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Home > My Essays > Who Is to Survive Our Eugenic Slection?

In recent years, more and more has become possible in prenatally testing for genetic diseases such as Down Syndrome and Spina Bifida. This has a positive side - for some conditions, foetal treatment is available. But in most circumstances, the only option to "treat" the handicapped foetus is by aborting it. Many countries, where abortion is restricted, do have specific clauses for foetal deformity. And even a country like the United Kingdom, where abortions in general are legal up to the 24th week gestation, removed this limit for aborting foetuses if there's a risk of disability. Are we heading towards an eugenic society, where only the healthy (whatever that may be) can live?

Women aren't forced to abort their handicapped foetuses. Most laws that remove restrictions for abortion of deformed foetuses, are not directly aimed at the improvement of the human race. Ann Furedi, in her article "Abortion for Fetal Abnormality: Ethical Issues", uses this argument to claim that the British law isn't eugenic. However, now that disabilities can be prevented through elimination of the people who have them before they are born, there is increasing pressure from the medical profession and society at large on women to abort their handicapped foetuses. Sometimes, women are even given prenatal diagnostic tests without their consent and doctors may counsel a pregnant woman to have an abortion for her disabled foetus. See the article "Disabled Person's Perspective on Eugenic Abortion" (PDF-file) for more information and statistics. And while this may not be classifiable as eugenic - in that there is no programme that systematically eliminates disabled foetuses -, it is a step in the direction.

People may claim that abortions should be legal and that, as a result, prenatally eliminating foetuses with disabilities is not wrong. However, it unfortunately doesn't end here. Philosophers such as Peter Singer (a well-known Princeton University professor) and John Harris (a British government official on bioethics) have argued that, when the child is severely disabled, infanticide is acceptable. There have been serious proposals to allow euthanasia on handicapped infants, and, recently, the University Hospital of Groningen (Netherlands) was given permission to kill children under age twelve through euthanasia if they "suffered unbearably" or in "rare cases of incurable disease". Who decides whether these children suffer unbearbly? They cannot be the children, and sometimes, they aren't the parents, either. Wesley J. Smith has written an excellent essay, entitled "Now They Want to Euthanize Children". Is this eugenics? Some Catholic ethicists say that The distance between the Dutch and Nazi practices of euthanasia has disappeared, hence implying that the protocol in Groningen is similar to Nazi eugenics. While I don't agree - we don't have a government programme encouraging doctors to eliminate "life unworthy of life" -, I think that what is happening here - and eveyrwhere, for Americans accusing the Netherlands of being nazi seem to forget about Jack Kevorkian -, does seriously devalue respect for other human beings' lives, and, this treatment having been accepted, I begin to become worried about what will be the next step? Women are pressured to abort their deformed foetuses, and if they're nevertheless born, and whoever it may be decides that they suffer unbearably, infanticide can be performed. Maybe, in the near future, all disability can be eliminated through abortion or euthanasia. I begin to wonder who will survive society's pursuit of perfection.