In light of our ongoing treatment of Sanger and the Eugenics Movement, it’s fair to ask if the eugenists have any merit to their argument.
No, they don’t.
From a Christian anthropological perspective, the least among us is made in the image and likeness of God. Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 that He will judge us by our treatment of them, as He identifies with, “the least of these my brothers”.
As for the genetic basis of their argument: genetics or environment?, the safe answer is probably both. We can train a chimp to play golf and even fly a spacecraft, but that doesn’t make it human. Aping (pardon the pun) human behavior does not change genetic and simian reality for the chimp. For humans whose genetic defects render their function as less than optimal, sub-par performance does not make them less human, or less worthy of human dignity. An individual need not exhibit or realize all of their potential functions at all times in order to be a member of the human family.
We know that certain traits are hereditary, having identified what genes on what chromosomes are responsible. Down Syndrome is the most famous and easily recognizable based on physical (phenotypic) characteristics. Certain psychiatric conditions such as the Schizophrenias appear to have a genetic etiology. Autism may well prove to be genetic as well. I’m currently involved in a research project that points in that direction.
To make matters murkier, to what extent do environmental (physical or psychosocial) factors influence, or exacerbate underlying genetic predispositions? Then there is the issue of the extent to which environmental factors influence and ameliorate the physiological and psychological effects of a genetic disorder.
Take autism as an example. Children with horrific deficits in communication, with a broad spectrum of associated developmental delays, would easily fit in to the eugenist’s list of targeted individuals. It’s my considered opinion that there is indeed a genetic, developmental defect at the root. With a prevalence in the population that is increasing, a moral and ethical decision needs to be made. What do we do with these children?
Having one myself, the answer is simple. Treat them.
The last decade has witnessed a revolution in the treatment in children with autism. Better speech therapeutic regimens, as well as social skills, special education, physical and occupational therapy, play groups, have all shown dramatic effects in children whose function was less than half their chronological age.
Unlike our chimpanzee friends here, these children are humans, being taught human skills. The environmental stimuli effect neural development to bring the child’s behavior and cognitions more in line with optimal human function. That’s environment being used to overcome genetic defect.
We’ve had great success after six years of daily work, several hours per day. We’ve also learned more about love in the process than we ever dreamed imaginable.
That doesn’t happen with sterilization and abortion. Eugenics proclaims that life has a monolithic standard of acceptability, that individuals not meeting its arbitrary and capricious standard ought never to have existed. Unable to murder the adult, eugenists will prevent the child. Such a standard says nothing about the targeted individual and everything about the sickness and evil of the ones who crafted it.
Genetics doesn’t describe our difficulties so much as it invites us to engage in growth as individuals, as civilizations.
That requires courage, imagination, and an appetite for innovation.
Most of all, it requires love.
Coming Home 
Oh AMEN!!!
From the heart of a mother with an autistic child – AMEN.
Gerard, it is a wonderful thing how far we have come in the past decades in understanding ” disabilities” and in our treatment of these people on an individual basis and as a society. Autism is a very good example especially in understanding that there is a wide range of capabilities in Autism.
However, regardless of this progress it seems to me there remains a concern when a severely disabled person hits puberty whether the disbility is genetic or not. How would someone who cannot care for themselves care for another? And do we want to perpetuate the genetic disbility? Now, remember I am talking about a severe disability. And realize too that in suggesting that perhaps we don’t want to perpetuate their disablility I am not suggesting that we do not think they should never have been born.
These are tough questions. But it seems to me they must be real questions for many parents and guardians. What do they do? What should they do? I would not want to be in their shoes.
Your reference point is off, so the rest of the argument follows. We are all expected to obey the same moral law. Healthy people, handicapped people, severely handicapped people all are bound by moral norms that restrict sex to married persons. If the person is deemed competent to enter into marriage, then it follows that they have some capacity to assist in the raising of offspring, regardless of handicap. It would be expected that family assist in the care of the offspring, as happens in ‘normal’ marriages.
If on the other hand the person is too dysfunctional to be able to function as a husband or wife, then they ought not be married. It follows that if they are not functional enough for marriage, it would be a terrible cruelty, monstrously undignified to arrange sexual encounters, with or without contraception.
Two things Gerard:
First, we are all not bound by “moral norms” that restrict sex to marriage. Those are your moral norms. They certainly are not everyone’s.
Secondly, my reference point is reality Gerard. I am not so naive to think that even people who share your morals will not possibly have sex outside marriage. And it would be foolhardy to think that a disabled person, incapable of independence and raising a child of their own, might become pregnant.
So while you have presented your moral views on sex outside marriage and your expectations for others, you have avoided my very real question.
Actually, my answer is very real. If you choose to ignore the guard rails on the road, you end up with a very nasty experience.
