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10/04/2004: "Proposing a new totalitarianism"
No doubt with nothing but the best of intentions, applied ethicist Peg Tittle offers this recipe for statism: licence people before allowing them to become parents, to make sure that no unworthy people bring life into the world, and to make sure that no unworthy lives are lived:
We've talked ourselves silly and tied ourselves in knots about ending life–active, passive, voluntary, coerced, premeditated, accidental, negligent–we have been horrendously silent, irresponsibly laissez-faire about beginning life. We would not accept such wanton creation of life if it happened in the lab. Why do we condone it when it happens in bedrooms and backseats?
It should be illegal to create life, to have kids, in order to have another pair of hands at work in the field or to have more of us than them. It should be illegal to create a John Doe Jr. to carry on the family name and/or business.
And it should be illegal to knowingly create a life that will be spent in pain and/or that will be severely substandard.
Because we all know that the government knows the future, and knows that life lived in pain is worthless, and knows exactly how to define "severely substandard," and knows just who should live and who should die.
From here Tittle proceeds to deal (badly–I can understand why she's referred to in the past tense as a teacher of applied ethics) with various objections, though not with the one about abortion's immorality because that's SO Catholic/fundamentalist, it therefore needs no response. She does, however, deal with the issue of statism:
One last objection concerns the potential for abuse. Do we really want to give the state this particular power? I have to say, seeing a theocracy coming ever closer, that this is the argument that gives me most pause.
I want to point out that just because something will be abused doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried, and I want to point out that our many other licensing policies still exist despite the occasional abuse. But I've read Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale." It's chilling. [Not to mention ridiculous–A.] But I've also read the reports of people too drugged out to even know they're pregnant. And it's not a question of which scenario is more likely. One is already happening and has been for quite some time.
Most of us have seen broken kids, kids who didn't get what they needed at a critical stage in their development, so they go through life thinking the world owes them something. And indeed we do. But sadly, tragically, we can't give it to them because that critical window of time has passed: We can't go back and flush from the fetus the chemicals that interfered with its development; we can't go back and provide the baby with the nutrients required for growth; we can't go back and give the child the safety and attention that would have led to a secure personality. Every year, millions of the people we've created so carelessly are being starved, beaten or otherwise traumatized. Thousands die. And that doesn't count the ones still walking around.
Who apparently shouldn't be walking around, because if you can't live the fantabulous life of a teacher of applied ethics, you shouldn't be allowed to live at all.
Here's a question for the editors of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: I presume you wouldn't run Aryan Nations propaganda on the op-ed page. So why are you running this eugenicist nonsense?
(Thanks to Mark Shea for the link.)
