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-----Original Message-----
From: Justice-For-All Moderator <jfa@telesys.tnet.com>
To: justice@mailbot.com <justice@mailbot.com>
Date: Wednesday, April 21, 1999 1:37 AM
Subject: Bristo: Stop Singer! Kevorkian: Stopped!


>
>
>                      Justice For All
>
>                      jfa@mailbot.com
>
>          Bristo: Stop Singer!  Kevorkian: Stopped!
>
>Marca Bristo on killing babies with disabilities:
>
> "Good afternoon.  My name is Marca Bristo and I am the
>Chairperson of the National Council on Disability, an independent
>federal agency advising the President and the Congress on public
>policy issues affecting the 54 million Americans with disabilities and
>their families.  I want to thank Christopher Benek and Princeton
>Students Against Infanticide for inviting me to participate in today's
>event.
>
> I have read Peter Singer's Practical Ethics, and I am
>extremely concerned that Princeton University has chosen to honor
>the author of this dangerous work with an esteemed position that will
>influence the way future leaders of America and the World will think
>about the value of a disabled person's life.  I am not a philosopher or
>an ethicist, but I know what is right and what is wrong.  Condoning
>the murder of infants is wrong.  Devaluing the life of a human because
>of her disability is discriminatory, hateful, and bigoted.  Peter Singer
>can package his ideas as utilitarian, practical, ethical, logical, even
>reasonable if he chooses.  The plain truth is that Peter Singer thinks
>people with disabilities have lives that aren't worth living.
>
> Singer's arguments have a seductive way of pulling you in and
>convincing you that parents should be able to dispose of their baby
>after it is born if that baby has a serious disability like spina bifida,
>hemophilia, or Down syndrome.  In one passage, he reasons:
>
> When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of
>another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of
>happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed.  The loss of
>happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier
>life for the second.  Therefore, if killing the haemophiliac infant has
>no
>adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right
>to kill him.
>
> Singer argues that disabled infants may be killed ethically
>because they are not sentient beings.  Sentient or not, babies with
>disabilities grow up to be children and then adults with disabilities.  As
>an adult, this same person will likely have a much different view of his
>quality of life than his parent might have had based on the doctor's
>predictions at the time of birth.  Studies have shown that people with
>disabilities usually have a much higher perception of the quality of their
>lives than people without disabilities have for them.
>
> Wrapping his ideas in philosophical and academic rhetoric,
>Singer argues that parents who want to have two "normal" children
>and inadvertently end up with a disabled child should be able to kill
>the disabled child and "replace" it with a nondisabled child.  On page
>188 of Practical Ethics, Singer writes:
>
> It may still be objected that to replace either a fetus or a
>newborn infant is wrong because it suggests to disabled people living
>today that their lives are less worth living than the lives of people who
>are not disabled.  Yet it is surely flying in the face of reality to deny
>that, on average, this is so.
>
>Singer's core vision, that the life of a person with a disability is worth
>less than the life of a person without a disability, and therefore it is
>okay to kill infants with disabilities if that is what the parent wants to
>do, amounts to a defense of genocide.   It is sad that just as Dr.
>Kevorkian has finally been recognized in a court of law as being a
>criminal for acting on the basis of similar beliefs in the case of
>physicianassisted suicide, Princeton sees fit to hire a proponent of
>infanticide to teach ethics to undergraduates.
>
> Parents of a newborn with a disability are often in a state of
>shock and adjustment for a long period after the baby is born.  Once
>this phase is over, most parents come to value their child with a
>disability and to learn about the benefits the entire family can realize
>from the perspective this child brings them.  Singer would like to give
>parents an easy out so they can go ahead and have another child to
>"replace" the defective baby.  What parents in that situation need is
>information and support so that they can give that child the best
>possible chance to develop into an independent adult.  They don't
>need a nudge from their doctor or their insurance company to put the
>baby out of its misery (and save the insurance company a few
>hundred thousand dollars as part of the bargain).
>
> I recognize that Princeton is an academic institution and that a
>free flow of ideas and vigorous debate must be fostered in such a
>setting.  However, I question whether Princeton would hire a faculty
>member who argued that parents should be permitted to kill their
>infant daughters so that they could have a son.  Would Princeton hire
>a professor who advocated terminating healthy babies born into
>poverty on the theory that their quality of life would be less than that
>of a baby born into an affluent family?   No.  The University would
>draw a line and say that the marketplace of ideas has no place for
>such patently hateful, harmful, barbarous views.  And yet, I am here
>today because, for me and millions of people with disabilities, Peter
>Singer's ideas belong outside the marketplace of dignified academic
>discourse.
>
> Moreover, to the extent that Singer's ideas are given the
>prestigious imprimatur of Princeton University, their influence may
>soon be felt in American public policy.  Singer's views on euthanasia
>for the terminally ill, coupled with pressures from managed care
>companies to keep health care costs down, may result in patients
>being pressured by their physicians to terminate their lives rather than
>undergo costly treatment or live in pain.
>
> I am here today because I cannot stand by and watch one of
>the world's leading academic institutions elevate such dangerous ideas.
