May 20, 2007
In its preamble, the recently unveiled U.N. Convention on the
Rights of Persons With Disabilities recognizes "the inherent
dignity and worth and equal and inalienable rights of all members
of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and
peace in the world."
We wonder what Oliver Wendell Holmes would have said about that.
This month marked the 80th anniversary of the disgraceful Supreme
Court decision in Buck v. Bell, which upheld Virginia's
involuntary sterilization laws. In his majority opinion, Holmes
declared: "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting
to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve
for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly
unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of
imbeciles is enough."
Although eugenics was eventually dismissed as "junk science," it
didn't happen before states authorized more than 60,000 forcible
sterilizations and segregated, institutionalized, and denied
marriage and parental rights to those deemed "genetically unfit."
Though society may be inclined to regard Holmes's detestable
opinion in Buck v. Bell as a relic of a time past, eerie
similarities exist in contemporary remarks of the well-respected.
Justifying the sterilization of "genetically unfit" individuals,
Holmes wrote that Carrie Buck was "the probable potential parent
of socially inadequate offspring."
Some 72 years later, renowned embryologist Bob Edwards said, "Soon
it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the
heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we
have to consider the quality of our children."
Not long ago, an embryo entrepreneur boasted on her business's Web
site, "In the process of screening donors, we select only those
that have clean medical backgrounds. . . . The embryos that are
available have all been medically 'graded,' so that the recipient
family knows the quality of the embryos that they will be
implanting."
In the past, eugenicists emphasized the "burden" of disability.
Holmes wrote that individuals with disabilities "sap the strength
of the State."
In recent years, Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at
Princeton University, has said, "It does not seem quite wise to
increase any further draining of limited resources by increasing
the number of children with impairments."
In January, the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists urged all women regardless of age to undergo
prenatal screening for Down syndrome, aware of statistics that
greater than 85 percent of pregnancies diagnosed with Down
syndrome end in abortion.
Several states recognize life with a disability as an injury in
"wrongful life" lawsuits, and certain judges who hear these cases
agree that in some instances, selective abortions help answer a
greater policy concern in curbing health-care expenditures.
Last fall, Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists argued for "active euthanasia" of significantly
disabled newborns to spare parents emotional and financial burden.
Two years earlier, the Groningen Protocol emerged in the
Netherlands; it proposed selection criteria for euthanizing babies
and children with disabilities.
And across the United States, "futile care" policies have required
that the most vulnerable give up their hospital beds -- and lives
-- for those with more "potential."
In stark contrast to words such as "defective," "burdensome" and
"futile" are the words of civil rights laws that liberate and
defend.
The Americans with Disabilities Act recognizes disability as a
natural part of the human experience that in no way should limit
an individual's ability to participate fully in all aspects of
society. The U.N. convention reaffirms that people with
disabilities have both a right to life and a right to the
effective enjoyment of that life on an equal basis with others.
On this 80th anniversary of Buck, let's not foolishly believe that
victims of eugenics are an artifact of history. So long as we
speak in terms of good genes and bad genes, recognize a life with
a disability as an injury, and allow health policies to value some
lives over others, we continue to create human rights violations
every day.
