I don't have a child with Down syndrome. I don't have a family member or friends with Down syndrome. But even though I don't have a close relationship with anyone with Down syndrome, I think a strong case can be made that my life, and yours, has been made better by those who have it.
The topic of Down syndrome has come up quite a bit in the media lately. And to be frank, I'm shocked at how polarized the issue is. But then again, that polarization just a reflection of how lost Western society has become.
The recent public discussion seems, to me, to have been sparked by news regarding how frequently babies with Down syndrome are being aborted. In the United States, roughly two-thirds of children detected to have Down syndrome in the womb are aborted. In Europe, it's even higher, with close to 90% in the UK. In Iceland, it's nearly 100% (80-85% of pregnancies are tested for Down syndrome). This led to headlines claiming that Iceland was close to "eradicating" Down syndrome (they were often changed after social media outcry).
The whole process, including the ghastly headlines, is eerily similar to Hitler's "Final Solution," where a perceived "problem" is simply killed off. And in some ways, this version is even more frightening than the Third Reich. Hitler's vision was enacted by the power of government from a ruling elite. It was a relatively small amount of people making the decisions, and those further down the chain of command fooled themselves into believing they were just following orders. But what's occurring with Down syndrome is even darker.
Unborn babies with Down syndrome are not being put to death by some large governmental apparatus. This isn't Pharaoh in Egypt ordering the children of the Jews to be slain. It isn't Herod doing the same when Jesus was born. This is individual mothers and families, often in consultation with doctors, making this decision. And these quietly isolated choices are, in aggregate, leading to shocking figures like those mentioned above. Those numbers tell you more about a society than the actions of Pharaoh, Herod, or Hitler. They tell you that what is being done, is being done with a broad, overwhelming, and horrifying consensus; a consensus that had gone largely unspoken, until recently.
The conversation about Down syndrome and abortion was taken to a new place thanks to an [editorial]9https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-wouldve-aborted-a-fetus-with-down-syndrome-women-need-that-right/2018/03/09/3aaac364-23d6-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?utm_term=.ddf4aa28ba79) from the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus. It's a difficult piece to read. It made me frustrated. It made me angry. But in the end, it just made me want to cry. It's impossible for me not to feel sad that the author is so broken that she feels the way she does. It's sad that, given the statistics, she appears to be by no means alone in feeling this way. And it's even sadder to think about the influence that widespread, broken way of thinking has on society.
The article is addressing the legality of laws regarding abortion and Downs syndrome testing. But I'm going to set aside that matter of legality because far more concerning is the attitude portrayed.
The Marcus tells how when she was pregnant, the test for Down syndrome was given. And she says that had it come back positive, she would have had an abortion. She claims that aborting such a child is inherent in the reasons the tests are given. She seems unable to fathom the idea that such a test could be used to give a family time to read up, talk with other Down syndrome parents, and prepare for the blessing that's coming there way. But she can't see that side. Instead of seeing the blessing, she only sees a burden.
She says we are free to call her selfish (she is). She talks about Down syndrome being life-altering for the whole family (what new addition to the family isn't?), as though that trumps the life of the baby (it doesn't). But in the end, she reasoned that "That was not the child I wanted." One is left to wonder what the child might have wanted.
As disturbing as Marcus' reasoning is, one can't help but recognize that even she, herself, is not comfortable with it. That's why she had to turn to something other than her reasoning to justify it. She states the Supreme Court's rulings as though that is the equivalent of moral standing. It's not. Governments have a long history of allowing immoral practices (slavery, anyone?). It's a ridiculous argument, and not even one she adheres to when she argues for more gun restriction(hello second amendment).
She also appeals to simple consensus. She states the idea that more than two-thirds of mothers make the same choice she would have as though that alleviates her culpability or makes it morally sound. But when has mere majority ever been a good indicator of morality. Again it easy to point to slavery which, has been seen as morally acceptable by a majority throughout different times in history. Or perhaps this is a flaw with Western society's celebration of democracy. It treats brute majority as a deciding factor, and we seem to have slipped that concept over to morality as well, without even recognizing the consequences of such a dynamic.
But in the end, she pushes the legal claim (does she not understand that legality changes?), while simultaneously claiming that it has no place in government. She closes the argument saying "that these excruciating choices be left to individual women, not to government officials who believe they know best." This is a strange argument coming from someone who, based on an overview of her last few years worth of op-eds, seems to believe government knows best in every other circumstance but this one. (Sadly, in a world where post-modernism has taught us that contradictions don't matter because everything is contradictory, no one seems to care about these kinds of philosophical incongruities.)
