Greater love than this…
Two pieces in today’s Washington Post stun by their sheer coincidence. An op-ed column by Michael Gerson addresses what he calls “the new eugenics” illustrated by the pressure to abort exercised upon couples who are informed that their unborn child has Down syndrome. Ninety percent of those so diagnosed are aborted–”eugenic abortions,” Gerson calls them, wondering what this says about a drift toward social Darwinism. He wonders whether the example of Sarah Palin’s son Trig will be morally instructive. The column is illustrated by a photograph of Charles de Gaulle holding his daughter Anne, who had Down syndrome and was lovingly cared for by him and his wife until her death at the age of 20.
And then, on the first page of the Post, there is the story of the death of Thomas S. Vander Woude. A daily Mass-goer, he was working in his backyard with his twenty-year old son Joseph, who has Down syndrome. Somehow Joseph fell into a septic tank. His father jumped into the tank and submerged himself in sewage so he could push his son up from below and keep his head above the muck. Rescue workers arrived and pulled them out of the tank, but the father, who had been in the tank for 15 to 20 minutes, was unconscious and could not be revived.
“Gerson calls them, wondering what this says about a drift toward social Darwinism.”
No, but because we’ve sunk lower than this. The Darwinist Eugenicists thought they were improving the race. We do it now because we want to improve our lifestyles.
Last Nov. we published a piece by Tim Shriver on abortion and Down syndrome: “Silent Eugenics.”
It’s available here, to subscribers only: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=2053&var_recherche=shriver
Thank you for bringing this piece.
It would be interesting to know whether clinics are truly pressuring or whether parents are simply feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of caring for a child with Down Syndrome.
We were fortunate to have good counselors when my OB recommended amniocentesis. I was over 40, and initial tests showed a condition that was associated with Down Syndrome. Before we left the clinic we were offered information about the two types of Down Syndrome–one is more severe and often comes with very serious medical conditions–and told that we could be plugged into a support group with other parents of Down Syndrome children even before the baby was born.
In any case, the irony is that our son turned out not to be “perfect” in ways that can’t be predicted. Knowing how to help a child with ADD, backward social skills, a host of allergies, and chronic asthma might have been nice, helped us pick up the clues faster.
Maybe we would have spent less time feeling gormless, less time feeling ashamed when the CCD Ladies wanted to know why our kid was so disruptive and us only with ONE to contend with.
Or maybe it’s better not to know. We’ve actually muddled through OK, and having a lot of information at the start might simply have made us hovering and insufferable.
In any case, this is a good place for one of my plugs for L’Arche, a Catholic group that advocates for mentally handicapped individuals.
By the way, Trig Palin is a boy.
As bad as it is for some now it is much better now than it was fifty years ago. It was inconceivable then that someone could exist such as the autistic woman who runs the lecture circuit explaining autism. Then any abnormality was wrapped in shame and to admit that one had anyone like that in the family or as a friend was a no no. http://www.willowbrookstateschool.blogspot.com/
And this practice cannot be separated from the broader social treatment of people who have disabilities. By eliminating less perfect humans, deformity and disability become more pronounced and less acceptable.
As someone who lists Life Goes On among the best television series ever, I do find it very upsetting that Down syndrome is being dealt with in this way.
However, I think the assertion from Gerson’s article that I quoted above is just not true. As a society, it seems to me that we do a great deal for people with disabilities, and that we are becoming more, not less, sensitive with every year that passes. For example, I work for an educational publisher, and we are legally required to provide our books in alternative formats (at no extra cost, although of course it costs us) for the blind and physically disabled. Web sites must be accessible for the blind, and audio must be transcribed for the deaf. I believe there are even requirements for color use to accommodate the color blind. We have “kneeling busses” in New York City that can accommodate people in wheel chairs, and although I can’t tell you the exact laws, there are all kinds of requirements to make stores, theaters, and restaurants accessible to the disabled.
Going beyond that, people actually mock the left for trying to protect children with allergies to peanuts, or for making “fragrance free zones” at public events for people who are allergic to perfumes and colognes (or maybe just don’t like them).
And then we have this . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/sports/othersports/06paralympics.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying too much is being done, or enough is being done for the disabled. But I am saying that the demands of the disabled and those who work on their behalf are increasing, and the sensitivity to their needs and feelings is most definitely on the increase as well.
I think it’s unfair to characterize every person who does not want to keep a Down Syndrome child as practicing eugenics. Imagine how scary it might be for a single parent in a dead end job to think of caring for such a child. Not everyone has the resourses of a Palin or a de Gaulle. I have a disability myself, Stargardt’s disease, and I’m not saying only uber-children should be kept, just that it’s easier for some to rise to the challenge than others.
