November 1, 2014 - 21:06
Although I appreciated Harriet McBryde Johnson's resistance to dehumanizing Singer by labeling him a monster, I found myself incredibly angered by Singer's assertions around the value of a disabled life. This was, primarily, for two reasons:
1) Singer equated the responsibility of a caregiver to their child as a fetus, with the responsibility when the child is a newborn. This seemed to me to be a straightforward attack on any pro-choice advocates who might challenge his feelings on this issue. However, it seems to me that there is a very clear distinction between the two points in a baby's development. When a mother discovers that she is pregnant, when the child is a fetus, she faces a decision: whether to keep the baby or not. This is based on any number of factors: her own ability to raise a child at all, her religious beliefs surrounding abortion, etc. However, at this point in time, the mother has no knowledge of a child's personality, or intellectual or physical disabilities. If she makes the decision to go forward with the pregnancy, she has made the committment to raise a child--not a perfect child, and certainly not a child who will necessarily be happy with life at every turn. She is certainly setting herself up for hardship no matter what the outcome, and this comes with agreeing to become a mother. As everyone should be generally aware that babies are born with disabilities every day, this option cannot be ruled out in any mother's case. Therefore, by the time the baby is born, the mother has made a committment in one way or another--to keep the baby regardless of its state, or to give the baby up for adoption regardless of its state. No parenting situation is equatable to going to a store and browsing, and it is inhuman to suggest that this one could be--a baby is a living human regardless of "flaws."
2) Singer did not take the time to evaluate the society that makes the life of a disabled individual so unworth living, and he treated the current state of accessibility as an unwavering norm. The entire notion of a "life worth living" rests on the assumption that no changes can be made to an environment to make that life "worth living" or not. In reality, any informed parent of a disabled child can easily see that comfort and safety is entirely dependent on how a given environment is structured--whether the boy who moves via wheelchair has ramp access or whether entering every building is an anxiety-inducing struggle, whether the girl with a learning disability has a professor who has been briefed on how to teach to a variety of individuals or whether she must constantly struggle to understand the way he insists upon teaching. In this way, Singer's argument seems dismissive, selfish, and lazy. If he truly believes that the lives of disabled people are not worth living, then he should understand that he can have a hand in changing this--without killing off disabled babies.