Georgia councilman a ‘lightning rod’ in eugenics debate
April 24th, 2008From the Roswell [Georgia] Beacon:
David Tolleson, elected city councilman in Roswell, Georgia, and executive director of the National Down Syndrome Congress, is at the center of a national debate about prenatal diagnosis, eugenics and the rights of people with disabilities.
Tolleson says lessons can be drawn from eugenics-based policies of the past, as health care providers attempt to manage the cost of providing care.
Tolleson’s nemesis is the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, whom he blames for skewing couples’ decisions in favor of abortion and failing to see the richness in disabled kids’ lives. He also believes physicians are afraid of being sued for “wrongful birth” if they don’t stress the negatives. For their part, practitioners of reproductive medicine say they’re obliged to present patients with hard information about the condition and recommend the latest screening technologies, which don’t carry the same risk of miscarriage as amniocentesis. The procedures are recommended as a matter of policy, regardless of a mother’s age.
Listening to Tolleson discuss the plight of the disabled in 21st century America is an echo of reformist, utopian thinking of 100 years ago, when political figures like William Jennings Bryan championed the weak as Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” credo swept the country. Those without a full set of faculties don’t fare well “in a society that equates wealth with worth” he says, one that is consumed with producing “designer children.”
Tolleson, who has a 13-year-old boy with autism, thinks expecting parents who abort based on disability are deluding themselves.
“All parents envision what their children will turn out to be, but very few of them live according to their parents’ dreams,” he says. “Rather than the Hallmark version, your children are formed by the filter of their own lives and their own experiences.”
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