Richard Dawkins has issued an unapologetic apology. It's one of those defensive "apologies" that's just a pretext to double down on the original claim:
https://richarddawkins.net/2014/08/abortion-down-syndrome-an-apology-for-letting-slip-the-dogs-of-twitterwar/
I'll venture a few comments:
I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare.
Even if we accept his utilitarian yardstick, there's no evidence that giving birth to a Down baby increases suffering or reduces the sum of happiness. In fact, the evidence is very much to the contrary.
In addition, it's sophistical to say you're acting in the child's own welfare by killing it. The child's own welfare presupposes the child's existence. It takes it from there.
My position, which I would guess is shared by most people reading this, is that a woman has a right to early abortion, and I personally would not condemn her for choosing it.
Dawkins is half right. Given atheism, Down babies have no right to live.
But like many atheists, Dawkins fails to carry his position to its logical conclusion. Given atheism, women have no rights. Humans have no rights. It comes down to raw power.
If you disagree, fair enough; many do, often on religious grounds. But then your quarrel is not just with me but with prevailing medical opinion and with the decision actually taken by most people who are faced with the choice.
Unless a Down baby pregnancy is significantly riskier than a normal pregnancy, in what sense is there a medical opinion on the preferability of aborting Down babies? Dawkins is hiding behind medical authority to lend respectability to a moral evaluation rather than a medical evaluation.
By the way, Dawkins is of course a prominent evolutionist. Evolutionarily speaking, what's wrong with a genetic abnormality - whether an obvious extra chromosome like in Down syndrome or a subtle single base-pair substitution like in sickle cell anemia?
ReplyDeleteSickle cell disease actually confers benefits to some in light of malaria. Or should we abort sickle cell carriers too? Where do we draw the line in terms of aborting those with genetic abnormalities?
Also, not all Down syndrome children necessarily have an entire extra chromosome. A small percentage are mosaics, which means some cells could have a normal complement of 46 chromosomes while other cells have 47 chromosomes. It goes without saying people with mosaic Down syndrome typically fare much better in terms of medical and health outcomes than those with (as it were) full-blown Down syndrome (e.g. higher IQs).
Besides, from an evolutionary perspective, perhaps Down syndrome possess in its genetics an evolutionary advantage greater than even intelligence, which may be currently unknown to modern science.
"I personally would not condemn her for choosing it."
ReplyDeleteI'm sure all the potential abortionettes are relieved to have Pope Dawkins' smiling approval. His personal condemnation, or lack thereof is certainly a weighty moral consideration.
All hail El Papa!