Related to Rick's recent post about the advertising in Spain for a prenatal test for Down Syndrome called "Tranquility", here's an equally frightening essay by Renate Lindeman, a spokesperson for the Dutch parent group Downpride.
She writes:
Denmark was the first European country to introduce routine screening for Down syndrome in 2006 as a public health-care program. France, Switzerland and other European countries soon followed. The unspoken but obvious message is that Down syndrome is something so unworthy that we would not want to wish it for our children or society. With the level of screening among pregnant Danish women as high as 90 percent, the Copenhagen Post reported in 2011 that Denmark “could be a country without a single citizen with Down syndrome in the not too distant future.”
... like other European governments, the Netherlands is currently considering permanently including the NIPT, primarily aimed at Down syndrome, in its prenatal screening program. An American-European-Canadian study on DNA screening for Down syndrome was published in the New England Journal of Medicine this year. Dick Oepkes, chairman of the Dutch NIPT consortium, called results “positive,” stating in a recent interview: “Surveys show women experience waiting for test results arduous. Offering the DNA test as a first step will allow women who consider terminating the pregnancy to make their choice before they have felt the fetus move.”
Lindeman has two children with Down Syndrome. She gets right to the crux of what's really at stake behind the rhetoric of the push for such testing, including what makes the "Tranquility" advertising approach that Rick found so horrifying:
Screening and selection say nothing about the inherent worth of people with Down syndrome. They say everything about the elevation of the capacity for economic achievement above other human traits. My children are fascinating, demanding, delightful, present, annoying, dependent, loving, cuddly, different, unpredictable and completely human, just like other children. They are not a mistake, a burden or a reflection of my “personal choice,” but an integral part of society.
If we allow our governments to set up health programs that result in the systematic elimination of a group of people quite happy being themselves, under the false pretense of women’s rights, than that is a personal choice — one we have to face honestly.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
My colleagues at the John Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought, Michael J. Naughton, Jeanne G. Buckeye, Kenneth E. Goodpaster and T. Dean Maines, have written a book applying the principle of subsidiarity in a concrete context. This might be a good resource for those teaching or working with Catholic social teachings. Their description:
Respect in Action: Applying Subsidiarity in Business is a book addressed to business leaders committed to implementing sustainable organizational changes consistent with the key principles of Catholic Social Thought. It is directed to managers whose decisions and purposes influence not only the economy, but the lives of men and women around the world who work for them. Subsidiarity invites organizations to pursue the common good through practices that take the integral development of the human person at least as seriously as economic prosperity. We believe this book has something important to say to practitioners as well as to business faculty and students.
You can download it (for free) as a PDF or e-book here.
Friday, June 5, 2015
Having just finished teaching "Payment Systems" again this past semester, I was delighted to come across this "news" item (on the "Eye of the Tiber" blog), about a particularly Catholic use of evolving electronic methods of payment.
Monday, May 18, 2015
With Minnesota's Governor threatening to veto the bipartisan education funding bill later today, sending the legislature into a special session this summer, I'm happy to report that something positive came out of this past session. On Monday, Governor Dayton signed the Prenatal Trisomy Diagnosis Awareness Act. It passed unanimously in the House and 58-1 in the Senate. That doesn't happen much anymore!
Effective August 1st, health care practitioners in Minnesota who perform genetic tests on pregnant women for Patua syndrome (trisomy 13), Edwards syndrome (trisomy 18), or Downs syndrome (trisomy 21), will have to provide specific information if the results are positive. The information has to include "up-to-date and evidence-based information about the trisomy conditions that has been reviewed by medical experts and national trisomy organizations", including expected "physical, developmental, educational, and psychosocial outcomes", life expectancy, and contact information for nonprofit organizations that provide information and support services for trisomy conditions.
You'd think such information should be routinely given, but 20 years ago when I received a diagnosis of Trisomy 21 for my son, it certainly was not part of anything I got from our genetic counselor or doctor; anectodal evidence suggests things aren't much different now.
According to my friends (and a former student) at the Minnesota Catholic Conference, some of the key factors in getting passed were the diverse coalition of supporters, bipartisan authorship, pepole with disabilities serving as the principal public advocates, and message discipline (this is an information bill--and who is against more information? Well, based on the sole vote against this, apparently Senator Katie Sieben.)
Though similar bills have been passed in six other states [Massachusetts (2012), Kentucky (2013), Pennsylvania (2014), Maryland (2014), Louisiana (2014) Delaware (2014), and Ohio (2014)] Minnesota's is the first to include Trisomy 13 and 18. Anyone who wants information on this bill or the background of its passage, feel free to contact Jason Adkins, Executive Director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Update to my recent post mentioning the prosecution of a the right-to-die group Final Exit Network Inc. here in Minnesota: they were convicted today assisting in the suicide of a woman who took her life in 2007 after years of suffering with chronic pain; it's the first time they've been found guilty of this charge. They do, of course, intend to appeal for violation of the First Amendment.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Mary Rice Hasson, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has an
interview on National Review Online that offers a fiery response to Frank Bruni's recent NYT piece, “Catholicism Undervalues Women.” She suggests that "Bruni needs to take off his 70s-style feminist goggles, because they’re distorting his view of women and the Church."
She continues:
For decades, the Church went silent when liberals ridiculed “outmoded” teachings on the male priesthood or the immorality of contraception, for example. As Cardinal Dolan said a few years back, the Church became “gun-shy” in the face of cultural disapproval and silenced itself, suffering a self-inflicted catechetical and moral “laryngitis.” Because the Church “forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice” on issues that matter to women, the Left has controlled the narrative. They define ‘women’s issues’ and ‘what’s good for women’ on their terms. So the average Catholic woman thinks about these issues much like a secular feminist, demanding “equal access” for women to all “jobs” in the Church, including the priesthood. And it doesn’t help when some women, schooled more in secular feminism than they are in Catholic theology, encounter priests who tip over into clericalism — an attitude strongly criticized by Pope Francis.
Hasson invites Bruni to "Come meet the smart, accomplished Catholic women in my world — they love the Church, embrace her teachings, and know that their gifts are deeply important to the Church."
Hasson just edited a
book called "Promise and Challenge: Catholic Women Reflect on Feminism, Complementarity, and the Church," a collection of essays by some of the Catholic women in Hasson's world: me, Hasson, Helen Alvare, Sr. Sara Butler, Sr. Mary Madeline Todd, Margaret McCarthy, Deborah Savage, Theresa Farnan, Cathy Pakaluk, Erika Bachiochi, Mary FioRito, and Mary Eberstadt. My chapter is
The Promise and the Threat of the 'Three' in Integral Complementarity, addressing some of the barriers to men and women collaborating more fruitfully in the life of the Church arising out of fear of the unknown Church that might emerge from such collaboration, and lingering distrust between men and women created by the sexual abuse crisis and women’s advocacy for abortion.
