it comes to human beings with development disabilities. We campaign for women's rights in our own nation but ignore the estimated 100 million missing girls worldwide who have been victims of sex-selective abortions. We seem incapable of recognizing the hypocrisy of protecting a "woman's right to choose," even if such a choice is made at the expense of another's life--and a female's life at that!
Michael Gerson is correct in saying we have have embraced eugenic, Social Darwinistic concepts--the very ideas that were at the core of Nazi Germany. And it's no surprise, given the strong embrace of eugenics by Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger. It is a bitter harvest, indeed.
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