 |
| Comments on "The Worship of Retardation" |
|
 | Sunday, September 14, 2008 at 23:49:14 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: BrianS
E-mail: blspro (at) gmail
"The people who worship retardation reject human reason as a value. They're as anti-man as the deep ecologists who regard mankind as a cancer on the earth. Frankly, one wonders why such people don't lobotomize themselves, if retardation is such a boon to their fellow man."
I had the exact reaction to a spate of Hollywood movies (such as 'Regarding Henry') which put forth the same literally brain-damaged philosophy.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 1:47:27 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Penny Green
E-mail: ganggreen(at)onetel.com
I think your comments are pretty insensitive.
People don't "worship retardation", in fact many of us strongly dislike that terminology anyway, what we do is recognise that everyone has a value in life even those with a learning disability.
If you "wholeheartedly support the vast majority of women who choose to abort a Down's Syndrome fetus", do you also support those who have the view that all life is precious and should be valued as such? And what about those who don't have the choice because their babys aren't diagnosed in utero?
And do you realise that now that society is more accepting and supportive of people with learning disabilities that "rather than saddle themselves with a perpetually dependent child" does not have to be the scenario as many individuals are living independently. You say that "I regard his life as inherently tragic and likely quite miserable" about the young man you worked with at the movie theatre, did you ask him how he felt about his life? Perhaps some people would regard your life in the same way for the views you have.
It's all about informed individual choice and anyone who has ever been in a large children's hospital will agree that there are sadly children born who have things wrong with them that are a lot worse than Down's Syndrome. Should we put a programme of eugenics in place to get rid of them all? And should we include adults who develop degenerative conditions such as Stephan Hawking, those involved in accidents that are left with impaired function like Christopher Reeve, oh and maybe people with dyslexia like Albert Einstein?
Wow,it would help with the population increase and wouldn't it be great if we were all perfect!!! Always provided of course that a) we know what perfect is and b) we fit into that criteria!
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 5:17:33 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Bill Brown
URL: http://bbrown.info
I have to wonder if this is a cause Objectivists should be fighting for. Sure, abortion would prevent Down's Syndrome but this sort of position lends itself perfectly for caricature. People don't like eugenics and people don't like Social Darwinism. If you're trying to effect cultural change, I'd suspect that you wouldn't want to give the appearance of either of those positions. And sites like this http://enddownsyndrome.blogspot.com/ wouldn't resonate with anyone outside of Objectivism (maybe not even with Objectivists either, it sure turned me off).
The fact is, there are a lot of people in this world who are afflicted with Down's Syndrome and whose parents are not zealots morally elevating special needs. The parents are not sacrificing anything to support their children: they are taking the responsibility that they themselves earned. It's unfortunate to be saddled with that, but that's the way it goes.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 5:43:08 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Wendy
I sure see your points here, as I have similar feelings regarding people who exclusively adopt children with disabilities, and sometimes the worse the disability, the more desirable they are to the adopters. Why deliberately saddle yourself with a seriously disabled child? The only reason I can imagine is that these people want their chance at sainthood by making such an obvious sacrifice. I think that is what is actually being worshipped--the people who choose to sacrifice themselves.
However, while I would not personally choose to have a child I knew had Down's Syndrome, there are many well-functioning people with Down's Syndrome out there and I would not presume to know whether they are miserable.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 6:07:06 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Richard
E-mail: rbramwell(at)sympatico.ca
Re #2:
Down's Syndrome researchers and psychologists have discovered the the LESS severe the Syndrome the more *UNhappy* the person will be. This is because those who are less afflicted are able to understand their differences, disadvantages, and misfortune. Of course, those more severely afflicted are NOT going to live a life as anything more than an dependent parasite on the irrational 'good will' of misguided altruist parents proving their 'goodness' by sacrificing themselves to a hopeless case. The greater the need the more 'good' the altruists believe themselves to be. That IS the "worship [of] retardation".
Re #3:
The elimination of a Down's afflicted fetus is not really eugenics Eugenics is a *societal view* holding that offspring should be selected genetically to ensure a more ideal *race*. Here we are speaking of individual parents choosing how their lives will be affected by a child --whom they will be responsible for raising when it comes to term. Trisomy 21 (Down's) fetuses are, effectively, deformed humans, care of which will severely curtail the lives of the parents. This is precisely the same reason why any unwanted pregnancy can and should be terminated. No other person has the right to prevent that termination if it is the choice of the mother.
As for creating a better race, every parent combination will have a different view of what that should be, which again does not really fit with the usual understanding of the term "eugenics".
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 6:13:23 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Rob Abiera
URL: http://moralitywar.blogspot.com
RE: "one wonders why such people don't lobotomize themselves". Diana, if a Christian lobotomized himself, how could he continue to sacrifice his intelligence?
In addition to rejecting reason, having another person to be dependent on you all his life allows a Christian to sacrifice his own life - or, in a case like this, two people, since both parents would be sacricing their lives to a life-long dependent.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 7:22:54 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Bill Brown
URL: http://bbrown.info/
Richard, thanks but I am completely aware of what eugenics is. That is why I said "the appearance of either" when referring to both Social Darwinism and eugenics. I linked eugenics with SD because the latter is a frequent (and gross) mischaracterization of Objectivism--I would hate for the movement to be similarly linked to the former. If you don't think that our detractors would seize on this, you're naive. Personally, I don't really care because *I* understand what Diana and The Aesthetic Capitalist are saying and agree with it. But if we're interested in being activists for the cause of Objectivism, there are much better issues to tackle than the disparagement of mental retardation.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 8:22:05 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
First: Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of women who discover that their fetus has Down's Syndrome choose to abort. So I'm not worried about offending people. Most people, when faced with a lifetime burden, do choose well. And yes, I do think that abortion is the right choice in those cases, although I certainly respect the right of people to choose otherwise.
Second: Upholding and supporting the RIGHT of INDIVIDUALS to decide whether to bring a mentally or physically defective fetus to term is NOT eugenics or social darwinism by any stretch of the (rational) imagination. If I have to never say anything that might be construed as something wrong by someone else, then I'd better just never say anything again.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 9:55:33 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Bill Brown
URL: http://bbrown.info/
Was I suggesting that you NEVER say ANYTHING that MIGHT be construed WRONGLY? I wasn't. You can say whatever you want, any way you want. I'm just saying that it might not be the most sympathetic position if you are interested in cultural activism. Maybe you could say that it is, in fact, the best position instead of trying to shut me down by asserting your freedom to say whatever you want, a point that I explicitly do not contest.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 10:07:40 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Thomas Shoebotham
E-mail: tbshoe1927(at)yahoo.com
Please also keep in mind the main message of the NR article Diana is criticizing. The writer does not simply call for acceptance of the retarded, she all but deifies them, calling them "ambassadors of God", whose presence can "elevate all of us." This, I maintain, is evil, an attack on reason and other important human values, as Diana pointed out in her comments.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 10:10:45 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Bill, my response wasn't about freedom of speech at all, as you'll see if you re-read it.
Instead, my point was that your objection to discussing this topic would apply to any form of activism. Some people think that egoism is horrific, that it would entail slaughtering and raping. That's no reason to shy away from advocating egoism, but it is a reason to be clear about what egoism means.
The fact is that the morality of aborting mentally and physically defective fetuses is important -- particularly in the fight against the religious right. Why? Because the religious right actively promotes the view that a lifetime of sacrifice by parents for a retarded child is noble. That's a grotesque form of altruism: parenting should be about helping a child become a rational, independent adult. If that's not possible, it's a tragedy, not some kind of benefit or value to parent or child. Moreover, the religious right actively seeks to force such sacrifice on people by banning all abortion. That's morally monstrous.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 10:37:06 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Bill Brown
URL: http://bbrown.info/
As I said, I have no problem with the ideas behind it. I would even be fine with the approach Diana just outlined, but I think the disparagement of the mentally retarded is ill-advised. It's not their fault and they can be productive people within their abilities. They are entirely incidental to the matter: for me, the issue is that the reasons behind an abortion are ENTIRELY irrelevant to the right of a woman to have one. The religious right, I think, seeks to elevate intention as a way to demonize abortion.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 11:58:20 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: canuck49
E-mail: canuck49(at)telus.net
Please look up the story of Johnny Stallings. He is the late son of legendary Alabama coach Gene Stallings.(Google the name)
This story does not prove or dis-prove anything except that you never know how someone's life will turn out.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 12:24:02 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Michael Labeit
E-mail: logician169(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://themethodoflogic.blogspot.com/
The consistent religious, I believe, feel compelled to exalt all that exists, including mental retardation, because it is assumed that all is divinely planned and that to be critical of a product of God's crummy handiwork is sinful.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 12:33:56 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: Sajid
>I think the disparagement of the mentally retarded is ill-advised. It's not their fault and they can be >productive people within their abilities.
I don't think the mentally retarded are what is being disparaged here. Just the idea that it is morally wrong to raise a child because he needs you rather than raise a child because you can be proud of him or form a connection with him/her etc. etc.
