From DoubleX magazine (a spinoff of Slate, property of the Washington Post Company):

Ayelet Waldman, author of ‘Bad Mother,’ and Elizabeth Weil, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, conduct a five-part conversation about late-term abortions in the wake of George Tiller’s death. Both women have had late-term abortions following diagnoses of fetal abnormalities. (Waldman’s diagnosis was an unspecified genetic abnormality with an “unknowable” prognosis; Weil’s was a cytomegalovirus.)

From Waldman, in part 5:

When NPR was considering running a piece by me about my abortion, they told me that they needed balance, and I wondered, am I going to end up in a debate over whether people with Down’s Syndrome deserve to be born, to live?

A commenter on my first post asks that very question. The answer makes me incredibly uncomfortable. No one likes to think of herself as a proponent of a contemporary form of eugenics. And yet, in some cobwebby corner of my mind, I fear that this is what I am saying. I absolutely believe that it’s fine to abort a mentally retarded baby. I have no doubt in my mind that I would do the same thing again. I’d go to any legal length to defend another woman’s right to do the same. But then aren’t I simply saying that people with developmental disabilities are better off dead? Or, perhaps more accurately, that we as a society are better off without them?

Now I’ve got a knot in my belly. Where’s that think tank full of bioethicists when you need them?

From Weil, in part 3:

The tough zone starts for me with the horrible question of which babies – not to mince words – are too fucked up, which babies have defects so serious we think it’s OK to decide they can’t live? What do you think about a baby with cystic fibrosis? What about a blind or a deaf one? We all know great people born in horrible bodies. Should we be allowed to say, no thanks, I’d rather try again for a better-formed kid?

…  I think part of the public discussion we need to have is about the link between abortion and prenatal testing. Why are we doing all this testing if we don’t condone women acting on the results?

… here’s the tough part again: Do we really think aborting all future Down babies amount[s] to “curing” a disease?

Full text can be found at:

Part One: ‘Kansas stories; What late-term abortions are really like’

Part Two: ‘Ayelet Waldman and Elizabeth Weil: The truth about late-term abortions’

Part Three: Ayelet Waldman and Elizabeth Weil: ‘When is abortion not OK?’

Part Four: “Ayelet Waldman: The abortion restrictions I’d accept”

Part Five: ‘Are we saying society would be better off without Down’s syndrome babies?’

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik cites the historic Buck vs. Bell case to endorse Sonia Sotomayor’s claim that a judge’s ethnic and socioeconomic background could enhance their interpretation of the law and ability to empathize. The 1927 case upheld a Virginia law allowing the forced sterilization of people deemed “defectives” and “manifestly unfit.”

Hiltzik says Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Harvard-educated son of an eminent Boston physician, was reflecting his elite upbringing and the culture of the establishment when he led the court in endorsing the pseudo-science of eugenics in the Buck decision. In doing so, Hiltzik says, Holmes produced one of the most infamous sentences in the annals of the court: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

An excerpt:

Might the outcome of Buck vs. Bell have been different were the court not monolithic? [Historian William E. Leuchtenburg] thinks so.

“It’s hard to believe that one or two women justices might not have made a difference,” he told me from his home near the University of North Carolina, where he is a professor emeritus. “They might have made the other justices confront what was at issue.”

… But to deny that the character and experience of judges helps to make law is foolish. Virginia sterilized more than 7,500 men and women before ceasing the practice in 1979 — second only to California, where 20,000 operations were performed. Nationwide, the toll was 60,000. How many would have been saved, one wonders, had the court showed a little “empathy”?

See previous posts on eugenic sterilization, including:

• Book examines high court support for sterilization of ‘unfit’
• Exhibit explores war on ‘genetically unfit’

See also: State issues apology for policy of sterilization — Los Angeles Times

Newsweek magazine profiles Ari Ne’eman, the 21-year-year-old founder of the nonprofit Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. Ne’eman is a master networker who wants to convince the world that autism is not a medical mystery that needs to be cured, but rather a type of “neurodiversity” that should be accepted by society.

