Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Richard Dawkins, Eugenics, Conflicting Principles, and Political Reality
With a tweet that spawned a thousand Ricochet threads, Richard Dawkins really stepped in it last week.
The would-be avatar of all things atheist then issued an “It’s-not-me-it’s-you” style apology soon thereafter; this said more about the man’s venal nature than his underlying argument. Unfortunately, people’s first instinct seemed to be to prove Godwin’s Law in the first iteration of the argument in their haste to denounce Dawkins and his admittedly tactless 140 characters.
This is demonstrative of the fact that any given thought which is much more complicated than “Ate at Chipotle. Was delicious!” which you’re considering transferring from your brain to Twitter should probably just stay there.
Due to this truncated thought being exposed to the cold examination of millions of critical eyes, the accusations started at “eugenics” and predictably devolved from there. Perhaps it helps to start with definitions:
eugenics / noun
1. the study of methods of improving the quality of the human race, esp by selective breeding
I certainly don’t think that Dawkins’ underlying intent was to advocate for a ruthless cull of the gene pool of untermensch – I think he was artlessly making an appeal to a form of utilitarianism, which has already been expressed by the greater public by the fact that around of 90% of parents who receive the prenatal diagnosis of Down’s Syndrome in their fetus choose to do precisely what Dawkins had the temerity to point out: abort and try again. For that reason alone, I think we can set aside any nefarious intent on Dawkins’ part. Even if there were, it certainly isn’t Dawkins himself who is personally responsible for these individual actions, and I seriously doubt his ability to influence the public at large anyways.
This isn’t eugenics in the sense that there is a centralized authority who is making decisions about who gets to live, breed or die: this is a Hayekian, emergent-order phenomenon, where parents are making decisions they believe to be in their interests. They are doing what they’re doing because these potential babies are failing to pass the market test which these parents are imposing. Nobody has to tell these parents what to do; they’re doing it themselves.
This has been possible thanks to the same kind of technological advancements that have made our lives cheaper, more efficient, and with more choices in so many other fields. Applied to reproduction, people have significantly more agency, up to and including how many children they have, when they have them, and those children’s quality of life. Yes, I chose that term intentionally, because the reality is that even breeding (just like dating) at this point acts like a market and is subject to incentives which can be measured.
Why do many people react to the decision to have children as though it were a market? Because people have choices. Starting largely with advent of cheap and easy contraception, people could choose to delay or specifically time when they have children, because the decision have a child has immense consequences in today’s world. A recent study emerged which pegged the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 at $245,000. That’s $13,600/yr or $1,134/mo; one heck of an investment. There are economies of scale as the number of children goes up, but the initial cost is rather steep. This cost also assumes the fact that the child is cognitively normal and doesn’t have any extraordinary physical handicaps. What justifies this cost? The answer of course is that people place a value upon their children which is higher than the cost of the investment, but that value is not infinite.
What about those other children, the ones who are not cognitively normal or do have extraordinary physical handicaps? According to links provided by Down Syndrome Help, the cost of caring for a child with a severe cognitive disability throughout their life is about $3.2 million. Needless to say, this is a cost which most people blanch at given the fact that they may not earn that much money in their entire life. As a result of this immense cost, and the perceived loss of quality of life that people anticipate as a result of having to provide lifelong care for an adult child, people frequently avail themselves of the opportunity to “Try again” for good or ill.
I imagine that this line of reasoning has a lot of readers choking on their coffee in their haste to denounce me as a ruthless and evil person bent upon the pre-birth destruction of each person whose net contribution to society is less than $0. Rest assured, that is not the point of this, so let me lay my cards on the table.
As a matter of principle, I am personally opposed to abortion, especially abortion of convenience, or ex-post-facto birth control. If you question my commitment, I should say that — against my better judgment — I married my ex-wife rather than see her carry out her threat to abort my daughter at the behest of her mother. I want to head off immediately any line of argument from any person who thinks that I “lack empathy” or “disrespect the lives of the innocent.” I made my choices, for good or ill, and I have lived with them.
