Useless Knowledge

A revealing article: The Problem With an Almost-Perfect Genetic World from The New York Times about the new test that detects a child's Downs Syndrome even earlier in pregnancy than the previous test. (My thanks to the Episcopal weblog Titus One Nine for the link.)

According to the article, 80% of parents who find out that their unborn child has the condition abort him, wait, sorry, "terminate their pregnancy." (I have read and been told that the percentage is actually much higher, perhaps even 95%.)

I don't mean to deny the struggles in raising a handicapped child. I know friends whose children suffer various handicaps and they do not have the (relatively) easy time the rest of us enjoy. (Many of us could do a lot more to help them in practical ways, and thus incarnate our pro-life thinking.)

But getting married, as Christians understand marriage, is a promise to have children if one can, and the promise to have a child is the promise to have him, period, and to love him when he arrives, however he arrives. It is a great risk, in some ways, is marriage, but you take the risk when you take the joys.

We had a tiny experience of this. Our last child — a "trailer" or, better, "bonus baby" — was born when my wife was 42. We were told by someone that mothers her age had a one in ten chance of having a child with Downs Syndrome, and I never bothered to find out if this was right, partly, I suppose, because I didn't want to find out that the odds were even worse. At one of her exams, her doctor mentioned the prenatal test to screen for Downs Syndrome, as he was apparently legally bound to do, and she said she would not have it.

There was no point. We were not going to abort our child, however he came to us, but then even parents convinced of their child's right to live can be, almost certainly will be, tempted to abort him if they know he's imperfect. Just imagine the fears your mind will present you: not so much of your own suffering, but of the child's.

And the test itself wasn't safe: it causes some mothers to miscarry and lose their babies, which is a horrible risk to run only to have some information you would not use. We could not risk our child's life.

There was a little pamphlet in the waiting room on the subject, essentially an advertisement for the test. It said that knowing whether your child had Downs Syndrome helped you prepare oneself — it said nothing about abortion — but it doesn't really, it only changes the point at which one learns, and there is no real advantage in learning that a child has such problems before he is born. With Downs Syndrome, you will have time to adjust before you really need to deal with it practically.

We didn't think there was any advantage, anyway, and we thought it unwise to ask for temptations even when you are sure you would resist them. There are some things the wise man refuses to know.

But many other people do want to know. The Times story includes this revealing quote:

Among the difficult choices facing prospective parents in coming years, genetics researchers say, will be the ability to predict the degree of severity in chromosomal abnormalities like Down syndrome, which can cause mild to moderate retardation.

"Where do you draw the line?" said Mark A. Rothstein, director of the Bioethics Institute at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. "On the one hand we have to view this as a positive in terms of preventing disability and illness. But at what point are we engaging in eugenics and not accepting the normal diversity within a population?"

You will have noticed that he assumes that there is a line to be drawn somewhere in the middle, i.e., that some unborn children can be killed, and that no child has an intrinsic or inalienable right to live. The way he puts the matter establishes at the beginning an ethical system that does not have a high view of human rights. You must satisfy certain criteria to have any right to live.

The problem for Dr. Rothstein is only that at some point killing such children, the benefits of which he has already noted, becomes eugenics. But "preventing disability and illness" by eliminating the disabled and ill is by definition eugenic. Improving the race by eliminating the "unfit" is what the eugenicist does.

Dr. Rothstein is worrying about eugenics while preaching a eugenic doctrine. Kiling the imperfect unborn is for him "a positive," after all.

The article also included a set of statistics that suggest something about what American society thinks most important, or to put it another way, what makes a life worth living:

Women were far more likely to choose abortions for disabilities that have a high probability of affecting cognitive functioning. For conditions that have little or no impact on the quality of life but might require medical or surgical therapy, the abortion rate was 16 percent, but doubled for those likely to cause mental dysfunction.

That intelligence makes life worth living, or a baby's life worth saving, is an idea that easily extends to those for whom it was not originally intended. If the retarded can be aborted because they are retarded, what about those — if a genetic test for inteligence is ever perfected — who are merely on the upper left slope of the Bell Curve as a matter of genetics?

And for that matter, what about those who are merely average, and will grow up to have dull jobs and financial struggles and never appreciate Faulkner or Picasso or Thai food? Why should not concerned parents spare them such a life, if intelligence is so important?

We are only prevented from having average children aborted by ambitious parents because we cannot predict a child's intelligence by prenatal testing. Pray God we shall never be able to. But many Americans have already accepted the principle that parents may abort the child who if born would grow up to check out their groceries or mow their lawn, if the Times report is right. They won't put it that way, of course, but that is what their choices say.

That is where all such utilitarian arguments lead, that establish the value of a man's life on some estimate of its quality or worth. If the average American does not approve of killing the unborn child of slightly below average intelligence, if he, arbitrarily, thinks one life worth ending and another life tenor twenty points up the IQ scale somehow protected, as Dr. Rothstein seems to do, he does not stop there because he has any reason to.

It is a social prejudice, inherited from the tenacious if weakening Christian heritage that has held that every man is a creature created in the image of God and therefore glorious beyond telling, however intelligent he is or isn't. It is a prejudice he will eventually overcome. Him, or his children, or his grandchildren.