On a side note I think it can be argued that the development and the finding of happiness of a mentally retarded child is still personally fulfilling to a parent once the parent has understood the child and is perhaps a testament to the advancement of our society that we are able to form meaningful relationships with the mentally retarded. But these relationships are not for everyone, especially if you are impatient and expect a lot from your children. In fact on a more general level parents don't always get the children they want and that's why being a parent is not that easy. Aborting a Down's syndrome kid is just the first step toward being able to design your child so that raising him/her is more satisfying for you. Let's face it, if you could make your child hyper intelligent or really good looking (or both) etc. etc. you certainly would be interested. I am not completely in favor of genetic manipulation because corrupt individiuals may have a corrupt selection for genetics in their offspring which is why I think topics like these are really interesting and worthy of discussion. As of now if I had a kid with Down's syndrome I would most certainly encourage my partner to abort.
>They are entirely incidental to the matter: for me, the issue is that the reasons behind an abortion are >ENTIRELY irrelevant to the right of a woman to have one
Sorry but I disagree even though you may be correct in a strict logical sense. Aborting on a whim, (which I think woman should have a right to do) can be taken to be having disrespect for human life and is a much worse way to affect cultural change than picking an issue in which abortion provides significant benefit to a woman's life (rape, teenage pregnancy, down's syndrome etc.). On a more general level, for any issue that one stands up for while trying to affect cultural change, if the reasons behind standing up for it were not important than why stand up for it in the first place? And how do you convince others to stand up for it?
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 12:46:02 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
The reason for having an abortion is not wholly irrelevant. Let me put it this way: I believe in abortion on demand, that is, the absolute right of a woman to have her pregnancy terminated by a willing doctor at her own expense. (Government-funded abortion raises more complex issues that I don't want to try to resolve just now.) But if someone is troubled by third-trimester abortion, or by a woman who uses abortion as a substitute for contraception rather than a backup for it, and wants to impose legal restrictions in those cases, I think they're wrong, but I don't find their positions monstrous. If someone wants to forbid abortion when the mother's life is in danger, or when the pregnancy is the product of rape, or when the child will be severely genetically or developmentally defective, I do find that monstrous: it's imposing a huge burden of risk, suffering, and/or expense, which any decent person would want to spare the woman.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 13:37:01 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Bill Brown
URL: http://bbrown.info/
From an individual rights standpoint (which is, I believe, the only perspective that matters when we're discussing the right to an abortion), the rationale for an abortion is entirely irrelevant. I don't care if the pregnant woman doesn't want to get fat, is promiscuous, was on the fence about having the kid for 8 months, or completely forgot she was pregnant--she still has the right to abort. That said, I think each of the reasons I just gave are sufficient to condemn the woman morally and find her despicable.
I'm not saying that there's no reason to stand up for the right to an abortion. I am for that right because I believe that the state should not be able to tell me what I can do with my body. Abortion seems like a beachhead for further invasions and infringement. But saying that the motivation for an abortion is important concedes the point to the anti-abortionists: that some abortions should be restricted because the fetus is a human being and the rationale is insufficient to warrant a pass.
I am saying that defending abortion as a means of eliminating Down's Syndrome and saving people from a miserable, degrading life of either a) being so afflicted or b) caring for someone with the disease is probably not the best tone to strike. There's plenty of other ways to characterize or frame the discussion such that you're not calling the retarded "miserable" or "worthless" or "degraded." Maybe it's just me, but I feel more compassion than contempt for those with Down's Syndrome.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 13:48:25 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Bill, I feel no contempt for people with Down's Syndrome. That would be bizarre: their circumstances are not of their own making. I do feel pity for them, however, because their existence is not a fully human one.
I also strongly disagree with you about the relevance of the morality of abortion.
Speaking generally, I'm not a libertarian, nor just concerned with political activism. So I'm just concerned to argue for rational egoism as I am to argue for rights.
More particularly, if a person can be convinced that abortion is not merely a person's right, but also a perfectly moral choice, then that person will be far, far less likely to ever support any restrictions on abortion. Why? Because in doing so, he recognizes that he would be preventing a person from doing something moral. People don't full understand rights, and so that true thought helps guide their political thoughts and actions in the right direction.
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 18:59:18 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: Adam Reed
E-mail: adamreedatalumdotmitdotedu
URL: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2
Diana: "Frankly, one wonders why such people don't lobotomize themselves, if retardation is such a boon to their fellow man."
There used to be a Christian sect in Russia, the Skoptsyi, who castrated themselves. Their numbers eventually kind of petered out, even after they modified their doctrine to only mandate castration after the believer had helped bring some little believers into the world. So maybe some mega-church minister will take up the idea of lobotomy as a sacrament. But only after the believer has earned and donated enough money to the church to keep the minister solvent...
|
| Monday, September 15, 2008 at 22:20:51 mst
Comment ID: #20
Name: Richard Watts
E-mail: rw1963(at)earthlink.net
Penny Green:
"People don't 'worship retardation', in fact many of us strongly dislike that terminology anyway, what we do is recognise that everyone has a value in life even those with a learning disability."
Some people do "worship retardation". Anyone who holds retardation as an ideal, who thinks retardation itself is a value (thinks of it as something to be preferred over full, thriving human functioning) worships retardation.
No one is advocating eugenics here -- I'm curious to hear your definition of eugenics. A woman has the moral right to abort any fetus, based on her own judgement as to what is best for her own life and happiness, whether the fetus is healthy or otherwise. Even a perfectly healthy fetus is not automatically a value to its potential mother. But there is something *wrong* with someone who chooses to give birth to a fetus with Downs Syndrome, when she could choose instead to abort the fetus and then simply try again for a healthy child (if she wants a child). Someone who knowingly chooses to give birth to a fetus with Downs Syndrome is choosing a baby with Downs Syndrome instead of choosing to have a healthy child. That's *sick*. Palin and the religious right seek to impose this insanity on everyone.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 7:33:39 mst
Comment ID: #21
Name: Nicholas Provenzo
E-mail: nprovenzo(at)capitalismcenter.org
URL: http://www.capitalismcenter.org
Great post, Diana . . . and I'd just like to SAY that the TENDENCY of SOME to use ALL CAPS in their COMMENTS would have made for a GOOD EPISODE of SEINFELD if that TV SHOW were still on the AIR.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 7:53:38 mst
Comment ID: #22
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
I'm not persuaded by Richard's specific argument about choosing to give birth to and raise, say, a child with trisomy 21.
Compare a different sort of genetic "defect." It used to be the case, in India, that many women from higher castes, who could afford medical care, were going in for amniocentesis, and if the child they were carrying was female, were having abortions. This was so widespread that there was concern about a shortage of women in the next generation, which led to India legally restricting these medical procedures. Which has not really been effective, because well off Indian women can fly to the United Kingdom, which has no such rules.
Now, it's very unlikely, though not impossible, that an American woman would terminate a pregnancy simply because she was carrying a girl rather than a boy. But that is not because she worships girls, or values girls over boys; it's because she values having a child, and what sex that child is doesn't enter into it. And the same might be said of parents who choose to complete pregnancies that will result in children with genetic or developmental problems: they value having a child, and that child's genetic makeup does not enter into it. It's not that they are specifically seeking to have a defective child; it's that they are taking what they get. That's not a choice I'm in favor of, either, but it's a different kind of mistake than what Richard describes. It derives from a different philosophical assumption.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 8:22:59 mst
Comment ID: #23
Name: Sergio Oliveira Jr.
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(at)gmail.com
URL: http://www.mentaframework.org
Hi Diana,
I have read Atlas Shrugged and have read a great deal of comments (good and bad) about objectivism. I like Ayn Rand's philosophy very much.
But please allow me to say that you may be mistaken or at least not considering all the pieces of this puzzle.
I would like to talk about "Moral Responsibility" which is a *value*. If you want to have a child you *must* be aware of the risks and the costs involved in this task.
I really don't think that having a child, *any child*, genius or retarded, is a self-sacrifice, UNLESS you don't have the money to afford it.
So, if *you* decided to have a child and you knew that Down Syndrome exists, then you cannot complain later on if misfortune hits you. But since you *took* the risk now you are moral obligated to take care and support your child.
Let's say that you had a healthy child that later on became a rapist or a murder. This is a *moral* choice he made and he deserves to go to jail. Some people (like me) will also say that he deserves to die.
But if you have a child that later on develops any kind of mental illness, this is *not* a moral choice. He does *not* deserve to die or to be thrown away in a jail cell of indifference.
So if you are a true objectivist, that always put your self interest first, you will *not* have a baby unless you:
1) Have money to afford, raise and take care of this baby that did not ask to come to earth.
2) Know the risks (Down Syndrome and other misfortunes) and are willing to take them.
I financially *poor* objectivist should *never* have a baby. Poor people that have babies are very far from being objectivist. This is a contradiction.
It is not a worship of retardation, but a worship of *responsibility*. A moral one.
So I do not agree with abortion. It is too easy and too irresponsible to just say: "I had bad luck creating this life, so let me kill it and try again."
If the laws allowed it, would you kill your son if he later in life developed a mental illness? I bet you would not. So why kill him when he is a fetus?
If people want to have babies, they MUST understand what kind of game they are playing. If they have money, they can always hire a nanny. If they have parents nearby they can "hire" their parents. If misfortune hits (it can happen to anybody) they will hire special professionals to take care of them. In either case they must care and try to love (i know Ayn Rand's definition of love!) their baby the best they can.
I would *never* have a baby if I did not have enough money. This would be too much self-sacrifice for me. But I would NEVER kill *my* baby either, no matter what. This is MORAL RESPONSIBILITY.
Do you agree?