I also have never been given a choice like the one that many people face when given the moral quandary of how to proceed with a potential child who is either going to be very sick or debilitated. I can’t say that I would have the moral fiber to withstand such a choice, and I’m glad that I never had to. It is equally obvious to me that given the choice between two tragedies that the evidence points to the fact that the vast majority of people prefer the outcome which they feel they have control over and benefits them both in the short and long term.
Placing myself in that position as a conservative, I could imagine my principles being tugged in two different directions. My personal commitment to preserving the rights of this potential person is opposed by my desire that people should contribute positively to society. While I can certainly guarantee that my contribution to society through my children, taxes and work will far exceed what I use, I am also certain that if I had a child with those sorts of cognitive disabilities or handicaps that this balance would flip. Add to this that because I don’t have the resources to completely cover the costs for that person, I am perversely incentivized to not abort that child precisely because I would not have to bear the costs which that child would impose, because they end up being collectivized through our social welfare system.
Unfortunately, I think conservatives are pinioned between these two mutually exclusive positions: on the one hand, we don’t want people to abort their children; on the other, we want people to bear personal responsibility for their choices. Rigid adherence to both principles would require of people that they simultaneously carry to term all children (no matter how sick) and to then bear any and all costs of that decision (no matter how crushing). I don’t feel like it is logically consistent for us to require both of people — and it certainly smacks of a sort of high-handed disregard for accident — when having children is frequently made at the margin.
As an acolyte of Thomas Sowell, I am convinced of the truth of the “Constrained Vision” of human nature and resigned to the “Tragic View” of life. That means that frequently in life we are faced not with choices between “Good” and “Bad,” but more frequently “Bad” and “Worse.” This is one such situation.
Where the rubber meets the road on this is in our expression of public policy. Any fair appraisal of government’s role when trying to balance the bad and worse while looking at contraception and abortion should tell you that the technology which gives us power over when and how to bring life into the world is a Genie which cannot be completely stuffed back into the bottle. We can no more do that than we can undo the technological advances of online dating, for good or ill.
To do so would empower the government to a degree where I believe conservatives would be deeply uncomfortable if it were any other aspect of life. Imagine if you would a flat, government-enforced ban on abortion. How could we ensure compliance? Perhaps women should provide monthly evidence of menstruation, with failure to provide such evidence initiating a pregnancy investigation, resulting in mandatory monthly checkups to ensure that a potential fetus has not been aborted? If that woman is pregnant, what happens in the event of miscarriage? Must the coroner be dispatched to ensure that a wrongful death has not occurred? And what happens if such a determination is made? This scenario quickly descends into madness or a police state. Conservatives should disavow policies that would grant the government such power.
So what can we do?
The best we can hope for at this point is containment. That means we should engage in moral persuasion rather than pursue broad public policy remedies. Coupled with the the realization that, just because you or I wouldn’t make a particular decision regarding how we would order our affairs given an extraordinarily difficult set of circumstances, that such a decision is not universally agreed-upon and we might just make some progress.
If you or I would struggle with what to do — even given a strong moral compass — keep in mind that it’s no less hard for other people who are also balancing a panoply of interests, and do not view their situation as a monopolar moral calculation. I’m not qualified to make up those peoples’ minds for them a priori; none of us is. Liberty can be abused, but empowering the government to impose our will can also work at cross purposes to the rest of the Conservative agenda.
Published in General
Thank you for a very thoughtful post. Simply superb.
Another aspect is that before Roe v. Wade, abortions were illegal … so it isn’t as if the ban is completely impractical and unknown.
It isn’t necessary to hypothesize a nightmare of enforcement. In the past, the method of enforcing the ban was not to go to each “alleged” mother and investigate her for possible crimes. (Yes, that would be a civil rights nightmare.) Instead, we banned the supplier. Abortion clinics were illegal.
Does that mean that it forces women to get their abortions in illegal and unsanitary clinics? No, because that assumes the woman has a right to get an abortion; remove that assumption and the argument is moot. The state has no obligation to make an illegal choice to be safe and clean.
