Unspeakable Conversations (Should I have been killed at birth? The case for my life.)

The New York Times Magazine ^ | 02/16/03 | HARRIET McBRYDE JOHNSON

[cyborg]

People sometimes put up defenses to hide what they really feel. I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Mike Savage is a deist because of what he's seen in pediatric cancer wards. People, esp. like this woman, want to know why God let these things happen. The easiest way to solve that problem is to say God doesn't exist.

I feel sorry for her. She'd be toast in Iraq, or any other radical militant islam country. She's alive because she's in the richest country in the world that was based on judeo-christian values of compassion for the infirm.

[AnAmericanMother]

science and reason without faith can only chase their tails.

You got it.

The article annoyed and puzzled and saddened me, but your gloss made all clear.

Since neither Singer nor Johnson acknowledges the existence of a higher power, what is "good" is only what each of them believes or has "reasoned" out. Each stands for their own point of view without having any overarching reason to do so - if there is no God, there is no absolute good, and one person's "sincere belief" is just as good as another's.

The reason Singer bothers her is because she's looking in the mirror.

[laurav]

It's interesting that the disability rights movement has found itself unintentionally aligned with religious conservatives. Many of the Not Dead Yet set use the exact same rhetoric as other minority group representatives -- and many are correspondingly quite liberal. When I covered a Not Dead Yet Peter Singer rally for the Trenton Times as a freelance reporter, I interviewed a woman who made a point of telling me she was a feminist and pro-choice. She didn't want to argue that all life was sacred... just that all born human beings are equally valuable under the law. Why, she asked me, would a girl like me who was depressed get counseling and medication, but if she said she was depressed, she'd get Jack Kevorkian? Euthanasia denies the equality of disabled people, and there doesn't need to be a God involved for that to be the case.

I don't think this is logically consistent all the way down the line, however, because ultimately viewing human life as a good in and of itself has its roots in a religious faith -- namely, that a higher power views life as an a priori good. Otherwise, why is living better than not-living, in the grand scheme of things? It can be an awful bother at times.

Here's something I wrote for the student newspaper after my conversation with the Not Dead Yet protester:

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/1999/04/21/edits/column1.html

[Palladin]

Johnson was wooed and won by the crafty Singer. Up to the point of her invitation to speak at Princeton, she was on the outside looking in upon the world of academia. Being invited to converse and dine with the world renowned animal rights guru made of her an awkward Cinderella.

In return for Singer's manipulative attention and phony kindnesses, she humanizes him, when, in fact, her sister was correct: Singer is a monster.

[Reactionary]

I suppose the thing that strikes me about Singer is his Utilitarianism, his assertion that the value of life is to be judged according to the standards of usefulness or happiness.

When he talks about disabled people being "worse off," surely he has some standard by which to make that judgement. And he also must have some means of gauging at what point one is sufficiently disabled to warrant death.

I would like to know what those criteria are. I suspect that in each case there are exceptions that would pose big problems for his "rational" system of ethics.

[ChemistCat]

We ARE all criticizing him without having read his books. The media spins everything else--I'm sure it has altered his position, and over-simplified it.

I'm hardly afraid his books would convert me and I doubt I would end up even tolerant of his philosophies. I would just understand them better. I say now that I'm sure they have their origin in a morally groundless prior assumption, but to say for sure I would have to read the original works. I just don't have time right now.

I do not think he's going to be very influential now or in the future. However, I'm sure the early signs of the worst elements of Mengele's philosophy were easy to dismiss.

[AnAmericanMother]

Actually, I have read one of his books - at least as much of it as I could stomach. This hideous individual works for MY old university (which was "tolerant" and PC to the point of lunacy even in my day, and clearly has gone from bad to worse since.)

Singer's suffering to a large extent from "ivory tower syndrome". Like so many navel-gazing professors, he's playing a semantic game with himself, as he admits, trying to construct a world-view from a purely logical and utilitarian starting point. He has persuaded himself that his philosophy and teaching lives in a separate pigeon-hole from his "self" - and that's the dichotomy that Johnson picked up on. She was uncomfortable with his "split personality" even as she succumbed to it. Since Singer is an atheist, he doesn't acknowledge that his thinking and teaching (broadcast to students and the world at large) affects his character. But over the long haul it does. (Hitler was extremely kind to animals. So what?)

When his own quite elderly mother became ill, he paid vast sums of money to obtain round-the-clock nursing home care for her. He didn't see the irony of this (or the "injustice" of it under his declared system) even when it was pointed out to him! The most he could say is that well, he didn't live up to his own system.

Silly man! He just stumbled over one of the great proofs of the existence of God - that man KNOWS the moral code in his heart, even when he professes to believe something else.

[AnAmericanMother]

See my post to Chemist Cat.

Singer is playing a double game. He's trying to keep his philosophy and his "self" in two watertight compartments.

Unfortunately, one can keep up this charade for only so long. Something's got to give, and since he has rejected the clear signposts that have been given to him (first his elderly mother, and now this woman) I fear the worst.

[livius]

Good points from both of you.

One of the problems, of course, is that the only thing that prevents more disabled people from being killed (after birth) is the fact that there are laws against it. The laws of a society do not come out of nowhere, but are the practical expression of the fundamental principles and assumptions of that society. Ours, obviously, come from our Judeo-Christian background. I'm not referring here to the form of our legal system, which obviously has many other sources, but to the fundamental principles to which it gives expression.