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 9:08:42 mst
Comment ID: #24
Name: Steve D'Ippolito
Sergio's error is ascribing the same identity (as a human being) and value to an fetus or embryo, as to a baby. In point of fact, he even calls it a baby in his last paragraph.
(Whoops, that *thud* was the sound of an entire long argument collapsing....)
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 9:16:11 mst
Comment ID: #25
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
Sergio save your breath.
What I can't figure out is why would an objectivist ever have a child? Varying degrees of sacrifice are called for with all the little ones and none ever come close to perfection, physical or otherwise and they rarely provide the monetary return to justify the investment.
Diana and other objectivist reject that the "potential" of a fetus is of any "value" worthy of protection by society and thus can be discarded right up to the moment of final exit. (presumably if the little critter can be pushed back in quick enough you can kill him)
Eugenics is precisely what is occuring when one decides that a "potential" Down Syndrome child is not worthy of living.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 9:35:34 mst
Comment ID: #26
Name: Sergio Oliveira Jr.
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(at)gmail.com
URL: http://www.mentaframework.org
quote: "Sergio's error is ascribing the same identity (as a human being) and value to an fetus or embryo, as to a baby. In point of fact, he even calls it a baby in his last paragraph."
I agree that a fully born person has more value than a fetus, but we must draw a line somewhere, right?
Are you sure a 4-month fetus has no value? Have you seen one?
But you guys did *not* answer my question at all. The question was: Do you understand and agree with *moral responsibility* ?
I am in favor of abortion of an anencephalic baby. No brain = No file. At least a human life.
I am in favor of abortion in rape cases. You were forced to become pregnant.
I am in favor of the day-after pill, although I think that people that uses it more than once are being very irresponsible.
But I am *not* in favor of somebody with free will having a baby and then deciding that it did not go good so I will kill it.
Maybe the whole problem in this discussion is when we have LIFE? Where is the line that separates life from something else.
I am flexible enough to say that before 30 days we don't have much in there. I am not aware in what period the brain and the central nervous system start to form, but I believe that anything after 90 days is not good at all.
If we consider LIFE = BEING WITH RATIONAL BRAIN then babies with less than 2 years are not LIFE and we can kill them as well. And worse than that, we can kill a bunch of adults, too.
My point is we must draw a moral line somewhere with regards to LIFE and we must understand and accept moral responsibility. Do you agree?
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 9:39:43 mst
Comment ID: #27
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Sergio --
For my view of moral responsibility, sex, and abortion, see the later sections of "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person" at:
http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf
Abortion is not irresponsible -- usually quite the opposite. And the proper moral and legal line -- where a fetus becomes a person with rights -- is birth.
I don't have time to respond to the rest of your comments, but I completely disagree with most of them.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 9:50:43 mst
Comment ID: #28
Name: Sergio Oliveira Jr.
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(at)gmail.com
quote: "What I can't figure out is why would an objectivist ever have a child? Varying degrees of sacrifice are called for with all the little ones and none ever come close to perfection, physical or otherwise and they rarely provide the monetary return to justify the investment."
That's an good question. The majority of people have babies without having a clue what they are doing. They are not objectivists ("Who is John Galt?") and they think that's the natural course of life. That's part of the human nature and instinct. They did not discover yet that we are not animals, we *think*. Not even talking about god/religion here...
Babies are very expensive and demand a lot of attention (from you or from someone else). It is not the amount of time you spend with them, but the quality of this time. But someone has to be there watching them all the time, so you better have money to pay for school or nanny if you don't want to be there all the time, cause I understand that you have a life to live.
But some people will like to have babies, because they can afford to have babies and because they like to see their genes moving forward, because they want company later on, etc. I agree it is not easy to come up with rational reasons for that decision, but we have to respect because if you have moral responsibility this is not a moral choice, this is just taste, like you prefer strawberry and not banana.
But we have to be moral responsible and stand up for our actions. I know that sex is good, accidents happens, but this is not an excuse, at least not for an objectivist I would think. We hate determinism, right? (I do!)
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:03:18 mst
Comment ID: #29
Name: Sergio Oliveira Jr.
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(at)gmail.com
quote: "Abortion is not irresponsible -- usually quite the opposite. And the proper moral and legal line -- where a fetus becomes a person with rights -- is birth"
If we use *reason* here, this wonderful gift that we are proud to have, we may be able to conclude that this law is unjust.
Fact 1: Baby is born on the 22nd of April. He is life from now on.
Fact 2: This same baby on day 21st of April is not considered life.
Is this law or this assumption really just? Is it a moral?
I am not the final answer, people will have different opinions on this, but I have my opinion which is: Life is formed after brain and central nervous system is formed. After that it is not good to kill the fetus, not even considering the fetus pain involved because we can probably come with a technology to suppress that...
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:29:26 mst
Comment ID: #30
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Sergio -- I've written on this issue in detail in the paper I already mentioned. Please read the relevant sections. It's not reasonable to expect me (or anyone else) to spend my valuable time answering your half-baked questions until you've shown some evidence of doing so. If you're unwilling to do that, please drop the topic entirely.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:50:48 mst
Comment ID: #31
Name: Sergio Oliveira Jr.
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(at)gmail.com
Diana - Your document has 19 pages, but I did a search for the world "life" and did not find any definition of what characterizes life for a human being.
My question is very simple and can be answered quickly by rational human being:
Fact 1: Baby is born on the 22nd of April. He is life from now on.
Fact 2: This same baby on day 21st of April is not considered life.
Is this law or assumption (life begins after birth) just? Is it moral to kill the above baby on the 21st of April but not on the 22nd after he is born?
Of course I am excluding here: life of mother in danger, anencephalic fetus, rape, etc. That would clearly be gross self-sacrifice.
I am in favor of day-after pill as well, as I said before. I just don't think the line at birth is just for the fetus. Maybe 75 days after conception? I am not a doctor...
quote: "It's not reasonable to expect me (or anyone else) to spend my valuable time answering your half-baked questions until you've shown some evidence of doing so. If you're unwilling to do that, please drop the topic entirely."
My question is plan simple and can be answered with reasoning, but if you want I can drop the argument and leave. I totally respect you and your work. But this will not mean I am accepting or tolerating this idea. (See Peikoff x Kelly debate on tolerance)
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:58:08 mst
Comment ID: #32
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
Sergio:
It appears that you are making two different arguments here.
One is an argument based on the idea that a fetus is a human being, and has a human right to life. But it appears that you yourself do not really believe this. You make an exception for a woman who has been raped, and whose pregnancy results from the rape. But in this case, the fetus is not guilty of rape; it can't be, because it didn't even exist when the rape took place. So you are calling for putting an innocent person to death for someone else's crime. On your own premise, that would have to be considered a monstrous injustice. So check your premises, as Ayn Rand liked to say.
The other is an argument based on assumption of risk. By most accounts, a woman who is raped has not voluntarily engaged in sexual activity and has not assumed the risk of pregnancy. Conversely, you seem to be saying, if a woman has voluntarily engaged in sexual activity, she has assumed the risk of pregnancy. But what if the couple have used contraception conscientiously, and it has failed? Barrier methods, the pill, vasectomy, even tubal ligation all have failure rates. Are you demanding infallibility, and saying that if you do anything with any trace of risk, too bad for you? Because that's not a standard suited to the real world. On the other hand, if you don't demand infallibility, then a conscientious effort to avoid unwanted pregnancy surely must count as not assuming the risk of pregnancy. We don't hold people legally accountable for accidents that happened without negligence on their part, at least not as a general rule.
And even then, questions of assumption of risk arise only in legal actions between two people. If I have behaved in a risky way, deliberately or negligently, I can acquire a legal obligation to another person as a result. But this requires that there be another person involved. We have already seen that you don't believe that a fetus is another person, not really, because of your position on abortion after rape. But you are trying to treat it as if it were another person in the sense of being owed something under an "assumption of risk" argument. You can't have it both ways; that's a contradictory position. Again, check your premises.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:59:58 mst
Comment ID: #33
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://ecosmos.com
Sergio, this doesn't regard the existence and recognition of biological life, but rather of *personhood*.
If you are sincere about wanting to understand the issue, I would suggest reading those sections of Diana and Ari's paper. Even if you don't fully understand or agree, it will at least allow you to frame your questions and concerns well enough to allow for a productive discussion.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 11:07:26 mst
Comment ID: #34
Name: Sajid
To Sergio:
Here is a previous thread on Diana's website that goes over many issues you would like to discuss.
http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2008/05/personhood-advocates-are-goi ...
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 11:17:20 mst
Comment ID: #35
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Sergio said: "Your document has 19 pages, but I did a search for the world "life" and did not find any definition of what characterizes life for a human being."
That's because the beginning of life isn't the relevant issue -- as the paper argues. The relevant sections are "Personhood and the Right to Abortion" and "Morality and Abortion" -- pages 10 to 14. They explain (1) why birth is the relevant dividing line for personhood and rights and (2) why abortion is a responsible and moral choice, even when a couple failed to use birth control.
I also hope that you seriously consider William Stoddard's recent comment (#32). Your view is incoherent -- and you are demanding major sacrifices of people (either total abstinence or the burden of raising unwanted children) that are grossly inconsistent with the Objectivist ethics.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 11:54:12 mst
Comment ID: #36
Name: Sergio Oliveira Jr.