I think that eugenics is the practice of selective breeding done in order to promote or inhibit certain genetic characteristics of a species. One person having an abortion so as to not have a child with a perceived genetic defect is not practicing eugenics in this sense. But it does look like this when lots of individuals seem to be making the same choices to inhibit the same characteristics. As you point out, these are individual decisions and not the decision of eugenicists looking to improve some race.
I am making this distinction because the thrust of our moral (and political) arguments tends to focus on the individual and their individual choices. But in this case, we are seeing something that is becoming widespread. And it is reasonable to ask why this is the case. It is true that we now have the technology to do this kind of selection rather efficiently. These days, for example, it has become routine for people to know the sex of their babies before they are born; this is how common pre-natal testing is. But as Crystal points out, these choices are not made in a vacuum. They are often done in the context of certain material realities. The thing is, in our individualized society, we often look at the material realities that one faces as also the product of one’s individual choices. Either one has failed to obtain the resources necessary to make these decisions in the right way, or one is copping out on one’s personal responsibility to the future and one’s moral responsibility to “suck it up” in order to make the “right choice”.
But the fact is, our individualism as promoted in our political and economic beliefs leads to isolation and loneliness. Our families, such as they are, are mostly aggregations of individuals. We hardly have communities (in the sense of mutually supporting groups committed to each other’s welfare) at all). Our economic system is geared to break down community life. We have come to accept this as natural so completely that we hardly even talk about it any more. Moral decisions and their ethical and economic consequences are now atomized and the subject of individual decisions. Decisions about keeping the Down’s Syndrome child are now viewed as purely individual choices by the parent. Our lack of community throws people back on their individual resources and puts the fetus (any fetus) in the position of being a potential competitor with the parent for the parent’s personal resources. This is the modern moral order in its physical context.
Some excellent points, Unagidon. Your point that “the thrust of our moral … arguments tends to focus on the individual and their individual choices” ties in to some degree with BXVI’s “dictatorship of relativism.” BTW, he’s heading to France tomorrow for a visit, jumping right in to what is arguably the leading “dictatorship of relativism” in Western Europe. Some pundits are predicting that he’ll be delivering some of the most hard hitting, and important, speeches of his papacy to date.
As I see it, the problem is this: if you are committed to individual responsibility then you must enable individual choice. If I had time to think about this more philosophically, I might try to explain it, but it has always seemed strange to me that one side is committed to choice but doesn’t seem to have as much of a problem paying for expensive and stupid choices, while the other hates the idea of individual choice and is quite adamant about not paying to redress hardship, whether the result of choice or not.
And Unagidon is quite unfair when he characterizes it as competition between parents and children, because at least among those I know, it’s more like competition among a disabled child and one or more other children. No one has more than 24 hours in a day no matter how much of a hero they would like to be.
As for encouragement to abort: I rather think what really happens is that doctors feel compelled to explain the full range of possible outcomes, and many people interpret the barrage of negative information as advice to end the pregnancy.
I’m afraid straightforward advice/pressure to terminate a pregnancy happens more often than we’d like to believe. I’m basing this mostly on anecdotal evidence, but I have heard of doctors who decline to deliver babies they know (or expect) will be disabled, because it reflects badly on them professionally.
I’m sure many parents do make this difficult decision in part because of concerns about how having a disabled child will affect their ability to care for the children they already have. But I hope it isn’t taken for granted that having a disabled sibling would be a wholly negative experience for their kids.
Barbara said: “And Unagidon is quite unfair when he characterizes it as competition between parents and children, because at least among those I know, it’s more like competition among a disabled child and one or more other children. No one has more than 24 hours in a day no matter how much of a hero they would like to be.”
I am not saying that it IS competition between a parent and child. I said that this is how we look at it in this time and place. You imply this yourself when you talk about 24 hours in a day. These are the parent’s hours, right?
When we discuss these issues in terms only of the person making the moral decision, we are forgetting that as Christians we are responsible for each other as well. The 24 hours mentioned above are not sufficient because even you are looking at it in the context of the parent alone. Why should the parent be alone? Obviously this will always happen on a case to case basis, but what kind of moral order do we have when we make the base assumption that this is going to be the case and that outside support is the exception?
The Vander Woude story is exceptionally moving. I can’t imagine that I’d have the courage to embrace the cross as he did. Lord, give me strength to be a saint.
I was recently talking with an enthusiastic amateur cyclist about his chances for competitive racing. He said it was impossible, at his age, to begin. He said that it takes decades to build up the power necessary to pedal 35 miles per hour.
