Michael Berube, an instructor at Penn State, penned an op-ed in today’s Washington Examiner that chides Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, for suggesting at Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation hearing that parents of Down syndrome children should support the pro-life cause and oppose Roe v. Wade. Berube has a Down syndrome child, but he supports legal abortion. He also says parents should not automatically terminate a pregnancy based on a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. But Berube’s support for individual choice has its limits:
All such advice should be a matter of persuasion rather than coercion. Many families, for whatever reasons, decide that they do not have the financial or emotional resources to raise a child with a significant disability and I cannot support religious or political officials who insist that the police power of the state must be marshaled to compel those families to bear children against their will.Furthermore, unlike most contemporary conservatives and unlike all libertarians, I insist that the full health education and welfare resources of the state be made available to every family that does decide to bear a disabled child.
Politicians like Brownback are worried about the constitutional rights that accrue to fetuses, embryos and zygotes, but are willing to install at the head of our nation’s highest court a man who almost surely will strip numerous constitutional rights from living humans.
One of the differences between people like me, who are raising children with disabilities while supporting other prospective parents’ right to determine what will happen in their families, and politicians like Brownback and his allies, is that people like me don’t necessarily want to invoke the power of the state to ensure that our own choices are made mandatory for everybody else. (Emphasis added.)
The “full health education and welfare resources” that Berube speaks of are, of course, confiscated by force from individuals, who unlike Berube and his wife, have no choice in the matter. Berube has no problem invoking the “power of the state” to force us to subsidize his family’s choices.
At least Berube is perceptive enough to distinguish between conservatives and libertarians.
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It is shocking, sometimes, to see how illogical most people are. To make such a glaring contradiction within the space of a single essay does not speak well of Mr. Berube’s intellect.
The statists of all stripes are smart enough to realize that one of the few genuine areas of moral tension in Western Civilization is the abortion issue. They then promptly work together to help society and individuals resolve this tension, right? The hell they do – they exploit the issue to the hilt.
Fortunately, technology and demographics are putting severe pressure on the idea of abortion as simply another rational “choice”, and are at least forcing individuals to honestly confront this tension.
And I have to scoff at Berube’s assumption that having a so-called “normal” baby will by definition be any less of a financial and emotional “burden” than a Downs Syndrome child, most of whom are extremely tractable, loving children. There are not yet tests for every genetic disease, nor is there a crystal ball powerful enough to see whether a child will get a serious disease or injury. Is Berube suggesting that if my child gets cancer that “post-natal abortion” would somehow be a legal or ethical option?
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