The moral norms to which I have given witness have been universal norms until recent decades. Again this is an unapologetic Catholic blog. You asked a question, I gave an answer, one which respects the dignity of the handicapped individual. True to form, you just want an argument, have ignored the substance and cohesiveness of my response, and I’ve grown tired of it. You are petty and condescending, and I’ve cautioned you that such discourse doesn’t fly here. This happened over at Jill Sanek’s blog, and now it’s happening here. Please don’t comment on this blog anymore until you can approach others here (myself included) with a genuine interest in what others have to say and an open heart and mind to receive their responses. I don’t want to resort to blocking your IP’s, so please respect this request.
God Bless
Don’t you mean that “it would be foolhardy NOT to think that a disabled person..”
Catholics most certainly know that people fornicate, commit adultery, and rape. These sins do result in pregnancies. The answer is that we do not penalize human beings who came into being as a result of a sin by killing them. A person who is “defective” in your eyes is not viewed as such by his/or her Author.
Any child, in whatever state of health of body or mind, is to be loved and taken care of as a gift from God. “A person’s a person no matter how small.”
Eugenics reached very broadly, and very subjectively. The definition of “defective” is almost infinitely elastic. I love babies, and older children, so if I argue that abortion is sometimes a valid option, its not because I think kids are a drag, or that every delinquent should have been aborted. Many people of sub-average intelligence, if that can even be defined, simply lacked adequate nutrition during their first two years. (I personally know of four IQ tests administered to me in the public schools, 1959-1972, which show my IQ is somewhere between 70 and 140). Some delinquents grow up to be great teachers. There are unambiguous physical circumstances which terribly ravage the tissue of a fetus (e.g. a rubella infection in a pregnant woman), or show that the blueprint itself is damaged.
I read an account in Sojourners of a man whose wife was infected with rubella, and they declined to abort. He and his wife have taken full responsibility for their decision, for all the extra care their son needs, and I respect that. I do not believe any governmental authority should ever take that decision away from a parent. I also believe that it is a compassionate decision, for the parents to say, no, we do not want to visit the effects of this infection upon our child, we want to remove the damaged tissue and start over. Frankly, if the mother is motivated simply by “No, I can’t handle that responsibility,” well, she may be right, and nobody should try to induce her by saying “I did, and it worked for me.” The one mother is not the other.
It is far too complex and intimate a decision for the blunt instrument of the law to enter into — or at least, the law should enter in only on the far boundaries. There are moral standards to all of this, but again, the law is a blunt instrument, and can only approximate precisely where the moral law falls. But as I’ve said before, just because its legal, doesn’t mean it is right or correct, much less moral.
SJ,
To remove the damaged tissue is to operate on the baby in the womb. The baby itself is not tissue, but an entire organism. Removing damaged tissue is euphemistic for killing a child. My standard challenge is to talk with someone who is handicapped and ask them if they would have preferred non-existence to existence such as they experience it. I’ve asked a number of handicapped people that question in light of the abortion argument. None would prefer never having existed.
If you interview a person who was NOT aborted, and WAS born, you are already dealing with an entirely different scenario than if the fetus HAD been aborted. The fetus was in no condition to be consulted at the time the decision was made. Their response is naturally conditioned by their state of existence at the time the question was posed.
I have sometimes envisaged a scenario where a soul is in whatever metaphysical take-off zone souls assemble in before attachment to the animal component that, without a soul, would not be a human being. (…and man became a living soul…) I picture this soul observing that the intended mother has had a serious rubella infection, which has ravaged the incomplete body in her womb. I hear the soul saying “Mommy, take that tissue out! I don’t want to be integrated with a body that has no eyes and incomplete limbs and a damaged brain that won’t channel all I have to offer. Start over and give me a nice healthy body!”
Of course we don’t know that the divine process works anything like that. But we don’t know that it doesn’t. As I’ve mentioned before, there is a well-publicized case of a woman with Down’s syndrome who had her tubes tied before marriage, because while she is making the best of her life, and probably would not opt retroactively to have not been born, she had no intention of bringing into the world a baby who would face the same challenges she did.
I also recall reading about a woman with Down’s syndrome who insisted it should be HER choice (and her boyfriend or husband’s) whether to have a baby. Her mother was trying to get the daughter sterilized, saying that the daughter lacked the capacity to raise the baby, so that would fall on grandma, and she was too old for that, plus, the baby almost certainly would ALSO have Down’s syndrome, making it that much more work to raise. I can’t deny that the mother/potential grandmother has a valid point. People who exercise rights should be prepared to take full responsibility for the consequences, and not dump the consequences on others.
This is a really good post and I will provide a link to it on my blog.
“Horrific defects in communication” my son has autism and is 8 years old. He sees the world in a different way, a much more beautiful and simple way. Horrific? Not neccessary, Defects? Uncomprimisable.
Coming from a catholic who believes that God made everyone in his image, yet you seem to believe that some are lesser.