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(at)gmail.com
Thanks for the response, William. Good arguments.
quote: "One is an argument based on the idea that a fetus is a human being, and has a human right to life. But it appears that you yourself do not really believe this. You make an exception for a woman who has been raped, and whose pregnancy results from the rape. But in this case, the fetus is not guilty of rape; it can't be, because it didn't even exist when the rape took place. So you are calling for putting an innocent person to death for someone else's crime. On your own premise, that would have to be considered a monstrous injustice."
I can never be forced to do or engage in anything against my will. This is rule number one, right? If a woman was raped, she can access her free will to decide if she wants to have the baby. The answer will probably (and rightly) be NO. So she can use the day after pill or any other abortion method to get rid of this terrible injustice (crime!) she suffered!
I never said that life begins at conception. That's non-sense. But life begins at birth is kind of non-sense as well. So it is *not* injust or imoral to abort a fetus in its early stage (day-after pill or something else). It is the woman's body, and it is her decision, much more when we had an injustice and monstrous crime like rape.
quote: "The other is an argument based on assumption of risk. By most accounts, a woman who is raped has not voluntarily engaged in sexual activity and has not assumed the risk of pregnancy. Conversely, you seem to be saying, if a woman has voluntarily engaged in sexual activity, she has assumed the risk of pregnancy. But what if the couple have used contraception conscientiously, and it has failed? Barrier methods, the pill, vasectomy, even tubal ligation all have failure rates. Are you demanding infallibility, and saying that if you do anything with any trace of risk, too bad for you? Because that's not a standard suited to the real world. On the other hand, if you don't demand infallibility, then a conscientious effort to avoid unwanted pregnancy surely must count as not assuming the risk of pregnancy. We don't hold people legally accountable for accidents that happened without negligence on their part, at least not as a general rule"
This is a very good argument. Thanks! I agree that stuff fails. Even the most responsible person can fail. But contraception methods are very safe nowadays. Of course they are not 100% safe, but if you ask a doctor it will say that pills are 99% safe.
But let me take a guess here and you can correct me if I am wrong: The great majority of abortions are done on pregnancies that either the man or the woman neglected to take the appropriate precautions. Nowadays we have the wonderful day-after pill. This is a marvelous insurance, but you don't crash your car every month because you have insurance, right?
And like you said, which was very nice said, the embryo is not a legal person or even a life yet, so I have no obligations with him. I agree. You are right.
To conclude and clarify: All I was saying is that:
1) I don't think the "life starts at birth" is fair.
2) I never said that we have life at conception. That's non-sense.
3) After some time (guessing after 120 days) it may be imoral to kill a developed fetus, with brain and nervous system. (We need a doctor here to give his opinion on this period)
4) Down Syndrome is a known risk. In what stage of the fetus can we detect that? (We need a doctor again!)
I understand it is an awful hard issue and that no-one in free will or rationally wants to have a SD child, but it all comes down to the morality of killing a 6-month baby/fetus in your self-interest.
The main idea of Objectivism, and the most important I presume, is that values are absolutes. Yes there are absolutes! You just simply don't rob a bank because you were unfortunate to lose your money in the stock market (plus you knew the risk) the same way you don't kill a developed fetus because you were unlucky to have a SD child. The problem here is that this absolute is not easily defined: if you got rid of a bunch of microscopic cells I agree you are not doing anything imoral, but if you get rid of a 6-month developed fetus, then I really have doubts.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 12:00:14 mst
Comment ID: #37
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
#32
Sergio also suggested that the "potential" life was value even when considered by itself. Thus is that protectable.
The apparent view according to a post several days ago is that it is immoral for society to even deny funds to a medical institution that forces people (thru threat of firing) to aid in abortion (per Paul Hsieh). No the money must keep coming. That would seem to show a contempt for people who think the fetus is something worth valuing in it's own right.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 12:32:43 mst
Comment ID: #38
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
Diana
I don't think Sergio's views are not half-baked. He is trying to defend the half-baked.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 14:01:22 mst
Comment ID: #39
Name: Victoria
Nice commentary on this issue Diana. I really enjoyed your original post.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 15:12:37 mst
Comment ID: #40
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
Sergio,
In applying concepts to the real world, we are mostly engaged in dividing up a continuum of cases into discrete, bounded categories, like dividing up the surface of the earth into countries. It's almost always the case that where exactly the boundaries go is optional. There will be borderline examples of the concept that are more similar to borderline examples of closely related concepts than they are to prototypical examples of the concept where they're actually assigned. See for example C. L. Hardin's discussion of colors in Color for Philosophers. Nonetheless, from the fact that we cannot identify a unique wavelength of monochromatic light as the only possible boundary between blue and green, it does not follow that we cannot identify certain wavelengths as unquestionably blue and others as unquestionably green, or that color terms are simply arbitrary.
In some cases, we can just accept that the boundary is blurry. But in others, we need to define a clear line around the concept. And the exact placement of the line will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary. For example, it's clear that it makes sense to define a 25-year-old legally as an adult, and that it makes sense to define a 5-year-old legally as a child, but whether the age limit for adulthood is set at 14, 18, or 21 is optional. This kind of line-drawing is very commonly necessary in law.
You object to drawing the line between personhood and nonpersonhood at birth as arbitrary. But what other point would you consider less arbitrary? The only transition that's equally unequivocal is fertilization, and you reject that. I can't see that any point short of birth stands out as so obviously right that no one could debate it. If you put the line at N days, I could argue with you that N-1 days is just as much a "person" as N days, or that N+1 days is just as much "not a person" as N days, in the same way you did for birth, and it would be just as hard for you to defend that difference being meaningful as you find birth. So the argument for the arbitrariness of distinguishing between the born and the unborn does not persuade me.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 15:14:40 mst
Comment ID: #41
Name: Sergio Oliveira Jr.
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(a)gmail.com
Why can't we be practical and just draw a line somewhere in the middle of the pregnancy period? Before that day you can do whatever you want, after that day you cannot.
The problem is that after a certain period the fetus is too developed and if you kill it people will always come with nasty pictures and stuff like that which will be hard to justify.
You may not agree with my proposal (to draw a line in the middle) but you should agree with the previous sentence.
Check comment #2 to see that I am not the only one who thinks this is too hash even to objectivists what to say to other people.
And again, all this debate arose because as far as I know, and I may be wrong here, when you do find out that the fetus has Down Syndrome you are way too far in the pregnancy period, so killing this fetus is not something as easy as getting rid of a small organic thing.
If Down Syndrome is a DNA thing, I am sure man can improve the methods for an early diagnosis, so that an abortion can be done earlier and easier.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 15:27:00 mst
Comment ID: #42
Name: Sergio Oliveira Jr.
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(at)gmail.com
I did not see your response when I placed my last reply #41.
Willian: The line need to be placed somewhere. We can consider size of fetus, size (or proportion to be relative to fetus size) of brain, size (or proportion) of nervous spine, and so on...
I mean, that's just my personal opinion. I think 0.08 for drinking levels is fair one. You could argue that 0.06 your reactions are compromised. I could say that 0.09 is close enough to 0.08 and so on, but people (rational people I hope) have decided that the line will be at 0.08 so we respect that.
But I agree with your arguments. All I have to say is repeat what I said on #41: "The problem is that after a certain period the fetus is too developed and if you kill it people will always come with nasty pictures and stuff like that which will be hard to justify."
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 19:16:25 mst
Comment ID: #43
Name: Amy Nasir
E-mail: amynasir(at)aol.com
URL: http://kindredist.com
I also enjoyed your post, Diana. I think it's not only morally irresponsible, but vicious for a woman to knowingly choose to bring a mentally retarded child into the world, just as it would be nearly equivalent to do the same with a limbless child. Reason is a person's means of survival, achievement and happiness. To gleefully (or self-righteously) look forward to raising a child basically unable or incapable of independent survival, achievement and happiness is cruel and inhuman.
From the time of Augustine, Christians loathed their ability to reason, as it brought a never-ending battle with a lack of faith in their own minds. To see a mentally retarded person is literally, for them, to see a person touched by the hand of god -- incapable of reasoning or questioning too much, thereby incapable of losing faith. As an aside, I suppose that is where the derogatory term "touched" derived from, as in, "You are touched if you believe in supernatural entities."
Neat post, Diana. Thanks.
|
| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 23:05:50 mst
Comment ID: #44
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
So, Sergio, are you saying that -you- find images of aborted late-term fetuses disturbing and think it's right that such abortions should be restricted? Or are you saying that you consider late-term abortions ethically legitimate, but you think that most of the public will never accept them, and therefore think that as a matter of political strategy they should not be defended, to avoid discrediting Objectivism by associating it with an unpopular position?
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 6:01:30 mst
Comment ID: #45
Name: Sergio Oliveira Junior
E-mail: sergio.oliveira.jr(at)gmail.com
All I am saying is: Is it cruel or not cruel to kill late-term fetuses? Is it moral or not moral?
Willian: "Or are you saying that you consider late-term abortions ethically legitimate"
Indians consider killing born twins as legal and moral. They say is a curse from the gods. We agree that killing is an absolute imorality, unless in self-defense. I never said I consider it legitimate. Killing for me and for every rational being is imoral.
But interrupting a pregnancy may not be considered "killing", if in early states. After some period, by common sense, you have to agree it is yes a sort of killing.
So we must push studies for early detection of illness, so we can interrupt and not kill. Again the "draw a line" problem.