I wonder if love is like that: whether the love necessary to make a spontaneous decision to give one’s life for another can be acquired through years of the exercise of love.
Thank you, Jim, for referring to Mr. Vander Woude. Such love! That’s what to pray for.
I was very surprised that it had gone so long without comment.
This is coming to prominence now because of Palin, but it is just one example of the ugliness of abortion on demand that is kept under wraps by the abortion industry. Since they work so hard to keep anyone from gathering statistics it is difficult to know how many babies are aborted because they are dwarfs, or have club feet or a cleft palate. Anecdotal evidence would indicate it is thousands.
Unagidon, that was my point. The parent is very much alone here, and that’s why the competition is there whether we like it or not. I am sure we all know parents facing this conundrum, but let me give you one of the most heart rending ones I know of: my sister is a teacher and became concerned about one of her teenaged students, so she called the mother to discuss how to help her, and the mother said, basically, “I’m sorry, but my younger child is sick and she is the focus of all our attention, so the older girl just has to muddle through on her own. I don’t have time to do anything for her.”
This really, actually, happened.
And why is it like that? I don’t know, ask those who think that this is okay as the status quo, and that the only test of their own morality is whether they prevented someone else from having an abortion.
“And why is it like that? I don’t know, ask those who think that this is okay as the status quo, and that the only test of their own morality is whether they prevented someone else from having an abortion.”
This came powerfully true to me in 1966 when a somnabulant archdiocese of NY contacted me to rally against abortion. I was impressed by the extravagant and slick campaign as contrasted with the lack of coordination in other programs. But you write it far better than I ever did, Barbara.
By the way are you aware that your saint might not exist. http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008809100364
But we know you do and your Spirit comes across loud and clear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/world/americas/11haiti.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
We are all aware of these kinds of stories. They constitute the great tests of our lives. And the conundrum of the mother you cite above is not just moral; it’s material. And what she did may have been almost unavoidable. And what she did may have been what almost anyone would have done in the same situation.
But every moral act is done in a material context. The material context includes time and money constraints, the law, etc., but it also includes the moral contributions of other people who, as we know “sin with what they have done and what they have failed to do”.
The moral contributions of Christians in society do not just include what they can do directly for and with people they know. But regarding those who they do not know directly, they do not also just include what they can do about the law through the political process nor what kind of checks they can write or who they volunteer for. The entire physical order is social and the kind of society that we create is a moral order created by the kind of engagement we define. Or to put it another way, we created the physical order through our moral choices to create a condition where the mother you cite only has 24 hours in a day and no resources to rely on other than herself and her husband. She has to throw her other child to the dogs (and we get to say that this is Tragic but Understandable) because we think that, as American realists, this is the way that it is. But we have made it the way that it is.
The sign of a global moral problem is not that people are widely sinning. It’s that we are used to it. And so much of our attempts to grapple with the problems that we debate about on this blog are actually done in a way that do not challenge our assumption that much of our individualistic world is beyond our control in an economic, social and political system of alienating individualism. Some of us are pious and God loving enough to be willing to do almost anything, except consider the radical engagement that Christ demands and expects. This is why we focus on laws and policies so much. They create the appearance of engagement when in fact they are designed to keep us from having to.
I have a 66 year old sister with Downs Syndrome who was not supposed to live beyond 13. Most likely she will outlive me and my other sister. My parents were small business owners, hence both worked in the business. Both spent untold hours taking care of the entire family and somehow managed to do it while maintaining senses of humor. It was tough, no doubt about it. To them, however, it was just another of the things in life with which to contend. Because she was not diagnosed until after birth (this was in 1942, after all) there was no possibility of abortion as a consideration. Knowing the strong faith of both of my parents, it would not have been a possibility anyway. That didn’t make things any easier; just more of a reality.
Unagidon, the problem is, within the current framework of political philosophy and engagement, there are too many peopl who want to live within a moral order that imposes costs only on others. I have my own reasons for why I think that is, but that it is I have no doubt. I will just say this: it is far easier to work these problems out in a more homogenous and less diverse society. Or as someone from a small European country once told me, they don’t worry much about paying for the health care and daycare costs of others because almost everybody is a cousin of everybody else. Writ large, the problem is: we don’t view ourselves as a family. And so, we divorce our moral standards from a notion of reciprocal obligation that makes it easier to accept social restraints.
And just to muse a little: there are those who think that if we impose restraints on things like abortion, eventually, a culture of reciprocal obligation will flourish (I think this is where many Catholics are), and then there are those, like me, who think it unfair that individuals should be forced to sacrifice their liberty and bear the burden and uncertainty of that experiment.
