Trig Palin – Rockstanding

Of the blogs I look at regularly, one that I have often visited and am often enlightened by is Wesley J. Smith’s Secondhand Smoke. Smith says his blog “considers issues involving assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation.” There are a lot of issues he deals with that are not isolated to the world of science but rather intersect with our lives every day.

For example, the whole furor around the nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be vice president by John McCain has brought to the forefront the issue of Down syndrome children and the divergent views about whether people should knowingly give birth to children with this condition. I have already given my views on the subject on this blog, but there are certainly those who disagree as seen just by comments posted here.

Physician and writer Rahul K. Parikh gives what by all appearances is a concerned response to Palin’s decision in an article in Salon:

By knowingly giving birth to a Down syndrome child, Palin represents a minority of women. A 2002 study found that about 90 percent of pregnancies in the United States where the fetus was diagnosed with Down syndrome were terminated.

Rabid anti-choice activists have called that trend eugenics via medicine. But try telling that to a mother who is told early on in her pregnancy that she will be raising a child who will have a host of medical and developmental problems, requiring intense medical and social attention for the rest of his or her life. It can be tragic and nearly impossible news to bear.

Kids with special needs require and deserve intense therapies and attention to their needs. That’s likely something Palin, with her political and social stature, can afford both financially and emotionally. But that may not be the case for other families, who have to struggle to balance work with home and family. They simply may not be up to the challenge of raising a child with Down syndrome. Sadly, kids with developmental problems like Down syndrome are at a higher risk for being abused by parents and other caregivers.

And if you can’t provide that, what should you do? Well Parikh doesn’t say, but by labeling Palin “anti-choice” gives the reader a pretty good idea. Yes, let the mother choose, but not the child. Of course it seems compassionate to consider the poor mother and family of a Down syndrome child and what they will have to face. Smith addresses such “compassion” in an article “Waging War on the Weak” that he wrote for the Discovery Institute:

(The “new eugenics”) perceives some lives as having greater value than others, and which in some cases sees death—including active euthanasia and assisted suicide—as an appropriate “solution” to the problems of human suffering. The original eugenics movement expressed this relativistic view of human life through hate-filled rhetoric; for example, eugenicists described disabled babies like Miracle in terms that today would be considered hate speech. Thus, as recounted in Edwin Blacks’ splendid history of eugenics, War Against the Weak , Margaret Sanger took “the extreme eugenic view that human ‘weeds’ should be ‘exterminated.’”

Today’s new eugenicists are not that crass, of course. Indeed, rather than screaming hate and pejoratives from the rooftops, they instead ooze unctuous compassion as they croon about a “quality of life” ethic and preventing the weak—against whom they are secretly at war—from “suffering.” But behind the politically correct language, and indeed, hiding within the hearts of those who perceive themselves as profoundly caring, lurks the same old disdain of the helpless who offend because they remind us of our own imperfections and mortality.

This kind of thinking is subtle but deadly. Smith does a great job of exposing this kind of thinking in his blog. Are these issues important or is this just a big fuss over little things? No, not when you consider that health care is a major issue in this election.

Gov. Sarah Palin's job performance as mother is being scrutinized. — Gov. Sarah Palin's job performance as a mother has come under scrutiny.

Albert Mohler weighs in on the uncomfortable announcement that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant:

The Palin family asked to be left to deal with this privately, an understandable impulse for any family. But this isn’t just any family at the present. The moment Sen. John McCain announced Gov. Palin as his running mate, the entire Palin family became a public issue. This was amplified by the fact that the entire Palin family (except for the oldest son, Track, soon headed for deployment in Iraq) stood there before the public.

One central feature of the public introduction to the Palins was the presence of Trig, the 4-month-old baby boy who is the couple’s fifth child. Trig was diagnosed with Down syndrome prior to his birth, and the Palins translated their pro-life beliefs into a beautiful portrait of human dignity. As the couple said, they never even considered aborting the baby, but considered him a gift from God.

Now there is another gift — this time in the form of a pregnant daughter and a child conceived outside of marriage. The Palins spoke of their pride in the fact that their daughter would keep her baby and marry the father. Once again, the Palin family chooses life over death, birth over abortion, when aborting the baby would be justified by many and considered the easy way out of an embarrassing situation. Yes, that baby is a gift, as is every single living human being, born and unborn.

But the entire nation felt the awkwardness of the situation, and even part of the embarrassment. Yes, as Steve Schmidt said, “Life happens,” but not always like this. And Mark Salter is certainly correct in describing the situation as “an American family.” Still, this is not the script many families would choose — especially evangelical families who had been most encouraged by Gov. Palin’s choice as Sen. McCain’s running mate.

And, as Gov. Palin is scrutinized far and wide following this announcement, Mohler raises a concern that many of us have:

A more interesting angle on this story has to do with the question of motherhood. In this case it is the Governor as mother that is the issue, rather than the daughter. As Jodi Kantor and Rachel L. Swarns of The New York Times frame the issue:

When Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska was introduced as a vice-presidential pick, she was presented as a magnet for female voters, the epitome of everymom appeal.

But since then, as mothers across the country supervise the season’s final water fights and pack book bags, some have voiced the kind of doubts that few male pundits have dared raise on television. With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as the country learned Monday, a pregnant 17-year-old, Ms. Palin has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try.

It’s the Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition. But this time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending her, while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much.

I was asked about this on Friday in an interview with Stephanie Simon of The Wall Street Journal. As that paper reported:

So Ms. Palin’s decision to accept the nomination for vice president just four months after the birth of her disabled son gave pause to a few conservatives. But just for a moment.

“If I were her pastor, I’d be very concerned for her and her family,” Mr. Mohler said. “But it looks as though she’s found a way to integrate it all in a way that works.”

Well, I would be even more concerned now. Do I believe that a woman can serve well in the office of Vice President of the United States? Yes. As a matter of fact, I believe that a woman could serve well as President — and one day will. Portraits of significant men of history hang on the walls of my library –but so do portraits of Queen Elizabeth I of England and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The New Testament clearly speaks to the complementary roles of men and women in the home and in the church, but not in roles of public responsibility. I believe that women as CEOs in the business world and as officials in government are no affront to Scripture. Then again, that presupposes that women — and men — have first fulfilled their responsibilities within the little commonwealth of the family.

Mohler encourages us to think hard about this situation. It is definitely a knotty issue, but one we should all think about and address in our own families.