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NIH Scholar Suggests Abortions for Disabled Children

Washington, DC -- Disability advocates and pro-life groups are up in arms

after a scholar from the National Institutes of Health said America would

benefit from aborting the blind and disabled.

In a speech earlier this month at the University of Rhode Island,

"biomedical ethicist" Dan W. Brock said his views are not discriminatory,

and he said any decision must be left to parents, without government

intervention.

Brock said that his beliefs are his own and do not represent those of the

National Institutes of Health or the federal government. He also said it is

not the first time he has faced criticism for his views.

The speech was meant, in part, to counter that criticism and offer a

defense for genetic testing, which Brock said is not like the eugenics

practiced by the Nazis. German dictator Adolf Hitler used eugenics, killing

disabled individuals and then Jews, with the goal of creating a perfect

society.

But two pro-life groups said Brock's theory could have a detrimental impact

on future generations.

"It's a hidden agenda that they want to rid our country of people who may

cause us to care for them and protect them and may even cost some money,"

said Tom Lothamer, interim director of Baptists for Life. "If we have that

kind of a culture of death, then I believe our country is doomed. If we can

do away with the disabled, then who's next?"

Wendy Wright, spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, echoed those

sentiments. She said Brock's theories undermine the field of bioethics and

lead society down a dangerous path.

"It's particularly dangerous when you target people because of a

disability," Wright said. "As we've seen throughout history, it's too easy

for people who don't have a moral compass to fall into that way of

thinking. Once people start down that slope, that inevitably expands to

other classes of people."

Brock said this is not the first time he has been criticized by those in

the disability and pro-life communities. As for the argument that he is

promoting eugenics, "One thing doesn't always lead to every other thing,"

he said.

"One can distinguish between using this testing, either pre-conception or

post-conception, to prevent the birth of children with very serious

disabling diseases from any implications of how we should treat people who

are born and live with those diseases," Brock said.

Other bioethics specialists have also challenged his views, including

Adrienne Asch, a professor at Wellesley College, who said Brock has failed

to understand how disabled individuals cope with their disabilities.

Brock, for instance, said blind individuals cannot enjoy the paintings at

an art gallery and people with cognitive disabilities are unable to perform

basic daily functions. For those reasons, he said, parents should give

genetic testing some thought.

"Even after we've made all the accommodations of justice and equality of

opportunity, there would still be some residual disadvantage from being

seriously cognitively disabled or being blind," Brock said. "It's a

judgment not about the person; it's a judgment about the condition and a

judgment that it would be better if the children who are born don't have

that condition."

Asch said blind individuals might not be able to see two-dimensional art,

but that does not mean they cannot appreciate other things in life.

"Not every human being can do everything," Asch said, citing the

athleticism of a basketball player or the knowledge of a mathematician.

"Everybody has things they are able to experience and things they are not."

For Penny Reeder, who is blind, Brock's theories are hurtful. She said if

genetic testing becomes prominent, parents would be faced with difficult

ethical decisions.

"How dare he say that he's not denigrating people with disabilities when

he's advocating aborting a pregnancy of a potential person with a

disability. It's just amazing to me," said Reeder, who cited her job as a

magazine editor as evidence that blind people can succeed.

Lothamer said the issue also extends beyond bioethics into an area where

parents must decide if they should play the role of a higher being. But

Brock was quick to counter that assessment as well.

"Medicine is in the business of messing with nature and God's will," he

said. "Medicine tries to intervene in what would otherwise happen by

natural processes or God's will. We normally think that if we can prevent

serious suffering, then artificial interventions are justified."

Even Asch conceded that some parents would probably adopt Brock's way of

thinking, but said she hopes those parents also consider the positive

impact disabled individuals can have on society.

"I think people should get to make the decisions they want to make," Asch

said. "I think they need to have better information about life with

disability before they make those decisions, but if they ultimately make

those decisions, then they make them."

From:  The Pro-Life Infonet <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>

Reply-To:  Steven Ertelt <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>

Subject:   NIH Scholar Suggests Abortions for Disabled Children

Source:   Cybercast News Service; November 25, 2002

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CANADA - McGILL SPEAKER CONDEMNS NEW 'EUGENICS'

MONTREAL, October 10, 2002 (LSN.ca) - In a third installment of National

Post op-eds in connection with the McGill conference on Pluralism, Religion

and Public Policy, Margaret Somerville, a professor at McGill's Centre for

Medicine, Ethics and Law, condemns "new genetics" which she says "is

functioning as eugenics."

"Decisions by individuals based on pre implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD)

of IVF embryos, or prenatal screening of fetuses," she says, "mean we will

eliminate certain groups of people, for example, Down's syndrome children,

from our society."