Maybe the issue of the article is that Palin mixed this problem with "God", probably just to get more votes. This, as everything else, has nothing to do with God. Has to do with choice and morality.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 9:22:51 mst
Comment ID: #46
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
It does not appear to me that you've actually offered a reason for saying that "life begins halfway from conception to full term" is a less arbitrary or more rationally valid rule of law than "life begins at birth." You've offered, at best, a sense-of-life reason: "an unborn child one day before full term looks entirely human, and killing it seems emotionally repugnant."
And the trouble with that sort of argument is that the destruction of individual rights always begins with emotionally repugnant cases. For example, censorship starts out with denying freedom of speech and publication to defenders of the Nazi death camps, or to people who write or draw erotic scenes involving small children (if actual small children were used as actors or models, of course, entirely different laws would be violated, and censorship would not be the primary issue). And on a sense-of-life basis, it's hard to say that repugnance isn't the proper response to such material, or to defend the right to produce it other than reluctantly. But in terms of legal philosophy, once you set aside the principle of absolute individual rights in favor of letting those rights be taken away from people most other people find offensive, you open the door to censorship of atheists, or wealthy entrepreneurs, or any other group whom a substantial number of people disapprove of, or, ultimately, of any party or demographic who come in in the minority in the latest election. Or, in this cast, to an endless series of votes over whether six months pregnant is too late for an abortion, or three months, or what test you use to measure how advanced a pregnancy is, or what exact problems with a pregnancy justify a woman's having an abortion. That's not a good journey to make, so it's better not to start.
Birth is a simple, unequivocal place to draw the line; it's obvious when it has occurred, and it has the highest possible psychological salience. No point short of birth is less arbitrary. And abortion is a weighty decision with real costs, that few women will make lightly; it's reasonable to assume that if a woman makes that choice, she has considered the alternatives and found them worse, and not demand that she justify herself to some judge or government official or mandatory ethics counselor. Let the person who pays the price make the choice of what to buy. That's my moral position on this.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 11:57:32 mst
Comment ID: #47
Name: Sajid
>>Birth is a simple, unequivocal place to draw the line; it's obvious when it has occurred, and it has the >>highest possible psychological salience. No point short of birth is less arbitrary
There also exist good physiological reasons for picking birth to be the boundary. Prior to birth the baby is completely dependent on the mother and is not even capable of breathing but takes nutrients and energy directly from the amniotic fluid. Right after birth the baby opens its eyes and takes its first breath.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetus#Postnatal_development (link explains in more detail what happens)
Note that after a baby is born we have no conflicts such as what if the delivery of the baby will cost the mom her life etc. The two are physically entirely independent now. A healthy new born could be whisked off from America to China the very same day and be raised just fine.
You may argue that this still isn't completely exact since if you did a C-section a couple of days before the baby is carried to term, the chances that the baby would live normally is still really high. However, the same logic applies. If the fetus is part of the mother it cannot be considered an independent human being. It has the potential to be an independent human being once it starts breathing on its own.
Note also that the rule as it is formulated is a technicality in many ways. As the following link shows, only 12% of abortions happen after 3 months and only 1.5 % after 5 months.
http://usliberals.about.com/od/healthcare/i/PBAbortion_2.htm
Basically any person who is not taking the utmost care of her fetus during its gestation and planning for its life after birth is not in the morally correct frame of mind if she wishes to deliver. An abortion decision should and usually is made early. The fact that its sometimes medically or logistically necessary to have an abortion later seems to be sufficient reason to fight for it being legal.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 12:02:00 mst
Comment ID: #48
Name: becklinn77
E-mail: becklinn77(at)gmail.com
I am absolutely appalled by what I have just read.
No - we as Christians do not worship retardation or disparage human intelligence. That's the craziest statement I've ever heard.
As a Christian mother, I took care of myself during my pregnancies, making sure that I got enough of all the nutrients that my babies needed to grow strong and healthy, making sure that I got just enough but not too much exercise, paying attention to every piece of advice my OBGYN offered. Thankfully my children were born perfectly normal with no deficiencies or malformations. As a Christian mother, I read with my chilidren every night because their grandmother (a teacher) said it would make them smarter. I talk about current events with my children because I want them to have a better understanding of their world and be less sheltered than I was. I help them with their homework and listen to their spelling words until I sometimes want to SCREAM... But I do it because these small sacrifices are worth the knowledge that I am raising bright, independent individuals who will be a benefit to their world. But not everyone is so fortunate...
My husband (we married 3 months ago, but have known each other for 4 years) is the father of a 21 year old daughter with severe cerebral palsy. Heather cannot walk or talk. She cannot roll over or sit up. She cannot swallow more than a few drops at a time, and all her nourishment and liquid needs must be delivered through a feeding tube. She will always be in diapers, and her every need will be provided by her parents (and me) for as long as she lives. Her disabilities were not discovered until she was about 3 months old. According to #18, she is not fully human. Should we therefore stop caring for her and let her die, since her existence can't possibly have any worth? If her parents had discovered her disabilities before her birth, should they have ended her life?
NO!!
Because the things that Heather CAN do are so much more valuable than the things that she can't. Heather can light up a room with a smile. She can enjoy her life and she does!! I have never seen anyone come in contact with Heather's infectous joy and not come away with a smile. She can reach out for my hand and cry with me when she sees me sad and laugh when something strikes her as funny. She can and does benefit everyone who knows her. Not because we somehow feel superior for "sacrificing" to love an unlovable child. But because she brings her joy and her beautiful spirit to everyone who has the gift of loving her. I love the way my son - who is 8 - talks about Heather. He is a typical "selfish", "the world revolves around me" 8 year old - so don't tell me that he gets an ego boost by loving someone unlovable. He says "Heather is my BEST big sister" while he hugs her neck. If you ask him why, he says "Because she always loves me and she's always happy to see me. She makes me smile!".
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 14:04:42 mst
Comment ID: #49
Name: BrianS
E-mail: blspro (at) gmail
"If her parents had discovered her disabilities before her birth, should they have ended her life? NO!!"
Lets look at this claim, shall we? Before the fetus has the chance to develop and be born, the parents discover that it is *severely* damaged. If allowed to come to term, the resulting human being will be trapped in a torture chamber of a human body and suffer mental damage equivalent to a sledge hammer being taken to the brain.
So - BEFORE all this happens, the parents have a choice: they can PREVENT this pain and suffering from ever occurring and instead try to create to a HEALTHY fetus -OR- they can choose to PURPOSEFULLY inflict such life long pain and suffering by carrying the fetus to term.
Isn't it interesting that the religion of 'love' demands that parents choose the sadistic option of purposefully inflicting unending pain, suffering, and severe disability rather than mercifully preventing it from ever occurring.
That says all that need be said.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 15:06:06 mst
Comment ID: #50
Name: Wendy
NewsBusters just printed a commentary of Nicholas Provenzo's discussion of this issue, which clearly shows that they did not actually read his post. Unfortunately, you have to register to post comments and it may take time to be approved. The comments are, of course, less thoughtful than those seen here (for the most part) and Nicholas is accused repeatedly of being a liberal of all things.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 15:46:55 mst
Comment ID: #51
Name: madmax
E-mail: max34(at)wlcm.net
The NewsBusters post has also sent a flood of Conservatives and Libertarians to the Rule of Reason Blog and turned the comments section into a sewer of Christian nonsense. The charge of Nazi-like eugenics is all you read there. Apparently deciding to abort a retarded fetus is now the same as being a Nazi. Between the socialism of the Left and the religiosity of the Right, sometimes I just want to spit.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 15:53:25 mst
Comment ID: #52
Name: madmax
E-mail: max34(at)wlcm.net
"Isn't it interesting that the religion of 'love' demands that parents choose the sadistic option of purposefully inflicting unending pain, suffering, and severe disability rather than mercifully preventing it from ever occurring."
All the Christian comments just underscores for me that Christianity is and always has been a cult of death worship. It champions suffering, misery, self-resignation, self-renunciation and martyrdom. And to think, Christians (and the religious in general) actually think that this cult of death worship is necessary as the foundation of society. Christianity -- that weird mix of Judaism, Near-eastern Mystery Cults, Stoicism, Cynicism, and Platonic philosophy -- has been one of the biggest plagues on mankind. Only Islam can be said to be worse.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 16:50:50 mst
Comment ID: #53
Name: Michelle
E-mail: mome23kjnc(at)roadrunner.com
my child has Down syndrome. She is in no way a burden to me or to her father. She is our child. She is living her life as any other 10 yr old, and she is happy. She is loved, cared for, and very capable. Is she dispoable simply because of her diagnosis? How do we decide who is unworthy, IQ? What will happen when your child is struck by a car and brain damaged? Is he then unworthy, too? Your thought process leaves out one very important aspect: humanity. Good luck raising children, may they never be less than you imagine them to be, lest you kill them for their shortcomings.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 16:54:56 mst
Comment ID: #54
Name: Andrew
E-mail: andrew.matheny(at)sbcglobal.net
Funny, this article seems to reflect the author's self-glorification.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 17:04:12 mst
Comment ID: #55
Name: BrianS
E-mail: blspro (at) gmail
Michelle says "What will happen when your child is struck by a car and brain damaged? Is he then unworthy, too?" This is the standard equivocation made by the anti-abortionists. 'You wouldn't do this to a healthy 30 yr old. So you shouldn't do it to a fetus!' - as if the two things are the same. They are not - any more than the straw man the anti-abortionists create is the same as the argument which they try to discredit.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 17:13:14 mst
Comment ID: #56
Name: Al Myers
E-mail: mearsly(at)hotmail.com
You're wrong on most of the points you make, purely as a matter of fact. Conservatives don't worship retardation, they're just not willing to kill babies in the womb just because those babies are retarded. And no, they don't hate human life as much as the global warming nuts. You're way out on a limb here, Mertz Hsieh, but not atypically.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 17:45:59 mst
Comment ID: #57
Name: BrianS
E-mail: blspro (at) gmail
Its always amusing to see a fetus called a 'baby'. With such disregard for concepts, one would fully expect such people to call geriatrics 'corpses'. Accurately identifying the state of the entity [ie identifying a fact of reality] - that just doesn't matter. Trying to equivocate in an attempt to rationalize one's emotionalism [ie justifying one's feelings] - THAT is what matters.
As if pretending a thing is something *else* will somehow change reality. It won't - no matter how many times the 'magical' incantation is uttered.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 17:58:38 mst
Comment ID: #58
Name: JamesB
E-mail: Bandler33(at)hotmail.com
"Trying to equivocate in an attempt to rationalize one's emotionalism [ie justifying one's feelings] - THAT is what matters."
Confusing feelings for facts or substituting emotions for reason is one of the chief epistemological errors of religion (specifically Christianity). The Bible demands it. Seeing the (non)arguments presented here and at Nick's blog, its clear that the anti-abortion camp is dominated by mindless emotionalism. Abortion, more than any other issue, offers the greatest insight into the religious mindset and its (non)thinking methods. Its scary yet enlightening.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 18:19:36 mst
Comment ID: #59
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
For those who oppose abortion: If I tracked down your offline identity, and hired a professional hit man to shoot you, the hit man would be guilty of first degree murder, and since he would be acting as my agent, so would I. If a fetus has the same right to life as you do, then a doctor who performs abortions professionally is a paid professional killer; and since he's acting as the agent of the women who come to him for abortions, they are also guilty of first degree murder. Are you prepared to call for the death penalty, or life imprisonment, for every doctor who performs abortions and every woman who has one? Let's hear you avow that position, and show how consistent your beliefs are.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 19:27:54 mst
Comment ID: #60
Name: matt
diana - you're obviously not a parent. I am willing to bet that if you asked your parents to name one thing they wouldn't do for you, they wouldn't be able to name anything. clearly you don't understand what personal sacrifice means, and that's kind of sad.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 20:00:05 mst
Comment ID: #61
Name: Anonymous
"diana - you're obviously not a parent."
So obviously then, 100% of all parents "understand what personal sacrifice means," right? Well, no. This is a perfect example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
"I am willing to bet that if you asked your parents to name one thing they wouldn't do for you, they wouldn't be able to name anything."
Which means that a couple should become parents only if they're willing to undertake such an obligation. If they aren't, then they should have free access to abortion. Otherwise you end up with the false Scotsmen you ignored above.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 20:33:09 mst
Comment ID: #62
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Just for the record, my very excellent and loving parents wouldn't do all kinds of things for me -- and rightfully so. I've always admired them for that, in fact. They were -- and are -- real persons with their own lives to lead.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 21:25:22 mst
Comment ID: #63
Name: Richard Watts
E-mail: rw1963(at)earthlink.net
Matt:
You said, "...clearly you don't understand what personal sacrifice means, and that's kind of sad."
Giving up something you value in order to do something for your child, because you value your child's well-being more than what you gave up, is not a sacrifice at all. That's an instance of pursuing your own selfish values, in your own selfish order of priority. It would be a true sacrifice to neglect your child, whom you value, in order to do something for someone you hate. Sacrifice is not giving up a value to achieve something of equal or greater value. Sacrifice is choosing a *net* loss. It's the destruction of value. Sacrifice is not a virtue.
One's choices to do things for one's already born child whom one has *already* chosen to give birth to, and committed to raising, are one thing. The choice whether to create a child in the first place, by carrying a fetus to term and giving birth, is quite another thing. And the choice whether to create a retarded child, who will never be able to fully function in the capacity of a human being, is another matter yet.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 21:36:23 mst
Comment ID: #64
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
There's another angle to this question of parental responsibility. I think of parents as trustees, whose job is to manage their child's life while the child is not yet competent to do so, making the decisions on the child's behalf that they believe the child would make if it understood the situation in an adult way. But with a small child, and certainly with a fetus, there is no actual evidence of what the child's values are; the closest approximation we have is that the parents decide according to their own values, which they assume the child will grow up to share, as if they were in the place of the child. For example, Christian parents tend to have their children baptized, and to recruit godparents who accept the Christian faith in the child's name and on its behalf.
Well, one of my own most deeply held values is the value I place on my own mind, with its powers of reason, choice, and self-awareness. I'm 58 years old, and the end of my life has come in view; the generation of my family above mine have all died. But it's not death that I dread; it's the possibility of long-term mental disability, through Alzheimer syndrome or some other condition. Compared to that, death is no terror; it would strike me as a release. I have left instructions that, if I am permanently comatose, no extraordinary measures are to be taken to keep me alive; if I could legally do it, I would seek euthanasia if faced with lesser but grave mental disability.
So if I were a parent-to-be, and faced with genetic evidence that my child would be born with profound mental retardation, I would look at that as a condition I would wish to be spared, if I were facing it; and, acting in my future child's best interest, I would want to spare it that same condition. You can talk all you like about the happiness of some deeply mentally retarded children; if you offered me a surgical treatment that would grant me that happiness, I would recoil in horror, and if you proposed to force it on me, I would give my life to escape it. There are, certainly, good reasons not to give parents that legal discretion for children who have been born. But there are equally good reasons to make abortion the pregnant woman's choice, and given that abortion is an option, I think in this case it would be the best one.
And no doubt, if it came to it, it would be hard. But sometimes death is an expression of love.
A few years ago, my older cat came down with a disabling condition, one that both made him physically weak and at risk of dying, and sharply decreased his intelligence. There were surgical treatments that could give him temporary relief, but no permanent help. We were faced with the prospect of having his chest cavity surgically drained every few weeks for the rest of his life. And we flinched, and said, "That's no life for a cat." He would not have understood what he was going through; he would only have had repeated fear and suffering, to give him a shadow of his proper existence. We would have been doing it for ourselves, because we didn't have the courage to let him got. Instead we told the vets to euthanize him, and sat and petted him and cried buckets while they did so. And I put it to you that if you cannot understand why we made that choice, then you don't know what love is.
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 22:24:06 mst
Comment ID: #65
Name: Tony Donadio
E-mail: tdonadio(at)optonline.net
Matt wrote: "Diana - you're obviously not a parent. I am willing to bet that if you asked your parents to name one thing they wouldn't do for you, they wouldn't be able to name anything. clearly you don't understand what personal sacrifice means, and that's kind of sad."
I wouldn't have wanted parents who would "do anything for me." They weren't my slaves. Or are you trying to say that I should have thought of them as though they were?
|
| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 23:59:08 mst
Comment ID: #66
Name: Brad Bryant
E-mail: braddagio(at)hotmail.com
I agree with those that think that Palin's use of baby Trip smacks of being a "prop". A sensible person might take from the situation that it is a play at "morality" that does the child no service...and Palin's possible VP nod would lead down a road offering scant mothering that such a child would need. But I don't wish to overplay politics on this issue...
What I don't agree with is the general tenor of Diana's post (and many supporting replies). The gist seems to be that the retarded are inherently doomed to pathetic, miserable lives and allowing them to lead those lives is an affront to reason and the advancement of society. I find any blanket viewpoint of the retarded such as this shocking and difficult to read. Could not disagree more.
My brother is retarded and to think of his life being squelched makes me want to jump off a bridge. I would hope my love for him is not merely a "selfish" grasp at morality...but more the love of beauty, happiness, and family that he exudes and embodies. It seems to me to be a perfectly valid argument (put forth by someone above) that perhaps the more "self-aware" retarded are prone more to episodes of unhappiness from their condition...but I have also worked with the severely retarded (which my brother falls more in this line) that generally seem to be the happiest people I have run across on this earth. A fully intelligent human might construe this happiness as ignorance and that might be right. But it is Happiness.
Do we comdemn the birds for their ignorance? The trees for their stupidity? Dogs for their loyalty to stupid masters? This question is of course rhetorical because life is what it is. I do not come from a Christian viewpoint...but I cannot shake the belief in a God who has helped the stars to align to form life. What does it say for the "intelligence" of man when forfeit life on the grounds of being weak? Who said societies are judged by how they treat their weakest?
I am not entirely against abortion...and can even understand the decisions made by those that chose to abort fetuses determined to be retarded if the parents think they (or their situations) are not up to the task. My viewpoint is that a fetus's potential productivity in society should not be the deciding factor in whether they make the finish line. There will exponentially more unproductive members of society (blessed with full intelligence) to the conclusion of civilization. Spare a fetus from a life of pain and suffering...but please don't think that pain and suffering go hand in hand with retardation.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 5:34:58 mst
Comment ID: #67
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
Children with special needs,” Gov. Sarah Palin said during her acceptance speech at the Republican convention, “inspire a special love.”
That statement is interpreted as "worship of retardation" by Diana. All of the objectivist seem to agree. Would not an objectivist mother say something similar? I don't get it.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 5:43:45 mst
Comment ID: #68
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
In addition I have read that Arthur Miller sent his retarded child to an institution and never visited the child. (unlike most Down Syndrome children, that child lived well into old age as I recall) Certainly that was not a "celebration of retardation". Is that the proper approach for an objectivist parent?
Compliments to William Stoddard for his dispassionate answers to the questions of Sergio.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 5:45:19 mst
Comment ID: #69
Name: Michelle
E-mail: mome23kjnc(at)roadrunner.com
it is interesting that so many of you think you can magically know without question that a child WILL be mentally retarded. You cannot. Nevermind that valuing anyone for their IQ alone is abhorrant. There is no test for MR prior to birth, in fact no reliable test exists that can measure IQ until 6 or so. So, for starters, in your rush to weed out the undesirable, you are making a very broad assumption about human potential. And you would be wrong. But who says IQ is the only measure of humanity? If you are using IQ as grounds for life and death decisions, you better be prepared to give up your own right to life if society finds reason to make you disposable. Old age? Infirmity? Car accident? Do any of you who agree with this garbage have anyone in your live's who you love that is affected by a disability? Alzheimer's? If society decided they, too, were disposable, would you be so quick to be on board? Your Mothers and Fathers are getting older, shall we off them, too? If we as a society set limits on what is expected to be valued as human, then we as a society MUST accept if those rules deprive us of our own rights. If society decides a fat gene makes you undesirable, then you have no choice but to give up your right to life, because society deemed you unworthy. You, like Trig Palin, would not get a vote. What about kids with autism? Know any? Well, guess what? Scientists are looking for the gene now, and it is only a matter of time till we declare that we can identify people with autism prenatally. Huntington''s? So what if you will live 30 years before it strikes. Off with you. This is the danger of making human differences value markers for living.
This article talks specifically about Sarah Palin's son Trig, who has Down syndrome. It makes some broad assumptions. That life with DS is a life of "pain and sffering". Tell that to my 4th grader, who is planning a sleepover this Friday, and her friends, who love her. Tell that to my friend's child, whose smile lights up the room, who people are drawn to like magnets but who will likely never speak. He brings out more gentleness, more kindness, more caring than anyone I have ever seen. And oh, by the way, more and more people with Down syndrome are testing in the normal range for IQ. Many are working, living independently, driving, even marrying. Clearly, it is wrong to base the right to life on IQ, but on a very basic level it is technically impossible to even use IQ as a measurement prenatally. That said, many people with extremely high IQs live virtually wasted lives. Many abuse drugs and alcohol, some are criminals, child sex offenders tend towards higher IQs.
IQ aint everything. Any person that proclaims themselves a hero of human rights is kidding themselves if they ever see their own rights as more valuable than anyone else's. "I value human rights" kinda goes out the window when their is a litmus test to being granted them at all.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 5:53:50 mst
Comment ID: #70
Name: Michelle
E-mail: mome23kjnc(at)roadrunner.com
Myth: People with Down syndrome have a short life span.
Truth: Life expectancy for individuals with Down syndrome has increased dramatically
in recent years, with the average life expectancy approaching that of peers without Down
syndrome.
Arthur Miller's son Daniel was sent away, absolutely. His Mother visited him weekly. SOCIETY deemed these kids undesirable back then. Now, like it or not, they have RIGHTS. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Just like you.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 6:01:18 mst
Comment ID: #71
Name: z
E-mail: shekfu(at)hotmail.com
Why do those who object to Diana insist that her thinking leads to killing anyone who gets old or needs help? She's simply saying that its OK to have an abortion, even if it is to avoid having a DS baby. Why do you all take it to mean getting rid of DS people already born? She's just reaffirming the right to have the abortion and supporting those who do.
Those who oppose this are gearing up to try to stop these abortions. Diana is perfectly justified in opposing them. These people try to elevate DS people as if they are special or better! But if we say they are NOT, that doesn't mean we say "kill them".
DS people are not ambassadors from god. They are not special. They have a syndrome. I don't hate them. I don't hate you for raising them. I know some DS people, they don't repulse me. I'm not going to put them on a pedestal. They don't deserve a pedestal. They are regular people with an impairment.
Aborting a DS fetus is not immoral.
Once it's born, he or she has rights.
They don't deserve a pedestal.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 6:13:47 mst
Comment ID: #72
Name: Michelle
E-mail: mome23kjnc(at)roadrunner.com
I dont have my child on a pedestal. In fact, just the opposite. I am asking you to see her life for what it is...NORMAL. The axis of the thinking here is that people with DS have lives unworthy of living, that they are burdens, draws on society...I am saying the truth is this: my child is not a burden to me, to you, or anyone else. She is just a CHILD. She learns differently, but she learns well. She is bright, funny, engaging, valuable. You make your own argument here, when you say they are regular people "with an impairment". I wear glasses and am legally blind, I have an impairment. I am normal, too. DS is just a variation of humanity, these are not some lower class of humanity, they are PEOPLE.
Diana said: "I regard his life as inherently tragic and likely quite miserable" TRIG'S life. TRIG has the right to decide for himself what his life will be. She also said: "abortion as a moral way to prevent the infliction of a miserable, degraded life on the person that will emerge from the womb." It cannot be both ways. My daughter's life is not miserable or degraded. I wager she got more home runs in baseball this year than most kids on her team. She reads at grade level, she attends regular school, she is a KID, with some differences...we all have differences. If you get the right to choose for her that her life (which she loves) is not worth living, *I* get to arbitrarily assign value to your life based on my own standards. I would never do that, because you get the right to your own destiny, just as my daughter gets the right to hers. I dont want anyone to see my kid as "special". I have fought for years to have her treated like a person, any other kid, with no presuppositions about her value and her ability. She is who she is, she has the same intrinsic value as my other 2, the same value I have for you, and even for Diana, to be whoever you are without my direction. To take away your right to be that person would be wrong, it would be presumptious, and it would be DANGEROUS. The crux here is the supposition that life with Down syndrome is somehow less than. It is not. It is just different than your life.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 7:23:57 mst
Comment ID: #73
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
Who on earth is talking about having "society" decide anything? There is a great deal of difference between saying that these decisions should be made by the state, and that they should be made by the affected individuals. I do not want the government to decide that I'm surplus and can be killed; but I would personally rather be dead than live on with profound Alzheimer syndrome, and I think the law should permit me to make that choice. It's my life, and I should have the right to dispose of it when it becomes a burden to me. The ancient world recognized this right; the prohibition of suicide was imposed on society specifically by Christians who believed that their lives did not belong to them, but to God, and was part of a long and destructive process of imposing Christianity coercively. I can advocate the right to die without advocating the duty to be killed by the state, just as I can advocate the right to engage in productive work without advocating slavery or forced labor.
And there is a similar difference between advocating that individual women should have the right to decide they do not want to carry their pregnancies to term, and advocating that the state should step in and decide which pregnancies are or are not acceptable. Those women are not choosing for everybody. They are choosing for themselves. Their choices in no way prevent anyone else from choosing differently; as Ayn Rand said about the poor and the disabled, "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."
Nor does this imply the killing of handicapped children after birth. Once a child has been born, it has the right to life. What has been argued for above has been that there is a sharp line to be drawn at birth, with the right to life starting there. Denying the right to life to newborn infants would be erasing that line, just as granting it to fetuses would be. It doesn't do credit to the anti-abortion position that its defenders can only argue for it by distorting and misrepresenting the position they're arguing against.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 8:16:51 mst
Comment ID: #74
Name: becklinn77
E-mail: becklinn77(at)gmail.com
Response to #49
"If allowed to come to term, the resulting human being will be trapped in a torture chamber of a human body and suffer mental damage equivalent to a sledge hammer being taken to the brain."
-You obviously only read into my post what you wanted to hear. I said she is HAPPY. She is full of joy. She is not suffering. If her parents had chosen to end the pregnancy they would have denied her the right to the life that she currently enjoys.
If you want to argue that mothers shouldn't be "burdened" - whatever. That just shows your selfishness. When you argue that you are protecting the child from suffering, you are only trying to make yourself feel better about your selfish choice.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 9:05:21 mst
Comment ID: #75
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
William Stoddard
Granting your arguments about the inadvisability of anti-abortion laws, I am specifically asking what is the appropriate attitude of parents of have a retarded child. Period, end of subject. If you are saying that objectivist ethics has nothing to say about the behavior of parents in that situation, then say it instead of scurrying behind legal arguments on abortion. BTW objectivist ethics would be pretty useless if it can't do that. I'm not talking about society, but real parents and children which is what Diana is doing.
1) Many children are born retarded (mentally challenged/whatever) without prior knowledge by their parents before the birth.
2) Diana mocked the attitude of Sarah Palin as "worship of retardation" and ascribed that attitude to all Christians.
3) Diana is an atheist, Arthur Miller was an atheist. He abandoned his child as unfit. If I were to argue as Diana does then I would make a stupid statement wouldn't I?
4) Between the approach of Sarah Palin and Arthur Miller which would be appropriate by a true objectivist.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 9:23:02 mst
Comment ID: #76
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
William Stoddard
"If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."
Rand's punchline is cute. Her abrupt switches could be annoying though.
