Disability on Display

If nothing else, Sara Palin's nomination as Republican VP candidate has brought matters of disabled children to the forefront in this political season. Palin and her husband have welcomed a child with Down's Syndrome into their family.

Unfortunately not all are willing to accept children as they are rather than as they might be. Wesley Smith at SHS blog has a disturbing post about a mother who murdered her disabled child.

Joanne Hill, 32, planned the murder after her husband refused to allow their daughter, Naomi, to be adopted, it was alleged.

A jury heard how Mrs Hill struggled to cope caring for the youngster, who suffered with cerebral palsy. She wore callipers to help her walk and had poor hearing.

Opening the case for the prosecution Michael Chambers QC told Chester Crown Court that Mrs Hill was "ashamed and embarrassed" of her daughter's condition and murdered her in a "determined and planned act".

"Joanne Hill could not come to terms with the fact that her daughter Naomi was disabled," he said.

"Instead of seeking help from the social services, she quite deliberately and consciously acted to kill Naomi."

Mrs Hill allegedly planned the murder for the afternoon of November 26 last year knowing her husband Simon would not be home until 5.30pm.

After picking up Naomi from the childminder she drove them to the family home in Deeside, Flintshire, north Wales, poured herself a glass of wine then ran a bath.

Mr Chambers said: "When the bath was full she told Naomi she was having a bath, but Naomi didn't want one. The defendant carried her upstairs and undressed her.

"The defendant put her in the bath and drowned her by holding her head under the water for a long time until she was dead."

Smith writes:

Princeton University's Peter Singer and some other bioethicists argue that killing unwanted babies is perfectly fine since babies aren't persons. Babies born with disabilities and terminal illnesses are already being subjected to infanticide in the Netherlands--acts of murder under Dutch law that go unpunished, and which have been supported by prestigious medical and bioethics journals such as in an article published in the prestigious Hastings Center Report. Here in America, 90% of fetuses testing with genetic anomalies such as Down or dwarfism are not allowed to be born--a eugenics action sometimes encouraged by doctors and genetic counselors. In Canada, Robert Latimer murders his daughter Tracy because she had cerebral palsy and is embraced by many there as a loving and compassionate father. Meanwhile, some people savage the Palins because they are affronted by Trig's presence in the world and a Canadian medical official worries that it could mean more parents deciding not to abort their disabled babies.

We as physicians have wonderful opportunity to affirm life from conception until natural death. Our patients respect us and we can influence the debate. Our actions and words are noted. Set the example and frame the debate in a life affirming way.

Technorati Tags: Down's Syndrome,disability,ethanasia,suffering,Catholic,physician,cerebral palsy,infanticide

Eugenics: Alive and Well

There was a time before Hitler and the Nazis euthanized the mentally retarded and the disabled in Germany when prominent Americans advocated draconian policies for similar unfortunates in the United States. No less the jurist than Oliver Wendell Holmes advocated forced sterilization of disabled in this country. Although eugenics was eventually turned back at the time, it seems to be making a resurgence in mainstream academic circles. An excellent editorial details the risks to the disabled in this country today.

This month marked the 80th anniversary of the disgraceful Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell, which upheld Virginia's involuntary sterilization laws. In his majority opinion, Holmes declared: "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

Though society may be inclined to regard Holmes's detestable opinion in Buck v. Bell as a relic of a time past, eerie similarities exist in contemporary remarks of the well-respected.

Justifying the sterilization of "genetically unfit" individuals, Holmes wrote that Carrie Buck was "the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring."

Some 72 years later, renowned embryologist Bob Edwards said, "Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children."

In recent years, Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has said, "It does not seem quite wise to increase any further draining of limited resources by increasing the number of children with impairments."

In January, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists urged all women regardless of age to undergo prenatal screening for Down syndrome, aware of statistics that greater than 85 percent of pregnancies diagnosed with Down syndrome end in abortion.

Last fall, Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists argued for "active euthanasia" of significantly disabled newborns to spare parents emotional and financial burden.

Two years earlier, the Groningen Protocol emerged in the Netherlands; it proposed selection criteria for euthanizing babies and children with disabilities.

Tell the little girls above that one of them is unworthy of life. Tell them that only those deemed "unimpaired" deserve the protection and resources of society. Go ahead. Tell them.

The depravity of men, many of whom enjoy respect of their social and academic peers, is truly unlimited when there is no recognition of the dignity each human life enjoys because of being...well, human, and created in the image of God himself.

Cross-posted at www.eyehackerblog.com.