The American Spectator

Reader Mail

The Truth Hurts

7.14.05 @ 12:01AM

THE COSTS OF LIFE
Re: George Neumayr's The New Eugenics:

Thank you for your insightful, timely, jarring article regarding the obsession with aborting the unborn disabled. I have often wished that I had a forum from which I could demand that everyone read the first chapter of A Brave New World, in which the reader is treated to a clinical description of the baby factories where manipulation of the unborn for the purpose of social engineering takes place with the cruelest efficiency and indifference. As with so many things today, our society has gone so far as to remove the possibility of hyperbole in art because we have taken what used to be considered outlandish scare-scenarios and made them into the law of the land.

My own family has had to cope with the devastation of handicapped children. My cousin Eugene, in his early twenties, suffers from spina bifida. Had he been conceived in today's moral climate, the doctors would likely have done everything in their power to convince his parents to avoid the inconvenience. Instead, my aunt and uncle chose to accept the responsibilities stemming from their marriage, their Faith, and their love and persevere. It has not been easy. But through their work and Eugene's, his life, which has always been intrinsically worth living, has been exceptional. He stubbornly learned to walk even though he lacks feeling in his legs. He swam in the Special Olympics. He was a graduation speaker for his high school class. In fact he has done so well that my aunt and uncle tell me that he has lived beyond the normal life-expectancy for spina bifida. Every day is literally a unique frontier.

Another cousin of mine, Christina, was told about a year ago, while pregnant with her third child, that the baby would suffer from Tay-Sachs disorder. The doctor not only insisted that she get an abortion, but declared that if she did go through with the pregnancy, absolutely no effort would be expended to care for newly born child. Christina and her husband Mike decided that their respect for life and their Catholicism trumped the utilitarian "expertise" of their "doctor." Several months later baby Noah was born, perfectly healthy, thanks to the faith of his parents and their willingness to spurn the intimidation and condescension of those experts who long ago traded the Oath of Hippocrates for the Ethic of Hypocrisy.

Thank you again for being a truth-teller.
-- Peter Halpin

I watched with horror as Terri Schiavo was starved, no, I'm sorry, they say she dehydrated to death....simply because she was disabled and it was inconvenient her husband to care for her. After all, he had another family already to care for, how could he be expected to care for a disabled wife.

Eugenics seeks to prevent such a scenario like this, supporters say. Well, if I had a dollar for every false/positive test when pregnant women have been told they were carrying a disabled child, only to deliver a perfectly healthy baby, I'd be a millionaire today! We are finite humans with finite tests, a lot of which give erroneous results.

Finally, I see a scenario in a few years, when if a couple desires to carry to term and to deliver a child they have been told is disabled that insurance companies refuse to carry coverage for. This is where we are heading. It won't matter if the couple sees all children as a gift from God, no matter the imperfection; it will be about the costs of having such a child. It will come down to profits lost.
-- Beverly Gunn

I live in Ontario, Canada, where at present we have a group of parents with autistic children demanding $60,000 per year, per child, from 'the public purse' -- i.e. their neighbors' wallets -- for the lifetime of each of these children, because the parents have decided or discovered that although they and they alone decided to give birth to these children, they can't or don't want to pay the freight, so the rest of us ought to be forced to pick up the slack -- for the child's lifetime.

As I am not one of those who has been brought up to believe I have a perpetual mortgage on my neighbor's paycheck, I would have difficulty in filing suit to force others to support a disabled child I knowingly brought into the world without the means to care for it. How would you suggest that such a child be supported after you forced me to bring it into the world?

I have frequently found that wealthy men have a talent for binding burdens on the backs of others and then going off in self-righteous satisfaction to their three-martini lunches on the taxpayer's tab. This sanctimonious plea to give birth to disabled babies and leave the question unanswered at whose expense seems to me yet another example of the same.
-- Kate Shaw

Faced with two sides of the issue. The sterilization, and defective abortion practices I find morally deplorable. But there is another path that will take 10-15 years to sort out. Given the pace of genetic science it will not be too long before predictions can be made by taking samples of the parents and delivering a prognosis of the chances for defects. If there are chances of defects the parents could opt for in vitro development and testing before implantation.

Is it playing God? Possibly. But I would have to defer to the parents and their wisdom on that issue.

But there is another player in this whole mix. When the predictive technologies become certain, what is to prevent an insurance company from stepping in and dictating whether they will pay for a full term baby? If they know that based on genetic paring of the parents that a full term delivery will be double the cost would they pay it? I predict they will not. Then what?
-- John McGinnis
Arlington, Texas

EXPEL ISLAM
Re: Jay D. Homnick's Small Trouble:

Letter to the Editor

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