"Intense individualism leads to claims of rights to 'absolute reproductive

freedom'," she says, "that is, claims that decisions about reproduction are

no one else's business -- especially not the state's business to interfere

with through law -- and one should be absolutely free to reproduce in

whatever way and reproduce whatever kind of child one wishes. That is an

adult-centred reproductive decision-making model. But should the

decision-making be, rather, future child-centred, especially when there is

a conflict between what is best for the future parents and for the future

child?"

"We should remember," she adds, "that the ethical tone of a society is set

by how it treats its weakest, most in need, most vulnerable members, not

those who are powerful, able and can protect themselves. What ethical tone

will we hand on to our near and far-distant descendants, especially

regarding respect for human life?"

Source: LifeSite Daily News (lsn@lifesite.net)

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Eugenics Records on Forced Sterilizations Shredded in Oregon

Portland, OR -- Records chronicling the forced sterilization of 2,650

Oregonians have disappeared or been shredded, erasing proof of one of the

state's most troubling chapters that advocates now want addressed.

Extensive searches for the records of the Board of Eugenics and its

successor, the Board of Social Protection, have so far turned up little

beyond annual two-page reports issued before 1950.

That's because the records were shredded at the request of a state employee

-- whose identity remains a mystery -- and in violation of state law.

"We destroyed them," said John Murphy, president of the nonprofit Portland

Habilitation Center, which held the state contract to shred the records. "I

remember them very clearly. We had to decide ethically because we had an

obligation to destroy them, but we were thinking, 'Someday these could be

the evidence of an atrocity.' "

Employees at the 50-year-old firm are combing their files for the order

that accompanied the shipment about a decade ago. Murphy thinks the files

came from Dammasch State Hospital in Wilsonville, which closed in 1995. But

two former Dammasch superintendents said they do not remember seeing the

eugenics records or ordering their destruction.

Oregon State Archives and state library employees, shocked at the potential

loss, want to find that order, too. Under state law, the state archivist

decides what records can be destroyed and when.

Unauthorized destruction of state records is a misdemeanor.

"They didn't have authorization to throw those records away. Nobody here

would have ever scheduled those things for destruction," said Mary Beth

Herkert, who manages the archives records center.

Without a record, the history of what happened depends on the memory of

those who were there. Former members of the Board of Eugenics, chiefly the

superintendents of state institutions who met quarterly, have hazy or

incomplete recollections.

"This was 40 years ago," said Dr. Dean Brooks, former superintendent of the

Oregon State Hospital. He remembers a handful of people being sterilized.

But one existing record shows that 26 people from his institution were

sterilized in a two-year period.

The records' disappearance comes as survivors and 17 organizations

representing people with disabilities, mental illness and gays want Gov.

John Kitzhaber to apologize for the state's eugenics law.

As a legislator, Kitzhaber served on the joint committee that helped repeal

the law in 1983. But advocates want him to acknowledge the state's

sterilization policies that for years were used to prevent "defectives" from

having children. They included anyone considered "feebleminded, insane,

epileptic, a habitual criminal or sexual pervert who is likely to become a

menace to society," as well as people convicted of rape or sodomy.

After 1967, when the eugenics board was revamped into the Board of Social

Protection, the law was chiefly used to sterilize those with mental illness

or mental disability.

On Monday, state employees, acting at The Oregonian's request, completed a

fruitless search of the Oregon State Hospital basement in Salem as student

archivists scrutinized microfilm of board minutes from prior to 1963.

Missing are case files, consent forms and any record of the last 20 years'

work of the Board of Eugenics and Board of Social Protection.

No trace remains of two cases that reached the Oregon Court of Appeals in

the early 1970s, including one that the U.S. Supreme Court later declined

to hear.

Murphy and his employees remember shredding the records from the state

mental health division because the contents were so disturbing. Inside

"nicely bound volumes," Murphy said, were the analysis, discussion and

conclusion of board members who referred to people in the medical terms of

the time: idiots, mongoloids and cretins.

"All the playground insults you've ever heard in your life seemed to be the

categories that they put people in," Murphy said. "Every ugly term you can

think of for human beings. . . . This wasn't a book or two. This was a

bunch of stuff."

The memory sticks with Murphy for another reason. Portland Habilitation

Center is one of the state's largest employers of people with disabilities

and mental illness.

"The very people who at one time would have been put in harm's way by the

board, instead made a living wage shredding the remnants of its work," said

Peter Bragdon, senior counsel for Columbia Sportswear Co. and a former

member of the Portland Habilitation Center board.

Murphy said his staff assumed that the documents, like the canceled checks

and other records they routinely handle, had been microfilmed. But no such

microfilm has been found.

