“I would’ve aborted a fetus with Down syndrome,” declared a Washington Post headline this week on an opinion piece by deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus. The article was declared “courageous,” presumably because the writer was saying what many people think but don’t say out loud.
Many doctors encourage abortion when they detect an abnormality such as Down syndrome, and most expectant mothers of Down syndrome children choose abortion rather than letting their child live. We have a culture that thinks it is better to end a disabled life in the womb than to bring it into the world and allow it to thrive.
That’s an indictment of our culture, so this isn’t a story about one liberal op-ed. It’s a story about a poverty in our culture and an evil in our nation.
The most basic duty of a government is to protect the innocent and vulnerable from harm. Nobody is more innocent than a baby, and few are more vulnerable than the disabled. So, while some pro-choice advocates see genetic disabilities such as Down syndrome as edge cases with which to challenge the pro-life view, the opposite is the truth. In a just and loving society, such cases would actually be the easiest to decide in favor of life. Aborting a child because he or she is disabled is more clearly evil than abortion in the abstract. If as a culture we cannot agree to protect the most innocent and most vulnerable people, then who will we protect? The less vulnerable?
Down syndrome is not a condition “incompatible with life,” as some genetic conditions are described. Life expectancy for a child born with Down syndrome is more than 50 years. It is typically accompanied by physical problems, most notably a lower IQ. Sometimes the intellectual disability is acute. Sometimes it is profound.
The threat of giving birth to a child with an IQ lower than 70 and “whose health may be compromised” would be justification enough to snuff it out, Marcus wrote in the Post. But intolerance of people who are intellectually or physically weak is not a sign of a good and loving culture. The eugenic mindset operating here is not only rooted in an evil philosophy, but will have malign effects. We are better people when our society includes the disabled. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a pro-life conservative, this week passed along a handful of stories of young men and women with Down syndrome bringing out the best in others.
Disabled people included in our society supply reminders, as necessary today as they ever have been, that our duty of care to our neighbors has nothing to do with what they can do for us or for themselves. Our fellow man deserves our respect and care because a fundamental dignity inheres to each individual.
To justify aborting a baby because its IQ will be 70 or lower is startling. But the problem isn’t that an individual who supports abortion rights would make that argument. The problem is that our culture respects that view and suggests that those who express it are courageous.
