Where The Atlantic went wrong in its report on Down syndrome
In The Atlantic’s article “The Last Children of Down Syndrome,” Sarah Zhang reports that over 95 percent of Danish pregnancies diagnosed with Down syndrome end in abortion. Interviewing both women who have chosen to abort their children and to keep them, Zhang refuses to condemn abortion. Taking a microscopic look at selective abortion, she does not shy away from discussing the ethical dilemmas and even addresses the historically eugenic laws in Denmark. Yet, Zhang still attempts to portray the ethical choice of life or selective abortion as personal, subjective to individual circumstance.
Many criticize Zhang’s neutrality towards the eugenic culture of aborting children found to have Down syndrome through prenatal testing. Micaiah Bilger from LifeNews, points out “Abortion… has become a modern means of eugenics, the targeting of “less fit” human beings for extermination.” Evita Duffy, the sister of a Down syndrome child, criticizes Zhang for not calling these selective abortions what they are — “No judgment is the central theme of this story, which doesn’t do much for a population that is being exterminated.” She goes on to write “to create sympathy and understanding for eugenics and a modern-day genocide…Zhang tries to “humanize” the pro-life and pro-abortion views. That might seem fair on the surface, but there is nothing “humane” about the pro-eugenics side of the argument.” These authors point out the glaring truth that Zhang refused to. But where is this disregard for the dignity of the human person coming from? How have cultures come to accept eugenics as “humane”?
JD Flynn, the parent of two Down syndrome children, criticized Zhang and wrote that people with disabilities only help us realize we are all in need of others. He said “[t]hey [his children] have taught me that independence is a myth and interdependence a strength.” Here Flynn starts to scratch the surface of the problem, one that has led to an inexcusable, disregard for the value of human life— the idea that man is an autonomous individualistic being.
In his most recent book What It Means to Be Human, University of Notre Dame professor O. Carter Snead J.D. criticize the concept of “expressive individualism” which permeates America and most modern societies today. He says that, by virtue of their very nature, humans are dependent on “networks of uncalculated giving and graceful receiving.” He claims we are all born into unchosen vulnerability and unchosen obligations. Decades ago, Pope St. John Paul II pointed out in the Theology of the Body, that only by relationship does a human person come to know him- or herself.
Under the guise of free choice, people are able to continue to assume their autonomy and eliminate those whose lives so easily prove otherwise. The ideology that justifies abortion lacks an understanding of who the human person is, in his or her very nature.
People with Down syndrome are more obviously dependent on their families and communities than people without apparent disabilities. They help us realize our interdependent human nature and are a help to our society. Kurt Kondrich, known as a “DADvocate” for children with Down syndrome like his daughter Chloe and a previous police officer, holds that people with Down syndrome can serve as “bright light[s]” to our culture. He sees their “unconditional love, kindness, and empathy” as more than a generous exchange with society. Kondrich reports: “I never recall an individual with Down syndrome being arrested or sought after for committing a crime, and I have never seen a news story of a person with Down syndrome involved in a heinous act.” Finally, he warns “when we as a society fail to defend and protect our most vulnerable and defenseless citizens then we as a society are destined to fail.”
The idea that one’s life is of autonomous being is hugely problematic and the rippled effect devastating. By realizing interdependence as part of human nature and not a weakness — that “embodied vulnerability” is a good rather than an evil to be avoided — may we come to live more fully and end the attacks on human life.
As Mother Teresa of Kolkata so aptly put it, “if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other— that man, that woman, that child is my brother or my sister.”
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