“And just to muse a little: there are those who think that if we impose restraints on things like abortion, eventually, a culture of reciprocal obligation will flourish (I think this is where many Catholics are), and then there are those, like me, who think it unfair that individuals should be forced to sacrifice their liberty and bear the burden and uncertainty of that experiment.”
How so? I would like to believe this. I believe I am very positive in that I believe we should always show hope. Yet when it comes to human nature I am pretty cynical. I always say that you never know a person until you have a money transaction with them. Why do people insist of placing their names on buildings which they have donated to? The vanity smears the charity. Though nobody will refuse the money.
This is why I insist if you removed all those who are in the employ of the RCC (count the ways), the “thinking with the church” would shrink considerably.
Would I be wrong in saying that since God makes the child [we are called pro-creators] that some reliance, some trust might be placed in God?
Martha Beck’s EXPECTING ADAM gives a good description [she's a sociologist] of the pressures “in a high class” ambience – Harvard – put on a pregnant woman to abort a Down’s child. She has some good lines. Of Adam smelling the flowers – “the spiritual rejoices in the sensual”. And “Adam has angels like a dog has fleas”.
Of those in a High Class Ambience who lament women having children with Down’s, there is that sad-making “abortion” atmosphere about them.
American culture doesn’t have the means to promote reciprocal obligation. Our economic system requires our individuation. We now think that this rootless existence is “natural”. The value that people think replaced all of this is “choice”, expressed as the ability to not have to really commit to things if we feel like changing our minds. We still operate with a vocabulary of community and commitment, but we don’t believe in these things any more.
So we want a “free market” society that promotes maximum choice and individuality and then we try to ban choices we don’t like under the name of “morality”. Sin becomes a technical problem with technical solutions which take the acts out of any context. Teenage pregnancy requires either a retooling of the school system or improvements in contraception. Abortion requires a change in the law (or not). The way we classify our problems like this is simply a sign of our alienation. And sorry, but it’s obscene.
The Catholic Church could be a way out of this, because it has a deep tradition of community which it defines quite clearly. But Catholics in the United States simply adapt to current conditions. Americans first, Catholics second. In our American fashion, we look for the checklist of things we need to do in order to be considered a Catholic in good standing, flipping to the back pages of the handbook known as the Catechism for the numbered rules and skipping over the boring bit in the front that tries to tell us in a holistic way why we are doing this to begin with. Our ethical arguments are full of numbers and statistics, as though sins carry scores and one can be 20 percent more or less devout than someone else. And American bishops don’t help very much. Many of them are American nationalists themselves, even though one cannot be a nationalist and a Christian at the same time (much less a Catholic).
So we make do with rotten moral choices and fruitless arguments, scraping away mongoloid fetuses “for their own good; it’s a quality of life thing, you know.”
Thomas Vander Woude had enough love to drown in a vat of shit in order to save his son. That’s the kind of love we would need to get out of this mess we are in. But note: love somehow never enters into our political discussions, does it? How about a “pro-love” party?
Gabriel – Not sure I’m following everything you’re saying, but I am glad you mentioned Expecting Adam. I was thinking, when I posted earlier, of Beck’s story of being pressured by doctors and professional colleagues to abort. Her story also suggests some of the blessings a family might be turning away in choosing not to have a disabled child.
Well, when the “pro love” mantra was all the rage it quickly morphed into the “free” love movement. Yeah, I get what you are saying, but I think we could improve things just a bit by removing some of the free floating economic anxiety of our existences that comes with having virtually no safety net. Fear hardens us considerably to the misfortunes of others. Also, not to be too much of a cynic, but Vander Woude was saving his own son, not someone else’s. “Even the pharisees would do as much . . .”
I think we understand each other now, Barbara and it dawns on me that you might have thought we were arguing with each other.
Yes, we could improve the safety net. Also, speaking as a (big) businessman, it would make good business sense to do so, despite what McCain thinks.
Regarding Mr Vander Woude’s sacrifice, I’ve always thought that love was the mother of empathy.
And just to muse a little: there are those who think that if we impose restraints on things like abortion, eventually, a culture of reciprocal obligation will flourish (I think this is where many Catholics are), and then there are those, like me, who think it unfair that individuals should be forced to sacrifice their liberty and bear the burden and uncertainty of that experiment.
Societies in Europe can not worry as much about an individual having such a child not only because of their extended families but because most of them have universal health care and more social programs.
To just hope that people will help a parent in such a difficult situation and that that will reduce abortions is akin to choosing private charity to help the poor instead of actual social governemnt programs to help them.
