Peter Singer Thinks Intellectually Disabled Less Valuable than Pigs

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

Wesley J. Smith

February 25, 2017

 

In his apologetics for infanticide, Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has used a baby with Down syndrome as an example of a killable infant based on utilitarian measurements. (He actually supports infanticide because babies–whether disabled or not–are, in his view, not “persons.”)

 

To Singer, moral value primary comes from intellectual capacities, and that means that developmentally and cognitively disabled human beings (also, the unborn and infants) have less value than other human beings, and indeed, a lower worth than some animals.

 

(Snip)

 

Take the recent statements by Singer, published in the Journal of Practical Ethics in which he explains why he would adopt a child with Down syndrome out (my emphasis). He then expresses a profound bigotry against people with cognitive and developmental disabilities (my emphasis).

 

For me, the knowledge that my [hypothetical Down] child would not be likely to develop into a person whom I could treat as an equal, in every sense of the word, who would never be able to have children of his or her own, who I could not expect to grow up to be a fully independent adult, and with whom I could expect to have conversations about only a limited range of topics would greatly reduce my joy in raising my child and watching him or her develop.

 

“Disability” is a very broad term, and I would not say that, in general, “a life with disability” is of less value than one without disability. Much will depend on the nature of the disability.

 

But let’s turn the question around, and ask why someone would deny that the life of a profoundly intellectually disabled human being is of less value than the life of a normal human being. Most people think that the life of a dog or a pig is of less value than the life of a normal human being.

 

On what basis, then, could they hold that the life of a profoundly intellectually disabled human being with intellectual capacities inferior to those of a dog or a pig is of equal value to the life of a normal human being? This sounds like speciesism to me, and as I said earlier, I have yet to see a plausible defence of speciesism. After looking for more than forty years, I doubt that there is one.

 

(Snip)

 

HT: Bioedge

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Peter Singer Can’t Hear the “Music of Humanity”

 

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You That Singer Guy Has Some Interesting Idea..for A Jew.