Some documentation does exist, in patient medical records from Fairview

Hospital and other institutions. Those records include dates of

sterilization procedures and medical notes such as the laboratory analysis

of tissue. But the rationale for the sterilizations does not appear. Many

victims never knew what happened to them.

James Taves, a state employee who co-wrote the legislation repealing

Oregon's eugenics law in 1983, remembers that while researching the law, he

saw records of operations on 9- and 11-year-old girls for "hygienic

reasons."

Some families placed relatives in Fairview Hospital and Training Center for

only as long as needed for them to be sterilized. The institution, which

reported sterilizing more than half the people being discharged for several

years, curtailed such procedures in the early 1970s. Authorities attributed

the change to the growing human rights movement.

But the change at Fairview also coincided with the death of Elonda

Murchison, 29, who died while recovering from a hysterectomy, according to

a 1975 report by Willamette Week.

Jon Cooper, who oversaw the closure of Fairview in 2000 and has worked to

preserve some of that institution's history, said people in his field

routinely ditched unsavory history as public opinion changed. Someone

looking for evidence that physical restraints were used at Fairview, for

instance, would have had a hard time finding any in 1987, even though 10

years earlier there had been many.

"When it became politically incorrect to have them there, they just

disappeared," Cooper said.

One of the chief legal and historical experts of eugenics said records have

disappeared nationwide. Paul Lombardo, a University of Virginia law

professor and historian whose research has driven much of the eugenics

discussion nationwide, said the destruction of such records represents "the

worst kind of bureaucratic negligence."

"Now there is no evidence that would allow government to reflect and say,

'We did this' or for people to look at it and learn from it, or for the

people involved to make the case they've been harmed or even document the

fact it happened," Lombardo said.

"It's a tragedy and a terrible way to conduct public policy."

In the hushed halls of the Oregon State Library, librarian Merrialyce

Blanchard oversees a eugenics collection that includes more than 80 items,

only a single page of which records what happened in Oregon.

Blanchard, who said she has gone out of her way to preserve and protect the

collection, is disturbed by news of the records' destruction.

"If we lose this information, we could rewrite our own history."

From:  The Pro-Life Infonet <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>

Reply-To:  Steven Ertelt <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>

Subject:

Source:   Portland Oregonian; July 30, 2002

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EUGENICS SURVIVES IN BLACK CHURCH INITIATIVE

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is sponsoring a National

Black Religious Summit on Sexuality.  RCRC is at the forefront of the

pro-abortion movement.

The background on Sanger's "Negro Project" can be found at

http://blackgenocide.org/negro.html.

Editor's note: The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice comprises

national organizations from the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church

(U.S.A.), United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, Unitarian

Universalist Association, Reform and Conservative Judaism, and other

faith traditions.

Source: American Life League "Communique" (communique@all.org)

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Virginia Governor Apologizes for Forced Sterilizations

NewsMax.com Wires    (Friday, May 3, 2002)

RICHMOND, Va. – Gov. Mark Warner issued a formal apology Thursday for the state's decision to forcible sterilize thousands

of Virginians from 1924 to 1979.

His apology coincides with the 75th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Buck vs. Bell decision upholding Virginia's eugenics

sterilization law.

"Today, I offer the commonwealth's sincere apology for Virginia's participation in eugenics," the recently elected Democrat said.

"As I have previously noted, the eugenics movement was a shameful effort in which state government never should have been

involved," said Warner. "We must remember the commonwealth's past mistakes in order to prevent them from recurring."

Virginia forcible sterilized about 7,450 people under the banner of eugenics, or selective human breeding and social engineering.

The practice continued in Virginia until 1979. It ranked second only behind California, which had 20,108 sterilizations.

The governor's statement was read aloud by state Del. Mitchell Van Yahres at a Charlottesville event Thursday honoring the

memory of Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old unwed mother who was the first person forcibly sterilized under the state's 1924 statute.

With its 8-1 decision in the Buck vs. Bell case on May 2, 1927, the Supreme Court cleared the way for tens of thousands of

sterilizations.

Besides Virginia and California, eugenics laws were passed in 28 additional states, including North Carolina (6,297), Michigan

(3,786) and Georgia (3,284).

Will Taxpayers Get Stuck Again?

Last year, the Virginia's General Assembly passed a resolution expressing "profound regret" for the state's role in eugenics, but

stopped short of a formal apology because of concern that an apology could lead to lawsuits.

Warner spokeswoman Ellen Qualls said after consulting with Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, the governor thought there would be

no "legal repercussions" from issuing an apology.

In Canada, the government of Alberta apologized in 1999 for the forced sterilization of more than 2,800 people. The government

paid more than $140 million to compensate victims.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/2/195413.shtml