I think the phrase “bear any and all costs” goes to the heart of the argument. As individuals in a society we have engaged in a social contract. Many of the services of government are provided inefficiently to say the least and some with dubious constitutional foundation. Many of us would agree that there are some government programs that should be eliminated altogether. If it’s a matter of economics that bringing Down Syndrome children to term is burdensome to others in society then would it be less burdensome if hundreds of wasteful and non-constitutionally mandated federal programs were eliminated? Does this make for the caring of Down Syndrome children beyond what parents can afford more palatable? Is there a mathematical calculus where this becomes acceptable? And if so what would that be?
Again, Dawkins’ premise is that personhood is tied necessarily to intelligence. That is not, as we have seen frequently on Ricochet, a universally accepted premise. I certainly don’t buy it.
I agree that cost, especially millions for basic care, is not to be dismissed easily. But frankly, when confronted with the conflict between preserving life and managing costs, my first reaction is to see if there are any ways to bring the cost down. Work that side of the conflict to the utmost before even considering the other side.
Brian is correct that there are lots of government programs that should be eliminated, as I think we can all agree. Sadly, the ones that should be eliminated tend to thrive in all their bureaucratic and regulatory glory, while people champion killing in the name of economic necessity. Count me as on board for helping people care for their handicapped kids and against other forms of big government. That sounds like compassionate conservatism to me.
May I also just add that when it comes to life, practical economics are not courageous. They are insidious. As the ghost said to Scrooge, “Who is to say that your life is more valuable than this poor man’s child?” Once we start deciding whose life is valuable, all bets are off.
Something is missing here. A conservative view of this, or any issue, should acknowledge that there are many forces at work in society other than governments and individuals. We are not reduced to choosing between fully taking care of ourselves, on the one hand, and fully letting the government do the job, on the other. We also do a terrible disservice to both our moral and political credibility if we succumb to the temptation to view the miracle of life, no matter how imperfect, as equal in significance to taking on an extra budget hit of $1,134/mo. As for policy, there is a lot that can be done on this short of outlawing all abortion everywhere. But abandoning that work because, well, hey, 90 percent of people are doing it so the market seems to have cleared and you know Down syndrome is one thing but not everybody has the money to take care of a really bad case and how you going to police a thing like that anyway–I think that’s morally indefensible.
This just isn’t true. It’s easy to ignore all the times when practical economics concords with a traditional moral agenda because the two often work together so seamlessly. When economics poses us no moral problem, we tend to take it for granted. That’s human nature, and even a kind of ingratitude. But just because we take economics for granted when it matches our moral intuition doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
To save up for something important (like a future family); to live as if sunk costs are sunk, no matter what disasters lurk in your past; those dry economic actions take courage, actually. You can tell this because people who fail to do these things are often allowing themselves to be a plaything of their own fears.
I agree completely with that. Unfortunately not everyone else does. Like I said earlier, we have to work on the culture itself, the laws and structures then follow.
Downs is merely one of the least-bad birth defects.
I would bring up the situation which arises with an entire class of birth defects (warning: Graphic images… again, you’ve been warned) such as anencephaly, microcephaly or other untreatable conditions which mean that the fetus will never develop the ability to reason or live anything like a normal life. In fact, with many nervous system conditions such as this there isn’t even a brain within the fetus.
I think it is entirely morally defensible to abort such fetuses prior to birth for a variety of reasons. What is morally indefensible in my opinion would be forcing parents to bear financial responsibility for the birth and care or a child that is doomed to die within hours of birth at incalculable cost.
The problem is that people want to have their cake and eat it too.
I hate to say it, but one of the problems that I see is the widespread integration of special needs students into general student bodies. We spend a disproportionate amount of resources on these students and politically correct feel-good attitudes towards people with cognitive disabilities does a disservice to them and to other students.
I feel bad that I don’t have a better answer for you.
Naturally, I’m not going to wave off such cases as if there were an easy answer. These are real world decisions with real lives at stake. But then again, it isn’t as if birth defects are a suddenly new phenomenon; there have been birth defects since the beginnings of births. We handled them then, and we can handle them still.
We always make a distinction between the obligation to preserve life versus the right to a natural death. Most of the extraordinary cases of birth defects are handled by nature, and don’t require extraordinary means to prolong a life. But I’m not going to make a sweeping rule about what to do in any situation.