A recent study (http://www.catholicsinalliance.org/) has shown that their were fewer abortions in the Clinton years because of social programs for mothers. If we really want to reduce abortions maybe it would help to help people instead of making moral judgements about them.
Barbara: Perhaps you could recommend that verse to whoever is going to give the eulogy at Mr. Vander Woude’s funeral.
I understand that the biggest worry many parents of children with severe disabilities is what will happen to them when the parents die. A social safety net would help alleviate that worry.
Joseph, No, I wouldn’t, of course, because I have no problem celebrating his actions, but I do think the most extraordinary acts of heroism are those involving strangers. Like people who risked their lives to help Jews during WWII. I was just following up on the idea that our notions of morality and obligation are very often connected with our notions of family, and that Jesus had a strong point when he made that comment that we often lose sight of when we congratulate ourselves for our own goodness.
Crystal, the point of my friend’s comment was that these European social programs were much easier to initiate and to defend politically because people view the nation’s population more or less as an extended family. They are much harder to initiate and defend when you think someone ELSE is benefiting at your expense.
True enough, Cathleen. I have a brother with twin daughters who are let’s say “genetically-challenged” and disabled. He and his wife knew of these issues before they were born, but they chose to have the children, who, providentially, were born on Christmas Day. It’s been tough for them, no doubt about it. In addition to the day-to-day challenges, one of the twins developed cancer when she was 4 and required a bone marrow transplant. Luckily, her sister was the perfect donor. Though my brother and his wife are both healthy and will hopefully have decades to go before they they are no longer in their daughters’ lives, they do worry about what will happen to their daughters after they are gone.
There have been other anecdotal stories here of parents raising disabled children, and I’m not passing judgment on anyone or trying to generalize about my brother’s experience, but his siblings marvel at the man and the father he has become. The added challenge–and, yes, burden–in his family’s life has had a transformative effect on both him and his wife, and on our family as a whole. It’s a thankful incongruity in our human nature–secular and religious–that just when we think there is no more love we can offer, love comes forth. Still, social safety nets for the parents of disabled children would, as Cathleen noted, alleviate at least some worries.
Joe, thanks for highlighting these articles and bringing them forward for discussion. The story of Thomas Vander Woude simple arrested my attention and brought from me the same response voiced earlier in the thread: Lord, give me the strength to be like this. While one wonders yet again why God’s providence would allow for such a horrible accident to occur, perhaps the radiance of the love that was brought forth in Mr. Vander Woude’s action is our best and only answer.
William Collier:
Thanks very much for what you wrote, especially this:
That last reminds me of a phrase attributed to St. John of the Cross. I’ve heard that Dorothy Day liked to quote it: “Where there is no love, put love – and you will find love.”
I have a nice, small apartment in the basement of my house. Two young undocumented immigrants live there rent free and they have dinner with me. This situation almost happened accidentally. Both of these young men are from Sinaloa, Mexico. Both of them send money to their wives and children back home. I am one of those Latinos who would never vote for McCain and Palin. I am voting for Obama and Biden because we need a more just immigration policy in this country plus many other things. I think abortion is wrong. In the United States, however, the discussion about abortion is about one side accusing the other side of not respecting life and the other side accusing the other side of not respecting women. Both sides are lying.
“But the fact is, our individualism as promoted in our political and economic beliefs leads to isolation and loneliness. Our families, such as they are, are mostly aggregations of individuals. We hardly have communities (in the sense of mutually supporting groups committed to each other’s welfare) at all). Our economic system is geared to break down community life. We have come to accept this as natural so completely that we hardly even talk about it any more. Moral decisions and their ethical and economic consequences are now atomized and the subject of individual decisions. Decisions about keeping the Down’s Syndrome child are now viewed as purely individual choices by the parent. Our lack of community throws people back on their individual resources and puts the fetus (any fetus) in the position of being a potential competitor with the parent for the parent’s personal resources. This is the modern moral order in its physical context.”
Well.
That’s about the most perceptive thing I’ve heard in months, and in an election year, too, when real insights and analysis are at a premium. One might want to propose, from this, a model for a parish that provides that needed sense of community.
Gene Palumbo, welcome back to the blog.
“I was just following up on the idea that our notions of morality and obligation are very often connected with our notions of family, and that Jesus had a strong point when he made that comment that we often lose sight of when we congratulate ourselves for our own goodness. ”
For Christians the bar is raised as Luke 6:32 states: “”If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”
Can we explore our love for Muslims, and those who destroyed three thousand people in two buildings? Is this the measure for Christians?
Jean said: “One might want to propose, from this, a model for a parish that provides that needed sense of community.”
I don’t think that providing that needed sense of community is the solution. I think that sense of community is the problem.