Life Unworthy of Life: On the Relationship Between Eugenics and Down Syndrom Abortion

This is a rough draft of a final project due for my sociology class. Some of it will be familiar to readers of this blog as I recount the history of eugenics and Nazi genocide. In it I try to demonstrate the relationship between eugenics and Down syndrome abortion, the moral problem that it presents, and a Christian response.

What if human life could be genetically improved? Imagine a world that is free of disease, disability, poverty, prostitution, and crime. Would not such a world be a utopia? It even sounds a lot like what Christians describe as heaven. How could science help? What would it look like? These are the questions that eugenicists were asking at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries and are still pertinent to us today. In this paper we will look at the history of the eugenics movement and its unfortunate consequences in support of the thesis that the purposes and outcomes of current-day prenatal screening for Down syndrome parallel important facets of eugenic thinking, and that the issue of abortion is central to the debate as it is being used as a eugenic tool. At the end I will attempt to give a Christian response.

The Glory of the Canoe

One of the greatest inventions of mankind is the canoe. This weekend I was reminded that canoeing is one my favorite things to do, which in itself is sad because I haven’t done it since I was in middle school. I was reintroduced to the glory of the canoe on a visit to a relatives’ cabin where Rebecca and I paddled the shallow waters of some lake up north where everyone owns a pontoon boat. She got fed up with my piloting skills and suffered a bout sea-sickness which resulted in hours of puking and cursing me to my face.

But I was to be deterred.

I began to secretly lust for the canoe and would visit my parents under the guise of wanting to spend time with them, but my real intention was to devise a plan to steal the canoe hanging in their rafters. My obsession paralleled that of Captain Ahab’s mania over Moby Dick, though in less vengeful terms. Soon I enlisted the help of the stout Brent Berg and saddled the canoe upon his sturdy frame ordering him to march the edge of the lake. Without the proper licensing we spit the eye of the DNR, and flouted our courage by leaving behind the life jackets. Anyone who capsizes their craft deserves to drown!

We braved the surly waters and splashed through the nefarious waves with maniacal laughter, scoffing at the speed boats who tried to leave us forlorn in their wake. Encountering a sneering water-skier we beat him mercilessly with our paddles to a bloody pulp and left his carcass in the blood-soaked sea for the sharks to tear limb from limb. In response to our egregious offense, Mother Nature tried to threaten us with her thunder and lightening, but we proceeded to punch every drop of rain until her scurrilous clouds fell out of the sky.

Finally we ran aground after navigating through treacherous icebergs and swatting seals and batting penguins out of our way. Our journey had come to an end and we climbed into the strapping Toyota pick up and left the dead to burry their own dead.

Then Brent took the canoe home for the 4th of July weekend I finished my homework.

Love Poetry Fridays

People have been asking me “Where is love poetry friday?” The tell me “That’s the only reason I read your blog.” So here it is you hard-hearted blog haters!

Injuries
Kissing girl good-bye
Her head hit mine, made her cry
Next time will shake hand

And… that is all I can come up with. That’s why LPF is dead.

Chicks Dig Fuel Efficiency

It looks like the days of attracting women via the ‘87 Trans Am are gone. Nowadays the guy driving the Toyota Prius is bound to get a flirty conversation from a female admirer. Who knew four-dollar-a-gallon gas could be such good news for the eco-friendly driver?

According to a study by GM, 9 out of 10 women say they would rather “chat up” a guy who drives the latest fuel efficient cars rather than one who drives a sports car. 4 out of 10 young people think it is a “fashion faux pas” to drive a gas guzzler. And since fashion governs behavior, this is good news for the environment and the legions of Prius owners in my neighborhood.

Speaking of the Prius, I have to say that for a modern hybrid the 45 MPG is actually kind of disappointing. Did everyone forget about the early 90s and the Geo Metro phenomenon? The 1.0 liter three cylinder engine got you 55 MPG easily. No batteries required. But if you were into the hybrid thing, Honda produced one in 2000 (which I remember laughing at when I saw it) that got 70 MPG. It was called the Insight. For all the advantages the Prius might give you at the pump it really isn’t all that spectacular considering the engineering technology that is already out there.

Yet the Prius truly is a fashion statement that is iconic of something larger: a response to global warming and high gas prices. It certainly isn’t the best we can do, but it most certainly is the eco-friendly David that is slaying the gas-guzzling Goliaths.

Does Jesus Command to Love Oursleves?

Brennan Manning asks Can You Love Your Neighbor If You Hate Yourself? From an excerpt of his book The Importance of Being Foolish he writes:

In order to love our neighbors as ourselves we must come to recognize our intrinsic worth and dignity and to love ourselves in the wholesome, appreciative way that Jesus commanded when he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself….

