I have been looking recently at the arguments being made by disability rights activists firmly committed to protecting a woman's legal right to abortion, who nonetheless feel that selective abortions based on a prenatal diagnosis of a disability are morally problematic. Some of them have been articulating what is coming to be called the "expressivist argument" against such selective abortions. Adrienne Asch, for example, argues that "What differentiates abortion after prenatal diagnosis (and abortions for sex selection) from all other abortions is that abortion is a response to characteristics of the fetus and would-be child and not to the situation of the woman." Selective abortion, she argues, "expresses negative or discriminatory attitudes not merely about a disabling trait, but about those who carry it." This message, she explains, is that "a single trait stands in for the whole, the trait obliterates the whole . . . The tests send the message that there's no need to find out about the rest." She makes an "any/particular distinction," arguing that it is not morally problematic for a woman to abort because she does not want any child at this time; however, it is morally problematic for a woman to abort because she does not want this particular child, based on one trait identified in a prenatal test. The latter decision, she argues, "disparages the lives of existing and future disabled people", hinders the wider social acceptance of people with disabilities, and thus concretely affects society's willingness to support the lives of those with disabilities.
Dov Fox and Christopher L. Griffin, Jr., both students at Yale Law School, I believe, have been trying to test some of the components of that argument empirically. They just posted on SSRN a fascinating article reporting some of their conclusions: "The Collateral Impact of the ADA on Disability-Selective Abortion." Here's the abstract:
This Article examines the unexpected impact that law can have on social behavior that the law was not intended to regulate. We explore this phenomenon by considering the relation between a federal antidiscrimination statute, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the practice of abortion following fetal diagnosis for Down syndrome. Our empirical study of U.S. natality data suggests that the ADA served to prevent the existence of people among the very class the Act was designed to protect. Using regression analysis, we control for social, economic, demographic, and technological confounds and find that the birthrate of children with Down syndrome significantly decreased after the ADA's passage. We explain this paradox by showing how media coverage of the ADA and Down syndrome reinforced negative understandings and expectations among prospective parents about what it means to give birth to a child with a genetic disability. We discuss the implications of these findings for reproduction and antidiscrimination law.
Fox and Griffin analyze two possible hypotheses about the "expressive externalities that the ADA could have generated with respect to the practice of disability-selective abortion." The "uplifting" message of the ADA could be that "the ADA's affirmation of social equality and disability rights discourages disability-selective abortion by tempering negative attitudes toward people with disabilities. According to this hypothesis, the ADA, by barring employment discrimination and assuring access to public serivces and accommodations, conveyed to parents the promise that prospective children with disabilities could lead happy and productive lives." In contrast, the "disappointing" message of the ADA could be that "the ADA, by requiring sometimes onerous workplace adjustments for persons with disabilities, led to a media backlash driven by commercial employers. On this account, disapproving stories about people with disabilities, covered widely by print and television sources, combined with detailed news reports on selective abortion procedures, to convince parents that children with disabilities would not be accepted into the world as social equals."
When they subjected both hypotheses to econometric analysis, they found support for the latter hypothesis. The data is too rich and complex, and my understanding of statistical analysis is so rudimentary, that I think the best I can do in this post is to quote from their conclusion:
The econometric analysis . . . showed that Down syndrome birthrates decreased significantly and steadily from 1993 to 1998. The decline of 13 to 18 Down syndrome births per 100,000 was robust to inclusion of demographic and health-related control variables and against the backdrop of highly stable prenatal screening rates. We did not find supportive evidence for a similar effect among infants with spina bifida and cleft palate. [Note from Lisa Schiltz: This is significant for their argument because these are "two well-known disabilities for which prospective parents do not routinely screen." ] Part V [of the Article] confirmed our argument about the expressivist effects of the ADA on Down-selective abortion by explaining away other immeasurable confounding variables related to technology, law, and medicine."
It seems to me that Asch and Fox & Griffen are attacking (from two entirely opposite directions) the same basic insight about our contemporary society: there is a fundamental dissonance between, on the one hand, our assertions that persons with disabilities possess the same full measure of human dignity as those without disabilities, and, on the other hand, our actions when faced with the concrete reality of assuming the responsibility of caring for those with disabilities.
In the current Commonweal, I review two new books: The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology, edited by Daniel Groody, and United States Welfare Policy: A Catholic Response by Thomas Massaro, SJ. As an inducement to reading the whole thing, here's the opening:
Two fears make Catholics wary of faith-based arguments about economic policy. First is the fact that policy questions turn on the exercise of prudential judgment rather than bright-line moral absolutes. It is easy to draw lines in the abortion debate based on the church's teaching;; it is significantly more difficult to draw such lines when the debate concerns the most effective way to address poverty. Bishops may deny Communion to a prochoice politician, but can one imagine them doing the same to an economist? Second, in light of this uncertainty, efforts to connect the church's teaching to specific economic policies arae often viewed more as partisan posturing than faithful discipleship, exacerbating a fear that too much noise about the political here-and-now may drown out the gospel's proclamation of a world to come.
Archbishop Charles Chaput has just published a book called "Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life." Here is a review by Fr. Robert Imbelli, a theologian at Boston College. He writes:
. . . Archbishop Chaput has written a book that is informed, measured, civil, and pointed. It should be read, discussed, taken to heart in the United States and beyond. In many ways his message is simple, though certainly not simplistic. He puts the question forthrightly: “What needs to be done by Catholics today for their country?” and his response is equally forthright: "The answer is: Don’t lie. If we say we’re Catholic, we need to prove it. America’s public life needs people willing to stand alone, without apologies, for the truth of the Catholic faith and the common human values it defends (p. 197).
I find here a clear echo of what the Apostle Paul says to the Ephesians as a requirement of their union in Christ. “Therefore, put away all falsehood, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, for we are members of one another” (Eph 4:25).
For some reservations about and objections to Archbishop's approach to these matters, you can go to thisCommonweal post, and the attached comments.
Have any MOJ bloggers or readers read the book? Any thoughts, reactions, reviews?
Doug Kmiec argues that "the Democratic platform language on abortion takes several notable steps toward specific, constructive ways to honor human life." I appreciate the new platform's inclusion of prenatal care, income support, and adoption programs as national priorities. But, like Linda Hirshman, I was more struck by the absence of the "safe, legal, and rare" mantra. Unlike Hirshman, though, I had always taken some comfort in the "rare." As Michael points out, Hirshman counts this new direction as progress, since the earlier version of the platform "asked that women not have abortions unless they absolutely must."
Did the platform's drafters share Hirshman's sentiment, or did they view the "safe, legal, and rare" language as superfluous in light of the call for prenatal care, income support, and adoption services? If the latter is the case, I would gently remind them that, in the painful national conversation about abortion, language is rarely superfluous.
A couple of days ago, Linda Hirshman posted an essay on Slate titled “Unnecessarily Evil: Reclaiming the Morality of Abortion and the Overdue Change to the Democratic Party Platform.” In it, she argues that it is time for pro-choicers to leave the pragmatic “safe, legal, and rare” language behind and reclaim the moral highground in the abortion debate.Toward that end, she is pleased that “The Democratic Party platform of 2008 finally dropped its old abortion language ("safe, legal and rare"), which had asked that women not have abortions unless they absolutely must. The 2008 platform … says instead, ‘The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.’"
The essay ends with this:“The wrong question will always lead to the wrong answer. Not coincidentally, the founding text of the Post-Abortion Syndrome movement is called "Making Abortion Rare." The Democratic platform of 2008 offers an opportunity to put an end to this self-destructive cycle of Safe, Legal, and Rare, otherwise known as regret, depression, and self-denigration. In its place, it can finally argue for the value of women's lives.”
Today's Chicago Tribunereports on Cardinal George's deposition testimony and the resulting sexual abuse settlement with plaintiffs' lawyers. (HT: Commonweal) Maybe someone can place this in a more positive light for me, but it seems like the Church was not taking abuse allegations seriously in Chicago, even as late as 2006. For example:
In the investigation of Bennett, the deposition finds the cardinal and church officials received four detailed allegations of sexual abuse dating back to 2002. But they did not act to remove Bennett from his church until 2006, despite two recommendations from the archdiocese review board months earlier, according to the deposition.
Instead, Bennett was placed under the supervision of a monitor, Rev. Leonard Dubi, who apparently was Bennett's close friend. George disregarded a recommendation by an archdiocese review board to remove Bennett in October 2005 and again in November, attributing the delay to the priest's lack of representation by a canon lawyer.
By the time he was removed, the deposition reveals, more than a dozen allegations had mounted against the priest—a fact the archdiocese failed to tell parishioners and the public.
George's testimony and church correspondence on Bennett also indicated that the archdiocese's vicar for priests, Rev. Edward Grace, himself a lawyer, played a role in coaching clergy to deny allegations.
In 2002, a male victim voluntarily underwent a lie-detector test that showed he was telling the truth. The cardinal says he never received that information. In 2003, a female victim tells archdiocese officials specific details about freckles on Bennett's scrotum and a round birthmark on his back that led an archdiocese review board to conclude that sexual abuse "did happen."
Grace advised Bennett on how to handle the victim's knowledge of his private parts, according to a memo. According to the testimony, Grace told Bennett in November 2005 to get a note from a dermatologist questioning whether the scrotum marks might be "aging marks" and may not have been present at the time of the allegation.
Related to my earlier post on the movie "Tropic Thunder," I just got this e-mail from the advocacy group The Arc. Special Olympics, the Down Sydrome Association of America, and the National Down Syndrome Congress are among the others joining this call for a boycott. The "Blueberryshoes" 60-second video is powerful (and short).
Arc members and friends,
The movie "Tropic Thunder" opens nationwide this week and reportedly contains many offensive uses of the word "retard" and a negative portrayal of a character with an intellectual disability named "Simple Jack." You may have received other e-mails and links about this.
Being called "retarded" is painful to persons with intellectual disabilities. Language matters; it can cut human beings down or build them up. Here's what we’d like people to do:
Boycott the movie and if you can, donate the dollars you would have spent to a disability organization you support.
Instead of seeing the movie, take a minute to watch this short :60 second public service announcement made for the Arc of Northern Virginia. www.blueberryshoes.com There is much more power in this "R" word. Send this link to everyone you know!
Take time to talk with others about why language matters. You can use the "Hate Speech" flyer prepared by The Arc of the U.S. [here].
Thank you!
UPDATE: The legitimacy of this boycott has been the matter of intense debate within my own household, with about an even split between those who think that it's a perfectly legitimate occasion to take a public stand on behalf of the most vulnerable population in our society today, and others who think that the film seems to be making fun of the vanity and shallowness of actors, rather than people with disabilities. Those in the latter camp argue you can't judge without seeing the movie. But that defeats the whole purpose of the boycott. It's a quandary.......
In the New York Times, David Brooks has this op-ed about China, America, and competing world-views. A bit:
The world can be divided in many ways — rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian — but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality.
This is a divide that goes deeper than economics into the way people perceive the world. If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.
These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.
It seems to me that a "Catholic" way of seeing the world might complicate, or at least diversify, Brooks's taxonomy. A "Catholic" view, one might think, is "individualist", in the sense that it emphasizes, and has as its focus, the worth of each and every human person. At the same time, a "Catholic" view -- while not "collectivist" (or statist) -- also sees the person in "context" and appreciates the role of societies (again, not merely "the state", but societies).
