"Worshipping Retardation"

There are days in my life when I cannot believe the things I read on the Internet.  Over at a site called the "Center for the Advancement of Capitalism", a male adult of questionable intelligence and lacking any moral foundation worth mentioning has written a horrific post which attacks parents who make the choice to carry a special needs child to term.

I find this article by Nicholas Provenzo horrifying, simplistic, misguided an immoral.

Provenzo weakly attempts to make an argument that parents of special needs children -- like those with Downs Syndrome -- have a responsibility to murder that child in utero, because that child may need support and love and care and supervision for the rest of their lives:

Because a person afflicted with Down syndrome is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all) and requires constant care and supervision, unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child's life upon others.

I must wonder if Provenzo was watching a Leni Riefenstahl film or listen to Wagner when he wrote this.  He establishes a purely utilitarian and eugenic reason for abortion that Hitler, Eichmann, Sanger, and the progressive eugenicists of the early 20th century would not only recognize, but applaud.

Imagine if we carry Provenzo's argument to any child that "is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all)".  Given that inner city poverty is now largely (but not completely) multi-generational, would Provenzo argue that inner city poor should abort their children?  Or what about the residents of the poor hollows of Appalachia?  Should we murder in utero the unborn children of Ashkenazi Jews because of the high incidence of hereditary disease like Cystic Fibrosis or Hemophilia or Tay-Sachs?  What about the unborn children of African-American's who present sickle-cell anemia?  Given the hereditary nature of some cancers, should we begin to murdering the unborn children that display those markers in utero?

Amazing, isn't it, if we try to imagine where this stops.

But let's get back to Downs Syndrome.  Provenzo makes a poor and stupidly constructed argument that Downs Syndrome children are capable of only being marginally productive.  What a phenomenal stereotype, made more egregious by the fact that it is patently untrue.  It is as untrue as the stereotype that there is something called "CPT", or "Colored People's Time".

Children with Downs Syndrome face massive prejudice because of irresponsible jerkwards like Provenzo, who obviously have spent little, if any, time with children or adults with Downs Syndrome.

He obviously missed the rabid popularity of the show Life Goes On, which featured a teenager name "Corky" (played by Chris Burke, who has Downs in real life).  Chris has starred in a dozen other very popular shows and movies, including ER, Touched By an Angel, Mona Lisa's Smile, Promised Land, The Division, and more.

Today, we understand far more about the cognitive and physical challenges that people with Downs Syndrome will face.  Moreover, we understand how to treat and respond to these challenges.  To say that these children face a future of being "marginally productive" is to deny the truth. 

Worse, it devalues human life.  Our lives cannot be valued solely by our productivity.  That is a measurement for Wall Street to make, but Main Street takes a different view.  To associate a person by their productivity is to dehumanize them; it makes them just a number.  Measuring a person solely by their productivity is to value them property.  Measuring us that way makes us slaves.

Provenzo obviously thinks people who value human beings intrinsically -- in spite of their cognitive or physical differences -- "worship retardation".  He would rather have us value people by the size of their paychecks or their future stock holdings.

I am glad he doesn't run any part of the world I live in.