Concord, NH — When Carol Nadeau was born with a rare bone disease, her parents were horrified by suggestions they put her in an institution. “She's coming home with us,” they informed the doctors.
Fifty-two years later, Nadeau is equally horrified by a bioethicist who thinks parents should be able to euthanize severely disabled infants – but she wants people to be able to hear him anyway. “I feel his philosophy is totally flawed, but I'd like people with disabilities and the general public to take a look at this person's views, and, at the same time, look at their own views,” said Nadeau.
Princeton University's Peter Singer, whose views have enraged many, was one of the panelists invited to attend an October 5 conference organized by the Governor's Commission on Disability, where Nadeau works.
Singer first detailed his views on euthanasia in his 1979 book, “Practical Ethics.” He wrote that children less than a month old have no human consciousness and that parents should be allowed to kill a severely disabled infant to end its suffering and to increase the family's happiness.
“Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all,” he wrote.
His views bother disability groups like Not Dead Yet, which protested the conference along with New Hampshire Right to Life. “If the Ku Klux Klan's grand dragon was chosen to speak to the NAACP, people would find that outrageous,” said Tom Cagle of Not Dead Yet.
Singer, a tenured professor at Princeton's Center for Human Values since 1999, said he hopes his appearance will stimulate needed public discussion. “If you want to have a conference where people are preaching to the converted and slapping each other on the back, then you needn't invite me,” he said Tuesday. “But if you want to have a conference that challenges how you think and your assumptions, I'm the type of person who ought to be invited.”
Cagle fears Singer will later use the conference as evidence that his ideas are being embraced by the disabled community, regardless of the reaction he gets. “There could be a room full of people throwing tomatoes at him, and I promise you, 10 years from now he's still going to be talking about the reasonable people with disabilities in New Hampshire who approved of him,” he said.
Singer said doctors are already quietly withholding treatment to end the lives of infants with severe disabilities.
“Life-and-death decisions are made for infants in hospitals everywhere, including in this country,” he said. “They ought to be made openly, and we ought to consider the basis on which they're made and who should make them.”
Singer agreed to give up his $2,000 speaker's fee after the Executive Council, an elected body that reviews state contracts, barred a state payment.
Commission Director Michael Jenkins said the conference will be a good opportunity for the other speakers, many of whom have disabilities, to confront Singer.
“In a public forum, through spirited debate, we can bring these moral and ethical issues to the fore,” he said. “This is a conference about the
value of life, not about Peter Singer.”
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Gordon Humphrey, who arrived after Singer entered the conference, criticized Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen for not rescinding Singer's invitation.
“It's an outrage she let in this cruel crackpot who advocates killing infants,” Humphrey said. “No civilized government in America should give him an honored place to speak.”
(This article courtesy of the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
