Richard Dawkins on Down’s Syndrome Babies: “It Would be Immoral not to Kill Such a Baby in an Abortion”

Richard Dawkins on Down’s Syndrome Babies: “It Would be Immoral not to Kill Such a Baby in an Abortion” August 21, 2014

 

I’m not going to say too much about this. It speaks for itself.

Dr Richard Dawkins got into this Tweet exchange earlier this week:

<@InYourFaceNYer I honestly don’t know what I would do if I were pregnant with a kid with Down Syndrome. Real ethical dilemma.

>@RichardDawkins Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.

That caused a bit of an internet dustup. So, Dr Dawkins clarified things by switching from the impetuous medium of Twitter to a column where he supposedly had more time to think through what he was saying and get it out as he meant it.

Here’s his more introspective take on the question of aborting babies with down’s syndrome.

“For what it’s worth, my own choice would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice would be to abort,”

…“I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare,”

I only have two thoughts to add to this, and I’ll get through them as quickly as possible.

Thought one: Eugenics.

Thought two: This is where a “morality” based on “the desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering” leads to: Putting other people out of your misery by killing them.

That’s all folks.


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