‘Scientism’ guides medicine along a false, fatal journey towards abortion
GENETIC screening of the unborn is now so precise that nine to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, scientists can tell parents with more than 99pc certainty whether an unborn baby might have Down syndrome or Edwards syndrome. Pre-natal screening and diagnosis of unborn babies is standard in maternity hospitals.
With an increasing focus on an abortion vote this year, a process of calm and measured, reasonable and responsible consideration of and attention to the evidence of the practices and policies of what is happening in our hospitals and culture is important.
By our choices, we shape whether or not we are to be responsible to and for each other and contribute to our common good by building a culture of welcome, support and appreciation for every human being.
If science is subject to ethical analysis, how might one evaluate pre-natal screening? There is no difficulty in identifying through a non-invasive diagnosis the presence of a genetic variation or irregularity, and suggesting what treatment a child may require.
However, where screening is a possible first step towards an abortion there is, even if unspecified, a conditional possibility of an act of injustice.
Where the child is not welcomed, it is difficult to put any distance between the diagnosis and the final decision not to welcome the child.
What is the situation in Ireland? At the recent Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment, Professor Fergal Malone, Master of the Rotunda, gave evidence of his hospital’s figures for 2016.
There were 26 cases in which Down syndrome was diagnosed pre-natally. Some 57pc of patients chose to travel to Britain and 43pc continued with their pregnancy.
There were 24 cases of Edwards syndrome diagnosed, of which 12 couples chose to travel to Britain and 12 chose to continue with their pregnancy. Professor Malone said this showed absolutely good and balanced counselling of patients.
“If I had statistics that were 99pc, 1pc one way or the other, that would raise the question of someone else doing something wrong in terms of their balance,” he said.
It is true there is near mathematical equality between the respective choices but their end result is very different.
A more incisive assessment is possible through some consideration of what is owed to the innocent children. Like all unborn children, those with any genetic irregularity such as Down
syndrome are innocent and who will not harm or endanger others.
They are defenceless and at our mercy. Their deaths through abortion are more than likely the result of the genetic variation found through pre-natal screening.
In a passage in his novel, ‘Under the Eye of the Clock’, the late Christopher Nolan pondered human vulnerability. He contrasted the relative innocence of those who lack physical vigour and power and the potential for violence amongst those who were able-bodied.
Nolan asked himself why the able-bodied was crowed over, someone who may after all turn out to be “a potential executioner”, while the baby with reduced mobility, often the subject of fear, was the soul who would “never kill, maim, creed falsehood or hate brotherhood”.
Was Nolan exaggerating or was his imagination over-worked? The Nobel Prize winner Robert Edwards, who developed IVF technology and methods of pre-implantation diagnosis, said “soon it will be a sin of parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease”.
This was no idle prophecy. In the last few days, Mary O’Callaghan, a developmental psychologist at Notre Dame, has pointed out the abortion of babies with Down syndrome is “deeply embedded in obstetrics”, with the consequence that “a substandard model of care that allows for elimination but not treatment” becomes the practice.
The French geneticist Jerome Lejeune, who discovered the genetic cause of Down syndrome, was well aware of the false and fatal path medicine takes when it aborts Down syndrome pregnancies.
WHAT Walker Percy called “Scientism” gives us some idea of the genealogy of this mentality. This is the belief that science can tell us everything we need to know about the world and ourselves, and that we follow its principles and methods in our choices.
It stresses usefulness, efficiency, functionality and productivity and that which does not meet its exacting standards is disposed of with brutal efficiency, human beings included.
Eoghan Ó Tuarisc’s ‘Kyrie’, part of his ‘Aifreann na Marbh’, was conscious of how hard-hearted we can be in our use of technology and science: “Déan trócaire orainn atá gan trócaire; Dar n-ainmhian eoloíochta déan trua.”