I haven't read it all yet, but the introduction sets forth her concern about the current feminist discourse about how to "help" Muslim women. In this discourse, she writes
. . . there is an expectation that Muslims, particularly women, will eventually value the same rights and social orderings as those of their benefactors in the West. Yet when Muslim women consistently articulate a different vision for themselves, it is a source of concern and puzzlement that can only be resolved through judgments about the 'progress' of thier consciousness, education, and/or experience relative to 'Western' women. This article seeks to challenge those judgments. To do so, I examine the Liberal theoretical underpinnings of these scholarly and activist projects to reveal how they advance a particular idea of human flourishing that seeks to ultimately 'reform' or extinguish those life forms (including traditional Islam) which do not comport with it.
In the first section of the article, I examine how Liberalism's justification for colonialism has been sublimated in Liberal (legal) feminism which subconsciously continues traditional Liberal political theory's judgments about the "East." I suggest that most Liberal feminists also have a specific idea of women's flourishing that prevents it from fully comprehending Muslim women who choose to adhere to Islam, which is, in their view, a hopelessly patriarchal and gender oppressive religions. Liberal notions of flourishing require progress towards a Liberal society. As such, "reform" is used to further this vision. I argue that Liberal feminism also shares this 'narrative progress' that reduces non-Liberal societies to "developing" and, consequently, global southern women to victims.
Yet, many women in the global south reject this characterization of their existence. In the second part of the article, I offer some examples of Muslim women's visions of flourishing that show both overlap with Liberal values and, more importantly, divergence. I propose that Muslim women's adherence to religion must be accepted as legitimate expressions of flourishing even if we, as Western feminists, are skeptical about the freedom of their choice. I urge feminists who have continued to be extremely incredulous about Muslim women's choices to live according to Islam, to re-evaluate and see these women as exerting power in their own lives.
It struck me reading this that Choudhury is engaged in precisely the type of work that Pope Benedict is challenging us all to engage in -- broadening the discussion about how to engage modernity from the largely Western concerns about secular vs. Christian viewpoints to include the rest of the world. That was certainly one of the major thrusts of his Regensburg address. He also urged that same larger focus in one of the most interesting books I read the past year, the dialogue between Jurgen Habermas and then-Cardinal Ratzinger, reprinted in Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion. In that book, Ratzinger wrote:
. . . although the two great cultures of the West, that is, the culture of the Christian faith and that of secular rationality, are an important contributory factor (each in its own way) throughout the world and in all cultures, nevertheless they are de facto not universal. This means that the question put by Jurgen Habermas' colleague in Teheran seems to be not devoid of significance -- namely, the question of whether a comparative study of cultures and the sociology of religion suggest that Europan secularization is an exceptional development and one that needs to be corrected. . . .
At any rate, it is a fact that our secular rationality may seem very obvious to our reason, which has been formed in the West; but qua rationality, it comes up against its limitations when it attempts to demonstrate itself. The proof for it is in reality linked to specific cultural contexts, and it must acknowledge that it cannot as such be reproduced in the whole of mankind. This also means that it cannot be completely operative in the whole of mankind. In other words, the rational or ethical or religious formula that would embrace the whole world and unite all persons does not exist; or, at least, it is unattainable at the present moment. This is why the so-called 'world ethos' remains an abstraction.
And, yes, this does mean that Ratzinger has to conclude, as he does in this same talk:
The natural law has remained (especially in the Catholic Church) the key issue in dialogues with the secular society and with other communities of faith in order to appeal to the reason we share in common and to seek the basis for a consensus about the ethical principles of law in a secular, pluralistic society. Unfortunately, this instrument has become blunt.
Interesting challenges. It's very exciting to see them being approached from the non-Christian perspective.
From the "stuff Catholics might think is funny" file: For more on the proposed AALS boycott (discussed in severalearlier MOJ posts), try this (from Concurring Opinions) and this, by San Diego's Prof. Tom Smith. There are some (I think) funny back-and-forths in the comments about whether Jesuit schools (like those at which some calling for the boycott teach) are really Catholic schools (and therefore also deserving of boycotts, given the Church's teachings on marriage and sexuality). (To my Jesuit friends . . . I kid! I kid!)