> As my good friend and the esteemed leader of the disability rights
>movement Justin Dart, Jr., has warned, if Singer comes to Princeton,
>"the prestige of Princeton will seem to condone the murder of babies
>with disabilities where this barbarian practice still exists."  Moreover,
>the students exposed to his ideas will go on to run universities,
>government, fortune 500 companies, and other seats of power and
>influence.
>
> I am here today with a heavy heart.  And yet when I look at
>the list of the Board of Trustees of Princeton University, I maintain
>some hope that this group may still reconsider its decision to hire
>Peter Singer.  Princeton University does not condone hate.  Princeton
>University does not abide racism or antisemitism or homophobia.
>Princeton University should not abide Peter Singer.
>
> On July 26, 1990, when President George Bush signed the Americans
>with
>Disabilities Act into law, he quoted from the Declaration of Independence:
>"We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal,
that
>they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."  The
>United States Congress and the President have recognized the
>fundamental rights of people with disabilities to make choices, pursue
>meaningful careers, live independently, and participate fully in all
>aspects of society.  I am hopeful that Princeton University will move
>promptly to demonstrate its commitment to these principles as well.
>
> Thank you."
>
>--
>
>In Case You Missed It:
>
>            Kevorkian Sentenced To Prison: Mich. Judge Tells Doctor
>                          'Consider Yourself Stopped'
>                                By Edward Walsh
>                         Washington Post Staff Writer
>
>     A Michigan judge sentenced Jack Kevorkian to 10 to 25 years in
>prison for
>murder yesterday, bringing to an end Kevorkian's nine-year crusade for the
>legalization of assisted suicide during which he says he has helped more
than
>130 people to end their lives.
>
>     Kevorkian, 70, a retired pathologist known as "Dr. Death," grinned
>as he
>was led from a Pontiac, Mich., courtroom in handcuffs shortly after the
>sentence was handed down by Oakland County Circuit Judge Jessica Cooper.
>
>     "You had the audacity to go on national TV, show the world what you
did
>and dare the prosecution to stop you," Cooper told him. "Well, sir,
consider
>yourself stopped."
>
>     Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder last month in the
death
>last September of Thomas Youk, 52, an accountant who suffered from
>amyotrophic
>lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig's disease. In what he later
>acknowledged was an attempt to goad prosecutors into charging him to
attract
>attention to the assisted-suicide cause, Kevorkian videotaped himself
>injecting Youk with lethal drugs and gave the tape to the CBS News
>program "60
>Minutes," which broadcast excerpts from it.
>
>     Michigan prosecutors have charged Kevorkian four times with assisting
>suicide, but those cases ended with three acquittals and a mistrial. The
Youk
>case was significantly different, not only because of the videotape but
>because Kevorkian admitted that he injected the lethal drugs into Youk's
>hand.
>In the earlier cases, Kevorkian said that those who sought his help started
>the flow of lethal drugs themselves through use of a crude "suicide
machine"
>that he built for that purpose.
>
>     The white-haired Kevorkian, who was later taken to a state prison in
>Jackson, Mich., sat stone-faced and silent as Cooper handed down the
sentence
>recommended by prosecutors.
>
>     "This trial was not about the political or moral correctness of
>euthanasia," Cooper said, according to the Associated Press. "It was all
>about
>you, sir. It was about lawlessness. It was about disrespect for a society
>that
>exists and flourishes because of the strength of its legal system."
>
>     Kevorkian could have been sentenced to life in prison. Cooper also
>sentenced him to a concurrent three to seven years in prison for delivery
>of a
>controlled substance. Prosecutors said Kevorkian will be eligible for
parole
>in six years and eight months.
>
>     Kevorkian acted as his own attorney during last month's brief trial
but
>he put on virtually no defense while ignoring Cooper's pleas to use a
lawyer.
>His fate may have been sealed when Cooper ruled that his only two
witnesses,
>Youk's widow, Melody, and his brother, Terrance, could not testify because
>their assertions about Kevorkian's "intent" to relieve Youk's pain and
>suffering were not relevant in a murder trial.
>
>     Yesterday, Melody Youk made an appeal for Kevorkian, telling Cooper
that
>"my husband had come to the end of his life as he chose to live it. He
>was not
>depressed. He was not a victim. He requested Doctor Kevorkian's help and
was
>grateful for it."
>
>     Cooper refused to release Kevorkian on bail while he appeals the
>conviction, saying she could not trust his promise not to participate in
more
>suicides. "This is what he believes his life mission is," the AP quoted
>her as
>saying.
>
>     Kevorkian's critics applauded the tough sentence. The American Medical
>Association said it should be a "strong deterrent to those who would take
the
>lives of patients prematurely."
>
>     Carol Cleigh, a member of Not Dead Yet, an organization that
represents
>the disabled, said outside the courtroom, "This is not the end of a fight.
>This is just the end of a serial killer in Michigan."
>
>
>--
>Fred Fay
>Chair, Justice For All
>jfa@mailbot.com
>HTTP://www.mailbot.com/justice
>
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