Ne’eman, who has Asperger’s syndrome, is troubled by the ethical implications of genetic research into autism. He fears that a prenatal test for autism could lead to “eugenic elimination,” which would mean people like him might cease to exist. Autism is not a fatal condition, he says. Should people without the disorder be allowed to judge the quality of life of someone who has it?

“That is a message that the world doesn’t want us here,” says Ne’eman, “and it devalues our lives.”

The prospect of no more Ari Ne’emans – whether you agree with him or not – is haunting. Termination of fetuses with Down syndrome is routine today; given the fear that autism inspires in parents, why wouldn’t it follow? And what would our world be like without autism?

… One of Ne’eman’s latest efforts is a new public-service announcement called “No Myths,” which he helped create with the Dan Marino Foundation, a funder of autism research. In it, Ne’eman appears in a red sweater and tie along with others on the spectrum, including a man who speaks through a communication device. “Our futures have not been stolen,” Ne’eman says. “Our lives are not tragedies.” The message is clear: We stand before you. Don’t make us go away.

Related posts here and here.

(Photo of Ari Ne’eman from ‘No Myths’ PSA)

From the New York Times:

Before they began the mass murder of Jews, the Nazis sterilized or killed hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities, who were considered mentally or physically defective. The intensive war against the “genetically unfit” is explored in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Museum that is on display at Stony Brook University in New York through June 12.

One film shows people in asylums, while a voiceover says that the money spent on them could be better used elsewhere. A wall of photographs focuses on 8 of the 5,000 children killed by injection or starvation.

“The goal of human enhancement and ‘perfectibility’ is still alive,” said Stephen G. Post, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook …

“We have to be very careful how far we want to go … I can imagine enhanced human beings who think quicker and run quicker, but if they’re self-centered, nasty, brutal and vicious, what have we achieved?”

Earlier posts here and here.

(Photo from New York Times)

From the AP/Seattle Times, Winston-Salem Journal:

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue has proposed spending $250,000 from her budget to set up a foundation aimed at providing justice and compensation for the victims of the state’s eugenic sterilization program.

The proposal falls short of proposing to pay actual reparations to the 2,800 surviving victims of North Carolina’s 45-year sterilization program. Legislators who have been pushing the funding for years say Perdue’s proposal is a start.

North Carolina was one of more than two dozen states that ran programs of forced eugenic sterilization. The programs targeted women who were considered  — sometimes inaccurately — to be mentally deficient or genetically inferior. From 1929 until 1974, more than 7,600 people were forcibly sterilized under North Carolina’s program.

See also:

Bill would open state hospital death records – Charlotte Observer

See earlier posts here.

(Photo from Winston-Salem Journal)

Questions raised: Why aren’t they regulated?

From the Washington Post:

A new generation of prenatal tests for Down syndrome is due to hit the market soon, promising a safer way to detect an extra fetal chromosome earlier in a woman’s pregnancy. But the tests are renewing questions. Among them: Why don’t regulators require such tests to be accurate before allowing them to be offered to the public?

At the same time, abortion foes and disability rights advocates fear that the new tests will prompt more terminations. Advocates also worry that the tests will encourage discrimination against people with Down syndrome and their families.

“We have a history in this country of a eugenics movement where people tried to eliminate certain people from the gene pool,” said Andrew J. Imparato of the American Association of People With Disabilities. “People could start wondering, ‘How did you get born?’ “

Writing in the [UK] Guardian, Simon Baron-Cohen says headline writers were wrong when they linked his recent research with speculation about prenatal screening for autism. Baron-Cohen says his study, about the correlation between levels of fetal testosterone (FT) and autistic traits, aimed only to examine the causes of individual differences in children.

An excerpt:

… the headlines and photo captions have led to emails from hundreds of worried parents of children with autism erroneously believing that our research is being conducted with a view to wanting to terminate children with autism in the womb — a nasty and sinister example of eugenics that my co-authors and I oppose.

… For the record, on prenatal screening, I believe that if there was a test for autism (and there is none yet), while some parents may exercise their legal right to opt for a termination, I am not in favor of discriminating against a fetus purely because it might develop the condition.

Earlier posts here and here and here.