The ability to love oneself is the root and foundation of our ability to love others and to love God.

This comes from a literal reading of the text “Love your neighbor as yourself” that interprets Jesus to be saying we are to love ourselves before we love others. Therefore, self-love is foundational to his ethics. If one does not love others, then one must do the hard work of self-love first before any neighbor love can obtain. Our self-love then is the fountain for all our other-love.

Music Notes for 2008

There haven’t been too many exciting discoveries I’ve made this year in music, but there have been a couple of good songs I’ve been enjoying a lot. Here they are in no particular order.

Trying to Put Your Heart Back Together by Slow Runner. I love how the beat of this song is captured simply by a well placed bass drum. The lyrics are tender and encouraging and the singer sounds like Jeremy Darling (see below for those that don’t know).

A Ghost to Most by the Drive-By Truckers. This has been the discovery of the year so far in that it is unlike anything I’ve ever appreciated before. The style of music is not new but my attraction to it is, and just about everything this band has put out is interesting to me. It makes you feel like you are keeping on with the “keeping on.” I also like how it makes me feel like a hick.

Soul On Fire by Spiritualized. Everything by this band is either love/hate for me. Never have I found music by the same band so polarizing. Soul On Fire is classic Spiritualized psychedelic beauty which does everything right to fit into the “love” category.

Kids by MGMT. I was playing this song after I downloaded it from iTunes and my dad walked in the room and started dancing. He said, “Alright Adam! You are one of the ‘in’ kids.” Enough said.

Graveyard Girl by M83. A retro sound that is delightful and magical from beginning to end with a touch of melodrama melancholy from a teenage poem in the middle.

Stars by Kid Dakota. The Minneapolis guitar extraordinaire Darren Jackson teams up with a sweet drummer to make a ballad worth listening to over and over again.

Your Twin Sized Bed by Death Cab for Cutie. While I would not say I am as excited about their newest album this song is classic Ben Gibbard storytelling on top of a poppy melody that sounds happy enough, though strangely sad.

I Had My Reasons by The Great Upset. Yes, I cannot forget Jeremy, Bart and the boys. This is one of their slower ones at the end of the disc, and it is one of the better Christian songs I’ve heard in awhile. You can preview the song here.

Geeze, I guess there were more than I thought!

Little League

Last night I went for a walk and stumbled upon a little league game playing at the park. It was very nostalgic and fun. Here are some haikus for the helluva it.

Nostalgia
Little league ballgame
Boy sluggers becoming men
Don’t grow up too fast!

Some Things Never Change
Catcher’s mask too big
The bulge in the chain link fence
Home plate needs a sweep

Jumping Up and Down
Boy hit a long ball
Rounding the bases he slid
Was thrown out at third

0 and 2
Call em out on strikes
Umpire is a grad student
Wants to get home soon

Contentment
Dad sits in the stands
Keeping tabs with a scorecard
Good life in the shade

Obama as Messiah

The Washington Times has an editorial comparing Barack Obama to Aimee Semple McPherson as a kind of religious celebrity, albeit of the leftist brand. Whether the comparison is apt is not as interesting as to what has actually been said about the first black presidential nominee:

In The Name Of Eugenics

My continued interest in eugenics beginning with my visit to the Deadly Medicine exhibit at the Science Museum has been supplemented by a comprehensive history of the movement in Daniel J. Kevles’ In The Name Of Eugenics. In it he details the origins of the idea that natural selection can be controlled to weed out undesirable traits such as “feeblemindedness” and moral delinquency supposedly contained in human heredity. By the 1920’s the idea took on religious proportions and produced literature that had the flavor of evangelistic zeal.

The Narnian

I just finished listening to the ten hour reading of a C.S. Lewis biography entitled The Narnian by Alan Jacobs. Books about Lewis are a dime a dozen, and it hard to know where to begin when trying to find a concise but accurate biography that is not soaked with naive adulation or excessively absorbed detail. InterVarsity Press alone has published 10 titles in the last 5 years on various topics ranging from his philosophical arguments to his literary work to his mystical imagination. Several biographies have already been written by authoritative eye witnesses such as Walter Hooper, George Sawyer, and the son of Lewis’ late wife Douglas Gresham. Why would the world need yet another Lewis biography? A.N. Wilson gave it a try by attempting give a more “honest” account of Lewis’ defects, but was met with scorn by those who knew him best. Jacobs has the advantage of writing with a generation of time’s distance from the vantage point of a twenty-first century literary scholar, where at Wheaton College, he had access to the largest collection of original and extant copies of Lewis’ writings to date.

What I learned about the beloved Christian writer is probably common knowledge to fans of Lewis, but no less entertaining: