In countries where early screening is routinely offered, almost all women opt to abort the affected unborn baby and try again. The global Down’s syndrome population is therefore plummeting.
‘It makes me sick to my stomach that we are going down the road of eliminating people,’ says Hulbert. Dr Helen Watts of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, an Oxford-based Roman Catholic charity, agrees. ‘It is extraordinary that instead of supporting our fellow human beings with Down’s syndrome, and their parents, unconditionally, we are inviting their parents to end their lives. The absence from our community of people with Down’s syndrome leaves those [affected] individuals who do succeed in being born with a justified sense that they are no longer welcomed by society.’
On the other side of the debate are such high-profile names as Richard Dawkins, Oxford emeritus professor of biology, who argued earlier this year that the advent of screening means it is now ‘immoral’ to bring a child with Down’s syndrome into the world.
Meanwhile, the Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer, who is professor of bioethics at America’s prestigious Princeton University, argues that the loss of babies with Down’s syndrome is a harm ‘either balanced or outweighed by the lives of other children that people will have instead’.
Campaigners for Britain’s estimated population of 41,500 adults and children with Down’s syndrome say this is the road to eugenics. But they are increasingly concerned that the opinions of Dawkins and Singer appear to reflect a majority view and that the public is broadly behind the accelerated elimination of Down’s syndrome from society.
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Could this be the last generation of Down’s syndrome children?
Globally, the Down’s syndrome population is plummeting – leading to suggestions that we may be witnessing the elimination of the condition
By Lois Rogers
1 October 2021
This is disgraceful. I seem to recall a case in Melbourne whether a woman demanded aan abortion because the child might have had dwarfism.
I seem to recall a case in Melbourne whether a woman demanded aan abortion because the child might have had dwarfism.
I recall that. What if they develop a prenatal genetic test for predisposition to, say, schizophrenia? Wouldn’t we just be doing those poor people a favour by killing them in utero? If only there were a catchy name for this, like, um, lebenunswert.
And like a reliable bubble of marsh gas, up plops Peter Singer. There was a good profile on him years ago in the New Yorker, back when it was still a magazine, which made the point that Singer, despite all his pseudo-philosophical musings about cost-benefit calculus for human life, paid for full time in-home care for his own elderly and disabled mother, despite her own previously expressed wish not to linger in such a condition. When queried on the contradiction, he argued that by doing so, he was providing an income for the carer, and therefore a ‘good’.
It’s hard to believe Singer maintains any kind of viable career.
He’s a monstrous lunatic.
Thank you C.L…..I find this both chilling and upsetting.
I don’t think people have any idea what they are missing out on.
So Dawkins and Singer accept the Nazi terminology of “Life unworthy of life” do they?
From what I have heard of him, Singer is an absolute POS.
In a similar vein to the doctors who routinely move down the Downs=abortion route, today I heard that much of the increase in Caesarian sections comes from doctors’ desire for interruption-free weekends.
No more pesky natural deliveries in the middle of the night or while you are on the golf course.
No.
My wife had two. It is safer. specialists on the gold course is a myth from the 60s.
My former GP told me years ago that many doctors really do spend a lot of time on the golf course.
I think the caesarean for the golf course is an old wives’ tale.
Most women in the public system these days would be lucky to have an obstetrician pop their head around the door.