I will say that I’ve had some limited experience with Catholic hospitals, and usually those chaplains, doctors, nurses, technicians, etc., have all been trained very well on what to do in those extreme cases. We’ve dealt with this before.
That’s okay…you have time to work on one.
Ah yes, here we go. Now we’re getting to the nub of the thing. The disabled are a drain on the public purse, on our schools, etc., so those who, like Dawkins, say it’s no biggie simply to wipe the slate clean and try again–you’re doing everyone a favor!–shouldn’t be attacked, they should be applauded for their civic mindedness. What was that you said about a strong moral compass?
Based on these arguments, I assume you would favor decriminalizing all murder. After all, people will commit murder whether it’s illegal or not, right? Or at least the murder of vagrants — you know, people you can off with relative anonymity.
I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of law. We make laws, not only for the purely utilitarian purpose of preventing harmful behavior, but as an expression of agreed values. While we acknowledge that not every law will effect its desired outcome, we believe that merely stating and codifying our intolerance for certain behavior has the power to alter attitudes toward that behavior.
Maybe. Maybe not. But the majority has to rule on such questions.
Majestyk – Now for the less flippant response to your #40. My experience with special needs kids in schools is that there isn’t wholesale integration of special needs kids into regular classrooms but that on occasion many of the special needs kids visit regular classes to observe and get what they can from them. For those who have behavioral issues it’s actually beneficial that they witness what more normal or restrained behavior is like from their peers. For regular students it’s beneficial that many of them come in contact with special needs kids so they don’t develop unfounded stereotypes of them. I don’t think there’s any empirical evidence to suggest that a) special needs kids are being fully integrated into regular classrooms and b) that they are in any way dragging down the overall performance or regular students. As far as disproportionate amount of resources – I’ve seen numerous special needs classrooms and it would laughable to suggest that they appear to be a drain on the rest of a school’s resources. They often rely on the donations of parents or others for computer equipment or other tools and resources to get by.
Obviously. Kill vagrants to your heart’s content.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way I want to address what you said here.
If men were angels we would need no laws. The trouble is, men aren’t angels – they aren’t devils either – and I think we’d be better off making law which addresses the world as it is rather than how we wish it were.
Merely because a majority of people vote for something doesn’t make it moral or right. Do you think that the relatively low murder rate we have is due to laws prohibiting it or because of the fundamental decency of most people? I think I know the answer.
At the same time, a not-insignificant number of those same people – who would never otherwise consider killing another person – are faced with extraordinarily difficult choices on a daily basis. People who probably agree with you on the majority of other issues – yet you relegate them to the status of serial killers of hobos?
That’s coalition-building.
Even the murder of a vagrant typically leaves behind a recognizable body. It is fortunate for the prosecution that making human remains of any size unrecognizable is rather difficult, and something most murderers (of born people) won’t succeed in doing it. Prosecuting murder in the absence of recognizable remains has long been possible in certain jurisdictions, but always been fraught. Maybe there’s a reason for that.
Moreover, other jurisdictions, including your fair state of Texas till 1974, have had “no body, no conviction” rules for murders. Why do you suppose that is?
Life and death decisions are never easy, M. I think KC is right that the standard should be that we don’t go to extraordinary lengths to preserve life, but the opposite says that we don’t take affirmative steps to end it either. We must not be overly practical about life, particularly in deciding what lives we regard as “worthless”.
This is a bit incredible. Perhaps you should come to our school system?
My children have told me how disruptive special needs kids can be in their classrooms, where they’re fully integrated. Of course there’s a spectrum, but to claim that it doesn’t happen is a bit ridiculous.
“It is well-established that special education enrollment and aggregate costs have increased markedly in recent years. At the same time, there have not been proportionate increases in federal special education (IDEA Part B) appropriations or state education spending. Regardless of federal and state special education funding, however, local communities under IDEA must provide a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment to children with disabilities, no matter how high or low those costs are in the case of an individual child or how high they are for a group of children with disabilities. As a result, special education spending by local districts has consumed a large portion of increased education funding nationally — 40 percent of the increase by one estimate — since the late 1960s.”