But every day our society moves to reject this background and brings itself closer and closer to Utilitarian philosophical premises. In short, these laws are only going to hold up as a bulwark until we have fully adopted Utilitarianism, which is happening faster than we like to think.

This argument is someday going to be fought in the courts, but I wish, in the meantime, that those of us who still understand the basis for Western culture - which affects the assumptions of all of us who live in it, even those who are athiests - would devote themselves to exploring and giving a modern expression to the fundamental principles.

The argument has, to a great extent, left many of us in the dust, partly because it was inconceivable to us that we might ever have to defend our society, and partly because we didn't notice how rapidly it was being destroyed. If there is one thing we need more than anything now, before this even gets to the courts, it is a vast effort in philosophy, political theory and law so that we will be prepared when we have to defend Western society's very core values. I think this is what it is going to come down to, in the end.

[Teacher317]

I'm learning so much in law school. For example, things like "wrongful life" suits. From this site:

LEGAL ACCOUNTABILITY: WRONGFUL LIFE SUITS

Support for amniocentesis and selective abortion, in the absence of gene therapy, may come from an unexpected direction. Using a tort action known as wrongful life, children born with genetic defects have sometimes sued physicians whose duty it was to warn parents of potential genetic conditions. At first these cases were not accepted for legal action because the courts could not measure the value of a life lived or unlived. However, some cases are now being heard, although none has been won yet by the plaintiff (28).

These cases differ from typical malpractice cases because they presume that a person's life should never have existed at all, if the defendant had done his or her duty. To date, a wrongful life action has not been brought by a child against parents. In the past, children were constrained from suing parents, but courts now permit cases that involve property and finance (29). In 1987, an Illinois appeals court ruled that a 5-year-old girl, injured in a car accident while still in her mother's womb, could sue her mother for negligence (30). If a child born with severe deformities or a genetic defect decided that the parents could have detected the disorder prenatally, a suit against the parents might be based on wrongful life or negligence. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a legal opinion in the late 1880s stating that there is "a conditional, prospective liability for one not yet in being" (31). Later courts have argued that every child has a right to begin life with physical and mental health (32). Marjorie Shaw, M.D., J.D., an expert in law as it pertains to genetics, has concluded that

knowingly, capriciously, or negligently transmitting a defective gene that causes pain and suffering and an agonizing death to an offspring is certainly a moral wrong if not a legal wrong. Thus, if reproduction is contemplated (or not consciously prevented) there is an ethical obligation not to harm the offspring and one's genotype should be determined so that appropriate steps can be taken to avert the disease in future generations. (33)

Pressures on parents to use genetic services will certainly, in part, be considerations of ethical duty to the child and responsibility to society. Parents might also choose to do what is most convenient for them, feeling themselves incapable of or unwilling to raise a handicapped child. But the moral and ethical responsibilities of the parents to do no harm to their children may yet be reinforced by court actions. After all, the children suffer the handicaps, not the parents.

(I just can't see my Mom escorting me into a courtromm where she argues that she wishes I had never been born at all. I also can't see how a dead child is better than a handicapped child. Is it just me?)

[BibChr]

Denial: gainsaying the obvious because of personal issues.

So you have been "told nothing," just like Clinton is the greatest president we've ever had, it was all about sex, and there's no smoking gun on Iraq. Just as surely as Carville and Begala, you're in denial of the obvious.

You have been told. Others know it. If you want to stay that way, that's on you. Me, I don't like being the last to know something on myself. Apparently, you don't mind.

But you should at least rotate your excuses. The "no one ever explained this to me" one is now invalid.

Dan

[tophat9000]

bump for comment later

[Burr5]

You are attributing quotes to me that I NEVER typed.

If your argument is reduced to comparing me to Carville and Begala, then it's not worth my time to refute you point-by-point.

Why don't we just agree about Clinton and Iraq and drop the whole theological debate? I am not a liberal, and I am not a satanist. I am an adult who is unconvinced regarding the existence of God.

I do not disrespect your opinion. I only ask that you refrain from belittling mine.

[BibChr]

So, in summary:

People look down on atheists because most know they're in denial.

It is remarkable in this woman in that meaningful discussion of values, meaning, and ethics on the one hand, and atheism on the other, are mutually exclusive.

You can now never again pose as if this has not been explained to you.

Dan

[Burr5]

This is now the third illogical, factually unsupported, and grammatically incomprehensible tirade you've lobbed in my direction.

And the substance of the article has taken a back seat to your stubborn determination to reduce it to an argument about religion.

Rest assured, many of us atheists agree with on issues of ethics. And on other serious issues.

Enough already.

[Burr5]

Make that "agree with you"...

Anyway, see you in Baghdad. :)

[ChemistCat]

If you ever post anything that cogent again and don't ping me, too, I'll hunt you down and cry on you.

PING because what you wrote is a must-read for those of us who might make a parenting mistake...like raising selfish, greedy, grasping, unforgiving kids whose perfectionism points outward. (Well, okay, I don't expect to make THAT one.)

[BibChr]

You mention Baghdad... but you're still in de Nile.

And I don't believe that you're so thick you are unable to absorb a few simple propositions/observations. Ignorance can be cured. Deliberate ignorance... that's tricky.

Dan

[ChemistCat]

You can't argue someone into belief in anything, okay?

Nobody converted me. It was between God and me, and that's how it always works.

[beckett]

I can't believe you posted the whole thing. :-)