LETTERS Being and unbeing
Sir: In your issue of 2 January, I read a letter from a Barbara Smoker, President of the Secular Society.
After considerable waffle, she adum- brated a proposition by which, as far as I could understand, it would be all right to massacre a newborn baby if it were severe- ly handicapped. There was a hint that it might even be all right until the child was 'a three-year-old, say', when it would have become a 'real little person.' After which, I took it, it would not be all right. For then, said Ms Smoker (I bet she's Ms), the child would be equipped 'with a sense of its own identity, with personal relationships, and with an idea of purposes and time — the very things that give human beings full status and rights'.
Well, I thought of writing to you to wonder whether Ms had never noticed that babies of two months, two days or even two minutes had distinct personalities; and to suggest that perhaps the thing which gave human beings full status and rights was to be alive. Then I thought, what the hell? What could ever get through to Ms?
This week I read your leader about Asian women aborting girl children, and your apt observation that this was equally as wrong as denying life to people on the grounds of handicap. It struck me for the first time that had I been conceived today, suffering as I do from muscular dystrophy, I would have been detected by modern scanning as unacceptable, and aborted (or, of course, bopped on the head at birth if Ms had had her way).
Now, while there may be those who think that that would have been no bad thing, I prefer to be alive. And I would like, after all, to make the point to Ms and the members of her socitey.
Quentin Crewe
Le Grand Banc, Oppedette 04110, France
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