We? I’m guessing “we” is a larger number than just the two parents…
Indeed we do.
Gallup polling on abortion.
The number of people who want to make abortion completely illegal ranges from 12-22%.
For punishment to seem just, it must seem both proportionate and non-arbitrary. “Proportionate” corresponds to the idea that the expected cost of punishment correspond to the expected social cost of the crime. “Non-arbitrary” corresponds to the idea that the variance in the cost of the punishment ought not to be too high (a great deal of variance is to be expected, obviously – but hopefully not too much!).
The remains of an early abortion are so hard to identify as such. If we don’t hold every woman of childbearing age with a heavy, late period or a natural miscarriage (or inexplicable fluctuation in weight) under suspicion of abortion, we’re going to miss a lot of real abortions. If early abortion is then prosecuted as murder, between the very many who get away with that murder and the very few who are caught getting punished for the gravest crime there is, the punishment for early abortion will seem rather arbitrary.
We already have enough problems in this country with arbitrary prosecution. I doubt we should wish to add to them.
What state do you live in?
Tuck, I don’t see anything in the report that you cited that indicates that schools must integrate their entire populations of special needs students into regular classrooms. The fact that some school districts are doing so is out of necessity to abide by IDEA because local and state governments haven’t kept apace with the increases in children diagnosed as special needs. This is a failure of government and a failure of the electorate to pressure government to appropriate accordingly and perhaps do away with more idiotic spending, like in California for a bullet train that will cost the state hundreds of billions of dollars.
Congratulations on an excellent post, Majestyk! It took great courage to post that, and to post it here. You have spoken what will be seen as an “inconvenient truth” (to coin a phrase) by many Richochetti. To their objections, I would just say Eppur Si Muove.
Tuck:
I’m sad to say Brian that living here in Douglas County in Colorado that my 3 children make very similar reports to my wife and I about the disruptions that occur due to special needs students on a weekly basis from their integration in classroom environments.
I was shocked when at my Daughter’s end-of-year choir concert, a completely blind and cognitively disabled girl was allowed to sing with the choir – I say “sing,” but what I really mean is “yell incoherently” throughout the performance.
This is an awful thing to say – but it really ruined and distracted from what was an otherwise beautiful performance. I wanted to ask her parents if they thought that this was somehow helping their daughter or anybody else. I don’t think it’s good for anybody involved to pretend that it does.
I wish it weren’t that way. I really do. I think this is orthogonal to the OP however.
Don’t disagree with you. See my comment #54
Brian, I want to take a second here to say that I know you have a son with special needs and I want you to understand that none of this is directed at you. When people are born they are due the respect we owe the living. I wouldn’t begrudge your son the very best that we can provide as a society.
I do think there is an issue of inconsistency here among some conservatives, however. I understand that some people are reflexively opposed to all abortion due to reasons of faith, but unfortunately those same people (I think) frequently find themselves on the side of the argument which asks for less involvement from the state and increased personal responsibility from individuals.
Given how our society is structured, and the expectations which exist upon parents who have children with special needs these positions are working against one another.
Conservatives also ought to agree that if we’re going to have institutions like “publicly funded schools” that there’s no need to have “publicly operated schools” simultaneously.
Voucherizing all publicly funded education would serve the needs of people who have children with special needs much better than the system we currently have, the purpose of which is apparently to cram each kid through the same extruder no matter what their gifts or disabilities. What you get at the other end is… messy.
…even a person who believes that all abortion is sinful may acknowledge practical reasons for not banning all of it.
Most Christians know what it’s like to sin for the sake of expediency. Sometimes the sins are small ones, perhaps so small that the question of whether they’re sins at all is up for debate (like saying “fine” when you’re not fine and people ask, “How are you?”). Other times, the sins are considerably larger, like abortion.
Some Christians talk as if there’s a sinless way out of every situation, no matter how bad. I can’t say I’m convinced. God is gracious and all, but not, I think, in that way. Humans seem more than capable of getting themselves into scrapes where all ways out involve some sinning. The question is then choosing the path of least sin – if you can tell what it is.