This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education featured an excerpt from Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s new book, Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening. In the excerpt, Cowan advocates for the abortion of children found through prenatal genetic testing to have conditions like Down Syndrome. Anyone who knows me will know I vehemently disagree with her position on several levels. I submitted the following as a Letter to the Editor of The Chronicle:

To the Editor:

Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s “Medical Genetics is Not Eugenics: Parents shouldn’t feel guilty about prenatal screening” (Chronicle Review, 5/16/08) rejects classic eugenics with its lofty goal of “improvement of the race” and instead advocates a new micro-eugenics with a smaller, more selfish chief goal: protecting the comfort and independence of the parents of children prenatally diagnosed with genetic abnormalities by ending the life of the child.

Dr. Cowan eagerly advocates 21st century genetic testing, prenatal diagnosis, and pregnancy termination, yet clings to an outdated and discriminatory early 20th century view of those with disabilities, calling those with Down Syndrome “chronically dependent” and “suffering.”
I’d like Dr. Cowan to meet Karen Gaffney, the remarkable woman with Down Syndrome who recently swam the nine miles across Lake Tahoe. And I’d like her to meet Sujeet Desai, a musician who plays six instruments, and his wife Carrie Bergeron, a community college graduate and national speaker; both have Down Syndrome. And I’d like her to meet my son Caedon, age 2, who experiences advantages in medical treatment, developmental therapies, and educational inclusion that were unavailable to children with Down Syndrome even a decade ago. We’ve yet to see what great things Caedon and others of his generation will contribute to society given these new advantages.

Far removed from the forced institutionalization of earlier generations, many people with disabilities now live meaningful and increasingly independent lives. Life is indeed challenging for those with Down Syndrome and other genetic abnormalities and for their families, and I am thankful for the advances that allow this increased achievement and independence. Further, I welcome additional advances in medical genetics that will cure or reduce the severity of these abnormalities.

We should all reject Dr. Cowan’s outdated and discriminatory view that death is the appropriate outcome for those with prenatally diagnosed genetic abnormalities.

UPDATE: The Chronicle has published my letter in its June 13 issue and included this response from Dr. Cowan:

Brian Baute accuses me of having the “outdated and discriminatory view that death is the appropriate outcome for those with prenatally diagnosed genetic abnormalities,” which is neither what I said nor what I believe; in some ways, it is the precise opposite. I applaud those parents who, like Mr. Baute, have chosen to take on the extra burden not only of raising but also of advocating for a disabled child — but I also applaud those parents who have made the equally caring decision that they do not have the financial or emotional resources to do the same thing.

Medical genetics is not eugenics, I argue in my new book, Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening, precisely because both sets of choices are available to parents today. Mr. Baute’s letter provides additional evidence that my argument is correct. If eugenicists were in power, as they were in Nazi Germany and have been in many American states, Caedon and his parents would all be regarded as unfit and would be subject to sterilization or even killing by state mandate, as people who should neither reproduce nor be supported with social resources.

Instead, our society is, as Mr. Baute explains, trying to help parents like him to help children like Caedon reach their full potential. But — and this is crucial — it is equally supporting of those parents who make different reproductive decisions. Some of those different decisions result in abortions, which some people regard as immoral. This is an opinion with which I, and many others, disagree — in part because allowing the state (or any third party, for that matter) to decide who should reproduce under what circumstances was a policy once advocated and put into practice by eugenicists.

Thanks to the Chronicle for publishing my letter and to Dr. Cowan for her response.