Ruth Marcus' article, unsurprisingly, sparked quite a bit of social of media response. Around this time, United States Senator Ben Sasse made an interesting Facebook post, which sparked the idea that I want to examine here. His post shared this year's Gerber baby, a sweet little boy with Down syndrome, as well as some heartwarming stories of teenagers with Down syndrome and high school athletics. The premise of his post was that what all these stories showed us was the innate, God-given, dignity that all these people have. And the reason these stories touch us so much is that that dignity is being acknowledged.
This concept of dignity, and I think Mr. Sasse is correct about the role it plays here, is what struck me. And I began to wonder if this concept plays a more important role in society than we recognize. Because in Western society, we seem to have lost much of our ability to see the dignity in others, particularly those whose opinions differ from ours. If someone isn't on our team, then we act as if they've lost all dignity, or as if they are lesser beings than those aligned with us.
Admittedly, dignity is a difficult concept to grasp and define. It's hard to put our finger on exactly what is. But there is one characteristic of dignity that stands out to me. Dignity is the characteristic in which we are all made equal. When the United States founding fathers wrote "all men are created equal" they were talking about dignity. Obviously, we are different in capability, but that inequality doesn't mean we aren't equal in dignity.
In older stories (and I think it's telling that you won't see it in more recent ones), you might hear a character ask another "have you no dignity?" The reason that was an effective question was that the answer was obviously 'yes,' but whoever was being asked the question wasn't living like it was true. They didn't have enough respect for themselves, even though others knew they were worthy of it. So they debased themselves because they didn't recognize their own dignity. The reason I give this example is that it demonstrates an important role that dignity plays in life: it's self-regulatory.
When we think of ourselves as having dignity, we treat ourselves as something worth caring for. We take better care of ourselves, and we don't let ourselves be drawn down by base desires. That's because things with dignity are things worth treating well.
But the role of dignity is not just limited to ourselves. When we see others as having dignity, we treat them better as well (as a side note, it's harder for others to see you as having dignity if you don't treat yourself that way first - perhaps I'll make a future post on that idea). If others have dignity, then we see them as equal to ourselves, and that alone prevents a lot of conflicts.
But if we don't see others as having the same dignity we do, then more often than not we see ourselves as superior. And, unfortunately, when we see ourselves as superior, that gives us a false sense of justice by which we can harm others. It leads to smaller day-to-day poor treatment of strangers, friends, and even family. And on a large scale, seeing one's self or one's country as superior is always behind the conflicts that lead to war. Why else would war propaganda be so heavily focused on making one side inferior and the other superior? That may be true in terms of ideas, but we often cross the line and try to believe it true in dignity as well.
And this brings me back to the beginning of this post and the idea that Down syndrome babies are being aborted at an astonishing rate. What's not being asked is, are losing something as a society in this rush? By killing these babies, are we missing out on human beings who would improve lives on an individual level and a societal one? Are we losing something even more than just the benefit of the productive members of society that many with Down Syndrome grow up to be? I think the answer is yes.
I think it's incredibly important for us to have reminders that however unequal we may be, we are equal in dignity. Because if we forget that fact, we find ourselves on dangerous ground. And because we are only human, with all the selfishness and foolishness that humanness entails, we need to be reminded of important things. Jesus, when talking about the importance of children, was telling us that they too have dignity (I imagine if He lived on Earth in a time where conditions such as Down syndrome were widespread, he would speak about the importance of those people as well). In no small part because when we treat children with the dignity they deserve, we are more likely to treat others that way as well. A quick way of telling whether a society is worthwhile or not is looking at how it treats its children. We could also consider how society treats it's mentally challenged to be a similar indicator.
People with Down syndrome provide a vital reminder for a society of the dignity we all have. It's easier for us to overlook it with children because we see them as unfinished. But people Down syndrome are one of the most beautiful examples we have of how dignity is part of the human package, no matter what they look like or capabilities that they have. We need that reminder. We need that idea of dignity to be regularly reinforced in our lives. And the more it is, the more we all benefit from it. Our society grows more respectful, peaceful, and caring. Acknowledging the dignity of all humans makes the world a better place. People with Down syndrome help us do that. It's hard to calculate just how incredibly valuable that is. And as more and more decide to abort their Down syndrome babies, we are undoubtedly losing something as a society.
As a final note, I don't want to sound like I'm minimizing the difficulty of raising a child with Down syndrome. Even though I think parents who have a baby with Down syndrome have a moral responsibility to have the child, raise them, and see for their care, I understand that it's probably more difficult then I can imagine. So more than anything else, I want to thank the parents who have gone through that challenge. Because of their hard work, I've been blessed on individual level (I've never had an interaction with someone with Down syndrome where they didn't brighten my day, usually with an infectious smile) and on an societal level, as we all benefit from their powerful reminder of how we all have dignity and should treat each other that way.