Is a Down syndrome baby an ethical dilemma or a high calling? It depends on your worldview

Recently the high priest of all things atheist, Richard Dawkins, found himself in a bit of a hole, one entirely of his own making. He had received a message from a lady on Twitter who claimed that she would be faced with a “real ethical dilemma” if she found out that she was pregnant with a Down syndrome baby. This was no such ethical dilemma for Dawkins, who replied on his Twitter account with all the subtlety and charm of a rhinoceros in a library: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”

A predictable backlash followed, which appears to have taken him by surprise, not because he wasn’t aware that some people might have a problem with what he wrote, but rather because he apparently didn’t realize how Twitter works.

According to an article posted on his website a few days later, he seems to have believed that his reply would only be seen by the few people who followed both him and the lady he was responding to. But, of course, Twitter doesn’t work like that, and the tweet was seen by his million or so followers.

So although he still doesn’t know how the universe came into existence or have a plausible explanation for abiogenesis, at least he now knows why people have been referring to Twitter as “social media” and not “private correspondence” these past few years!

Anyway, the backlash came and, according to Dawkins, he received “fireballs of hatred” and accusations of “Nazism, vile, monstrous fascistic callousness.” Probably he did indeed receive some pretty nasty stuff, but he goes on to tar his opponents with a pretty broad brush:

The haters came from various directions:

1. Those who are against abortion under any circumstances.
2. Those who thought I was bossily telling a woman what to do rather than let her choose.
3. Those who thought I was advocating a kind of mob rule.
4. Those who thought I was advocating a eugenic policy and who therefore compared me to Hitler.
5. Those who took offense because they know and love a person with Down syndrome.

Unless I am reading him wrong, it seems that he defines anyone who fits into one of these categories as, axiomatically, a “hater.” Now I guess it’s possible that all the people who tweeted to oppose his views are indeed “haters,” but that seems unlikely. For example, one mother with a Down syndrome child wrote, “I would fight until my last breath for the life of my son. No dilemma.” That sounds rather more like love than hate, wouldn’t you say?

Anyway, he did at least apologize on his website for having started a “new feeding frenzy,” and for “using abbreviated phraseology which caused so much upset.” But having begun to climb up out of his hole, he unfortunately then decided to again start digging furiously, this time by producing an explanation of what he would have said, had Twitter not limited him to 140 characters:

Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it’s worth, my own choice would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what the great majority of women, in America and especially in Europe, actually do. I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare. I agree that that personal opinion is contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn. In any case, you would probably be condemning yourself as a mother (or yourselves as a couple) to a lifetime of caring for an adult with the needs of a child. Your child would probably have a short life expectancy but, if she did outlive you, you would have the worry of who would care for her after you are gone. No wonder most people choose abortion when offered the choice. Having said that, the choice would be entirely yours and I would never dream of trying to impose my views on you or anyone else.

There are so many things in this statement, as well as his original tweet, that could and should be scrutinized, but I will confine myself to the points I have highlighted:

1. In both the original tweet and the clarification, the themes of morality and immorality are very prevalent. Yet this is the same man who once wrote: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Certainly his remarks about Down syndrome babies are remarkably consistent with his view of blind pitiless indifference, but where does he get all this talk of morality and immorality from? I am aware that he tries to wriggle out of this inconsistency by saying that morality has evolved, but such sleight of hand ought not to get past a 3-year-old. A universe which has, at bottom, no good and no evil, and where everything is eventually annihilated, has as much chance of having morality in it as a universe that has no leprechauns in it has of having leprechauns. Trying to inject morality and immorality into a universe you have explicitly stated doesn’t possess these traits is a bit like stating categorically that you’ve got nothing in your bank account, before going on to talk about what you’ve got in your bank account.

2. Having somehow magically pulled morality out of his own amorality hat, he then tells us what this consists of: “a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering …”

Frankly, there are two huge assumptions in this statement. The first of these is that a child born with Down syndrome cannot increase the sum of happiness. This assumes either that people with Down syndrome are bound to be unhappy, or that their parents are bound to be unhappy, or possibly both. But is this really the case? According to a study published in 2011 by the American Journal of Medical Genetics, 79 percent of parents with a Down syndrome child report that their outlook on life was more positive because of their child; 94 percent of siblings report feelings of pride about their sibling with Down syndrome; and 99 percent of people with Down syndrome feel happy with their lives. So all in all, it sounds as if the sum of human happiness actually increases, not decreases, in families with a Down syndrome child.

The other major assumption he makes, is that parents who abort their Down syndrome child are going to increase their own happiness. Again, this comes loaded with its own set of highly questionable assumptions, such as the idea that there will be no psychological repercussions, and the implicit idea that a Down syndrome child will ruin your happiness by restricting your ability to do whatever you want. Needless to say, these are remarkably materialist assumptions which do not appear to accord very much with the human condition.

3. His argument of morality based on a desire to increase the sum of human happiness and reduce suffering sounds very sweet, but in reality it is utilitarian to the core and has many times led to dreadful atrocities being carried out in the name of humanitarianism. From euthanasia of old people, to dropping bombs on nations in order to bring them “liberty”, the desire to replace the Ten Commandments with a morality which consists purely of increasing the sum of happiness and reducing suffering often leads to tragic consequences. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say.

4. Dawkins then comes out with this jaw dropper: “The decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare.” Well, since we can’t ask the aborted children what they think, I suppose we should go and ask the 99 percent of Down syndrome people who said they are happy with their lives whether they consider their mothers to be immoral for “deliberately” giving birth to them. My guess is that even the 1 percent who don’t feel happy would balk at accusing their mothers of immorality for not killing them.

5. Finally, there is this: “… you would probably be condemning yourself as a mother (or yourselves as a couple) to a lifetime of caring for an adult with the needs of a child.” This is just sad. It is Nietzsche all over again. Is there any higher and nobler calling than for a parent with a disabled child sacrificing themselves to care for them? Is there anything more beautiful than seeing someone devote themselves to the care of ones who cannot care for themselves? In the materialist construct that Dawkins espouses, it is the height of folly—even immoral. But thankfully, this is not the universe in which we live. Rather we live in a universe where sacrifice for another is the highest value of all.

Rob Slane lives with his wife and five home-educated children in Salisbury, England. He is the author of The God Reality: A Critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, contributes to the Canadian magazine Reformed Perspective, and blogs on cultural issues from a Biblical perspective at www.theblogmire.com.