So here we are again. Another day, another Richard Dawkins Twitter
outrage. This time it's about the morality involved in knowingly choosing to
have a child with Down syndrome. Dawkins had the audacity to state his view in
reply to a question that the moral thing to do would be to abort and try again.
Naturally this being Twitter, one does not have the luxury of expounding on
philosophical points of view; however, even before Dawkins' apology and
explanation (you can read it here), it ought to have been a matter of a two second consideration to be
able to imagine the line of thinking. I’ll put forward mine quickly before
moving on to the main point of this post.
At the point at which a mother would discover through testing that
her offspring has Down syndrome, the offspring would not be remotely close to
the blurry lines of personhood. Even if it was one's determination to attribute
personhood at this stage, it's hardly important beyond the realm of religiously
conjured ethics anyway, and if that’s your case then your problems go deeper
than what’s addressed here. What matters in the real world is suffering. At the
time of an abortion, a foetus would not have the capacity to suffer. It would
not have a conception of suffering even if it could. It would have no
historicity to protect. And it would have no capacity for any preference on the
matter whatsoever. For that reason, when a mother learns that her offspring has
the incorrect number of chromosomes (in this case, 21), from that point in time
she has a choice. Assuming she wants a baby, should she bring a new life into
the world with severe disabilities, or should she bring a new life into the
world without disabilities? Remember, the starting point of the dilemma is at
the point of knowing the diagnosis, assuming the matter of concern is the
welfare of the potential child. The investment made either physically or
emotionally before that point is irrelevant to that concern and only has a part
to play in the case of total selfishness in the agenda of the mother, e.g. “I
want a child now”. Again, the choice is simple, should she choose to have disabled baby, or
choose to have a fully able baby? If one accept that the more moral action is
to give her offspring the best possible chance at a long and healthy life to
the fullest of human potential, then one also would have to accept that the
more moral choice would be to abort. The extent of the likely scale of
disability that comes with Down syndrome is not the determining factor; it
merely amplifies the extent of the moral case. For the same reason, the fact
that some people with Down syndrome lead relatively able lives (Hu Yizhou from the China Disabled Peoples Performing Art Troupe, being one example) ought not to be
a factor in the decision. This is not about accepting or valuing disabled people, this is about not actively choosing to create disability in the first place.
With that two second thought process out of the way, it is clear
that if one’s morality is based on causing the least amount of suffering, then
the tweet from Richard Dawkins would indeed qualify as true (in fact, I don't believe
there is such a thing as a true moral statement, but that’s a discussion for
another time). Thankfully, for those of us who would rather less suffering, it
would appear that most women in that situation would make a similar judgement
because they do indeed tend to abort and try again, thus causing less suffering
than they would be likely to otherwise.
Now on to the irritating point of all this.
What then proceeded to occur on Twitter and, of course, on
Facebook, was the customary hysteria. In Dawkins' apology, he categorised the
main types of responses and their motivations (I advise you to double check
what they were so I don't have to repeat them) but there is one group that he
appeared to leave out - explicitly at least - and it is the one group that I
seem to notice crawling out from their intellectually dingy holes every time
something of this nature happens. First we get the statement of fact or
reasonable judgement from Dawkins (this includes the cause of the last outrage
when the swine had the raw nerve to suggest that saying one thing is worse than
another thing within a category does not mean that one condones either), then we
get the outrage from those who suddenly find themselves in the uncomfortable
position of having to deal with reality, and then, as certain as day-break, we
get the enemies of reason, in their vast hordes, leaping up excitedly, ready to
re-grind their axes, exclaiming, "See! I told you Dawkins is a bastard
(therefore everything he says is void, evidence or not)!" These people
don't care whether or not the statement is true, whether it's supported by
reason, whether there's an array of evidence behind it, all they care about is
scoring a propaganda point for their cause. Their cause is nearly always
irrational, frequently religious, and very often sinister.
Those people, together with the groups identified by Dawkins, make
up the vast majority of the internet outrage. They are all expected. They are
an irritation, but even they are not what concerns me most. I am concerned more
by those who claim to happen to agree with Dawkins, but then align against him
and even the point at hand, because they believe they will score some brownie points
by criticising the directness of his method. If you agree with the statement
but then join in with the ad hominem against it, then you are an intellectual
coward. By saying that you're an atheist, for example, but that you don't
support the behaviour of atheists who don't capitulate to religious censorship,
then you're an intellectual coward. You do not get any points for trying to
present an image of yourself to others as someone special because you have the
decency to keep your thoughts to yourself, truth be damned. You certainly do
not get any points for desiring to be so liberal that you will avoid facts and
reason, and even seek to socially censor both, just in case it steps on the
toes of one group or another that doesn't happen to react kindly to facts and
reason. That makes you... no, not a nicer person... an intellectual coward.
Furthermore, that is also precisely what you become when you claim that someone
ought to keep their mouth shut on an issue with which you assume they have no
personal experience. It is censorship, it’s fallacious, and it's the product of
a weak and feeble mind.
