Dialogue: Beware these promoters of survival of the fittest

BY BERNARD MORAN*

Barbara Summer, writing on the Dialogue page, hoped that recent findings on legalised abortion and crime prevention in the United States would "revive a debate that has been mired in simplistic notions of right and wrong."

She was referring to researchers Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and John Donahue, of Stanford University law school, who claim that a high proportion of women who had abortions after 1973, were in the "underclass" social category and likely to raise potentially delinquent children.

Thus abortion has raised the quality of life by eliminating possibly half the criminals and those who are traditionally dependent on welfare.

We can all think of "underclass" people who fit that profile and if they could be persuaded to abort their likely delinquent children in the interest of the greater public good, more "quality" people could sleep safely in their beds. In the meantime, what prevents a good cleanout are our simplistic notions of right and wrong.

But maybe not for much longer because a cultural revolution is percolating downwards to replace the old ways of thinking.

Professor Peter Singer's book Rethinking Life and Death opens with: "After ruling our thoughts and decisions about life and death for nearly 2000 years, the traditional Western ethic has collapsed."

Judaism and Christianity's ethic is based on divine revelation from God. Human beings derive their intrinsic worth and knowledge on how men and women should live from that revelation.

Prof Singer, an Australian philosopher, argues that we are the same as animals and should view life accordingly. He is the public and, increasingly, influential herald of the new era. Regarded as the founder and guru of the animal rights movement, Prof Singer lectures in biotics at Princeton University's appropriately named Centre for Human Values. He is one of the founders of the "practical ethics" movement which applies a cost-benefit analysis criteria to what will improve human society.

Only certain categories of humans are deemed to have "lives worth living." The criteria for the rest is their "wantedness." Thus infanticide and involuntary euthanasia are permissible and sometimes a public duty.

Prof Singer presents these prescriptions for society in such a rational way that his opponents in Australian academic circles recognise his supporters can be found at every level of policy-making in Australia and throughout the Western world. They have influenced judges, lawyers, politicians, doctors and nurses.

For example, recently three doctors at a Melbourne hospital were involved in the abortion of a baby diagnosed with dwarfism. When the news leaked out, Australian dwarfs were outraged. The doctors were nonplussed. After all that's what you are supposed to do when you diagnose dwarfism.

Converging with the philosophy of "practical ethics"is the futile care theory, which is redefining the role of doctors and the moral worth of sick and disabled people. Futile care theory, according to one of its promoters, "is about facing limits on our own mortality, on our technology, our community relationships with each other and our responsibility for stewardship of shared resources."

Translated, this means refusing medical treatment to the elderly and disabled, the "futile," and instead allocating it to the worthier recipients of limited resources - the young, the productive and healthy.

The concepts of the futile care theory are the logical outcome of popularising the term "human animal." Perhaps ageing members of the baby boomer generation should see where all this is leading, as a new generation comes to adulthood unburdened with "simplistic notions of rights and wrongs."

It was this generation which largely embraced legal abortion as social progress, not realising that it is a Faustian pact. Allowing the legal killing of a category of human being resulted in educating generations to view it as the norm and prepare the way for the Orwellian future of futile care theory, with its cold dismissal of those no longer deemed "productive."

For those who can recall Sunday school, Galatians 7 seems appropriate: "We reap what we sow."

* Bernard Moran is the Auckland coordinator for the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child.