A tenured professor at an Ivy League school who defends murder and genocide? No, it can’t be, you say. Probably he said or wrote something that was taken out of context. Well, let’s let Peter Singer, the new chair of bioethics at Princeton University, speak for himself:
“Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons.” • “A period of 28 days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others.” • “It does not seem wise to add to the burden on limited resources by increasing the number of severely disabled children.” • Parents of kids born with Down’s syndrome, spina bifida and other diseases have the right to decide if “the infant’s life will be so miserable or so devoid of minimal satisfaction that it would be inhumane or futile to prolong life.”
He’s a reasonable and compassionate guy, his supporters tell us, one of the brightest ethicists on the planet. He might be all that. But Singer is also a lot like suicide-doctor Jack Kevorkian. He’s a moral monster, the embodiment of the “inner logic” of the society we’re in danger of becoming.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it seemed so reasonable, so compassionate even, to allow abortion in limited cases. The smartest of our ethicists reasoned: Wouldn’t you want that option if you knew the baby you were expecting would be born with painful, crippling “defects”?
But reason and compassion detached from the truth about what really happens in abortion—namely, that some people decide that other people aren’t worthy or aren’t entitled to be born—fast become a murderous logic. It’s proven hard, in practice, to decide to kill only some people some of the time. Where do you draw the line?
The logic of “early” abortion for “hard cases” slid easily into the logic of abortion in any case at any time. The logic of abortion slid easily into the logic of euthanasia. If you can spare a handicapped baby a life of suffering through abortion, why wouldn’t you end the misery of a sick loved one?
Exactly, Singer says. Families should be allowed to kill their loved ones, even if their loved ones can’t decide for themselves, even if they lack “the capacity to understand the choice between continued existence or nonexistence.”
It all seems so reasonable, so compassionate. Isn’t it an exaggeration to call it murder and genocide? But that’s the problem with the logic of abortion. It makes it hard to think straight. We start calling something “good” if the people who do it have reasonable and compassionate intentions.
Singer is proposing a world where healthy people have the power to decide that people with disabilities and serious illnesses aren’t persons and don’t get to live. Substitute into that equation “Aryans” and “Jews,” or “whites” and “blacks,” and you see the genocide in this logic. Add in his arguments about increasing the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and it starts to make sense to a lot of people in a cost-conscious society where everybody fears there won’t be enough resources to go around.
At one time, Western culture would’ve branded Peter Singer a lunatic, maybe even a criminal. Now, Princeton has given him a platform to mold the best and the brightest, tomorrow’s leaders, in his own moral image. He’s become a moral monster with tenure.
Originally published in Our Sunday Visitor (October 3, 1999)
© David Scott, 2009. All rights reserved.