If Rand is suggesting that individuals would not be forced to abandon their principles, then would not Paul Hiesh's argument that the government (operating by majority rule) could not cut back funding to medical institutions that forced their employees to perform abortions. I am not talking about the principles of the employees, but instead the principles of the voting public.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 9:35:12 mst
Comment ID: #77
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
h-man: You have misrepresented what I said in quite a few ways now. It's annoying, and it needs to stop.
First, I did not criticize Sarah Palin's statement about Trig as worship of retardation: it was the NRO article that I criticized as embodying that attitude, precisely because retardation was upheld as a kind of special value.
Second, I did not say that all Christians worship retardation. Some of them do: "That's a good expression of the mind-set of so many of today's devout Christians." That's undeniable, given some of the comments here and on Nick's blog.
Parents have obligations to care for their own retarded children, just as they have obligations to care for their own normal children. That's never been an issue here. The question is whether (1) a woman has a right to abort a deformed fetus, rather than risk a lifetime of sacrifice to a disabled child (YES), (2) whether doing so is moral (YES), and (3) whether retardation should be regarded as a special value (NO).
Contrary to the hysterical cries of the anti-abortionists, to uphold the morality of abortion of a deformed fetus does not imply -- in any way, shape, or form -- doing anything other than respecting the rights and dignity of every person after birth.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 9:49:02 mst
Comment ID: #78
Name: Wendy
Objectivist ethics deals with principles and the life of the average healthy human being, not about corner cases or gray areas which must be taken individually and _in context_. That is what governs what a parent would or should do in a given case. Ethics is _not_ about "if there were two people who fell off a boat, who would you save?" That is the realm of university college professors, not true philosophers.
As Mr. Stoddard pointed out, this is a discussion about abortion and not about retarded living children, who, having been born, now have rights. What is it that anyone supporting Diana has said that made you think otherwise?
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 10:02:54 mst
Comment ID: #79
Name: Michelle
E-mail: mome23kjnc(at)roadrunner.com
again-you cannot know if a child has MR before birth, or even immediately after. Hence the discussion of living children and their inherent value, regardless of IQ.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 10:50:20 mst
Comment ID: #80
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
Why can't you tell if a child is likely to be mentally retarded? If we're talking about Down syndrome, it ought to be straightforward: extract a fetal cell by amniocentesis and do karyotyping. If you have trisomy for chromosome 21, you can anticipate Down syndrome. You don't need to do anything complicated like DNA sequence; you just need an optical microscope. Then it's just a question of making the best decision you can based on the results of medical tests, which is the same thing you'd do if you had evidence of diabetes, or cancer, and needed to decide whether to undergo the pain and expense of treatment.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 11:14:15 mst
Comment ID: #81
Name: z
E-mail: shekfu(at)hotmail.com
Michelle said: "I dont have my child on a pedestal. In fact, just the opposite. I am asking you to see her life for what it is...NORMAL. The axis of the thinking here is that people with DS have lives unworthy of living, that they are burdens, draws on society"
You are misunderstanding what is being said, which I don't blame you for since this is probably an emotional issue for you since you think we are picking on you or your kid, which we are not. I don't think anyone said it is wrong to choose to raise a child with DS. We are not accusing YOU of worshiping a disability.
We are saying that some people dont want a DS baby, and they have the right to avoid having one through the process of abortion. We are saying that the people who are trying to negate this right are elevating a disability into a badge of honor that it doesn't deserve.
Also, understand that when I say the disability does not deserve a badge of honor, that does *not* mean that an *individual* with the disability is incapable of honor, virtue, or normalcy. We are saying they are putting the *disability* on a pedestal, which is unwarranted. This whole issue is getting confused by people who are trying to link our arguments to thing that do not logically follow from our arguments. (Also, though I use the word "we" I am not claiming to speak for anyone else.)
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 12:10:40 mst
Comment ID: #82
Name: Michelle
E-mail: mome23kjnc(at)roadrunner.com
"Why can't you tell if a child is likely to be mentally retarded?"
is being mentally retarded such a crime? And..."likely"? Some people are "likely" to become criminals, do we kill them just in case? Some people are likely to develop cancer...what of them? The premise of this discussion was that having MR was the gold standard, if a kid would have MR, he should be aborted. My point is, you do not KNOW if a person has MR until you test them for it...around age 6. Not that IQ matters a whit, but if that is what YOU are using as the basis for killing people, then you are wrong..it cannot be known before birth, and so should not be a measurement in the decision. Not everyone with DS will have MR, and those who do are just as valuable as those who do not. My point is not that some should escape because they dont, it is that none should be PREJUDGED. We are not the sum of our IQ.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 12:28:13 mst
Comment ID: #83
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
I apologize for any misrepresentation.
(1) The article in the National Review link doesn't "celebrate retardation" either. The man is merely restating the golden rule and how actually having to practice it made him a better person. But I grant that going overboard on his sacrifice could be interpreted as such a celebration.
(2) Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding, but your first statement "I'm disgusted by the worship of retardation exhibited by Christians" seemed to indicate such views apply that to all christians. But your second sentence should have alerted me that that was not the case. I am not familar with Nick"s blog, but I will hurry over there and annoy him when I have time. I personally am a Christian who chooses to not go to church on Sunday err.. or maybe a Jew who chooses not to go to synagogue on Saturday instead.
(3) "Contrary to the hysterical cries of the anti-abortionists, to uphold the morality of abortion of a deformed fetus does not imply -- in any way, shape, or form -- doing anything other than respecting the rights and dignity of every person after birth"
I especially like your statement about "respecting"...dignity of people regardless of their unfortunate mental condition. When you earlier felt it necessary to say you pitied such people I perhaps thought such was not be the case.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 12:29:23 mst
Comment ID: #84
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
I was writing about abortion because it was brought up as an issue, specifically by Sergio, and because I had clearly organized thoughts on it. I don't know if I have clearly organized thoughts on parenthood and parental values. I'm not going to try to give a coherent, conclusive argument; I'm just going to say what comes to mind. And I should emphasize that I am not saying this as a statement of the Objectivist position. It goes beyond what Rand said; perhaps Peikoff has addressed it somewhere that I haven't seen, or someone else connected with the Ayn Rand Institute, and I would encourage you to look there.
In Objectivist terms, I think that children are an optional value. And while optional values are objective, they are not based on universal facts about the human species, or about living beings; they are based on facts that are specific to individuals. And many of those facts are quite subtle and make themselves know to our consciousness immediately in such forms as personal tastes, which have a rather "subjective" appearance. So I'm going to take what you might call a "literary" approach to this.
So: What are you having a child for? Why is a child a value to you? What do you hope to gain from having it?
One answer is that you value the child as a living tool, like a guard dog or a beast of burden; you want it to provide you with valuable services, and you want it to be obedient to your orders, as a farmhand, or a worker you can hire out, or a servant. Historically that is how many children were treated. But since the Industrial Revolution, that view of children has become obsolete, thanks to our much enhanced wealth.
Another answer is that children are a source of pleasure: that they exist to give us affection, and to play and amuse us, and to radiate happiness into our lives. And certainly that's a source of value in children for many people. But I don't think that valuing children only for that is a good thing. If that's all you want, you should get a dog. A well treated dog will be cognitively impaired, and will be dependent on human care, but it will greet you joyfully, and give you affection, and make you happy. And treating a dog as a pet does not involve treating it as something that falls short of its proper nature, or at least not so much as treating a child as a pet.
A child's proper nature is to grow up, and to become an independent, rational being. And a parent with good motives wants to help their children achieve this. That's the philosophically best value to be attained from a child, the value proper to child qua child.
Let me give you a bit of science fiction. We hear about how delightfully the mentally disabled are, and how much love they give their families. Well, in just a few years, it will be possible to create such conditions artificially, through genetic manipulation; for example, we might extract a third chromosome 21 from another person, and implant it into the fertilized ovum, to produce artificial trisomy 21. How would you feel about a parent who did that? Or suppose we learned how to identify the genetic switch that controls maturation, and turn it off, to produce a child who would forever remain five years old. Would you consider that ethical? I would not, because it would be turning children from independent adults in production, into consumer goods for the gratification of their parents, and I don't consider it proper to human beings to exist purely as playthings or sources of emotional gratification for other human beings.
Now, if you have a child, and it turns out to be mentally disabled, of course you don't have the right to kill it; and it's a good thing for you to find what gratification you can in it. But that's a compensatory value, not a primary one. It's like Robert Nozick's example: being cured of cancer is a value, but you can't be cured of cancer unless you have cancer, so is having cancer a value? If you have a child with these problems, of course you need to take what pleasure you can in them. But if you have the choice, it's better not to choose to have such a child, not if it can't ever lead the life proper to a human being.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 12:47:04 mst
Comment ID: #85
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
"A child's proper nature is to grow up, and to become an independent, rational being"
Same can be said about a fetus, unless there is intervention.
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 12:57:19 mst
Comment ID: #86
Name: h-man
E-mail: h_blend(at)hotmail.com
Michelle
"Not everyone with DS will have MR"
True, but irrelevant. Stoddard, Diana, etc.. think it is moral to abort a perfectly healthy child (excuse me fetus).
|
| Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 13:13:38 mst
Comment ID: #87
Name: BrianS
E-mail: blspro (at) gmail
Brad said "Do we comdemn the birds for their ignorance? The trees for their stupidity? Dogs for their loyalty to stupid masters?"
And Michelle said "is being mentally retarded such a crime?"
KNOWINGLY condemning a HUMAN BEING to be SO |
