Posted on 09/18/2008 8:55:35 AM PDT by Zakeet
In stunningly self-centered, cruel fashion, Nicholas Provenzo, writer for the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism suggests that Sarah Palin’s decision to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome, is a financial burden that others are forced to suffer with.
Provenzo, who has written opinion pieces for the Washington Times, Capitalism Magazine, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, as well as being a guest on Bill Maher’s former show, Politically Incorrect, makes his case for “the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome.”
The full first paragraph of the piece which is circulating amidst the blogosphere reads (emphasis mine):
Like many, I am troubled by the implications of Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome. Given that Palin's decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.
Morally justifiable reasons for killing a baby? There is no justifiable reason for taking any child's life, and to call it a moral obligation to society is undeniably one of the more disgusting things to be written by a human being, about another human being.
In fact, advocating the abortion of a child based on the potential of that child having a disease or imperfection of some kind raises echoes of Nazi Germany’s quest for an Aryan race.
The suggestion that another life should be ended based on the presence of an extra chromosome, and that another healthy individual’s own life is more precious because of that, is over the top narcissism.
Maybe this shouldn’t surprise quite so much. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that sick individuals were offering up baby Trig on ebay. We live in a society where skeptics simply can't admire someone who stands on their principals. They must tear them down by insinuating that such a move is merely a political prop. Or, in this case, they argue that choosing life was actually a selfish move. A stunning argument to say the least.
However, Mr. Provenzo demonstrates his own level of selfishness in his rant. He doesn’t go the typical route of the pro-choice crowd, but reveals some very bizarre reasoning for why it is Palin’s obligation to have killed her baby boy – the care, love and effort required to raise Trig is a cost that others must bear.
A parent has a moral obligation to provide for his or her children until these children are equipped to provide for themselves. Because a person afflicted with Down syndrome is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all) and requires constant care and supervision, unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child's life upon others.
I think Trig, and everyone who values life as a precious gift, all life, is extremely grateful for the Palin’s decision, no matter the challenges. Trig is a blessing and an inspiration to the conservative pro-life movement, as are Sarah and Todd Palin for making the right choice, the only choice.
And, if Mr. Provenzo needs examples of how someone with Down Syndrome has gone above and beyond the state of being ‘marginally productive,’ he only need look here, here, and of course, here, among countless others. In fact, I am quite certain that our very own readers could cite personal stories of their own.
I’m sure that Provenzo would have experienced a rare delight if it had been possible for him to abort Trig Palin himself.
Of course I suspect that Todd Palin would have acted appropriately and we would now be reading Provenzo’s obituary.
What a disgusting piece of inhuman sh*t this Provenzo is.
Hahahaha.... I love it John! I’ve never seen a “self censored” comment!
There is no shame in admitting an honest mistake.
Real humans don’t make life and death decisions based solely on some elitist and extremist notion of “value”. This guy would have fit in well with the Nazis.
Too bad Nicholas’s Mother wasn’t a baby killer.
There was a time when Objectivist writers would have deplored the system that places such a financial burden on others. Sarah Palin herself has no personal power to make us pay for the care of others. That’s the power of the welfare state.
Rand would not have been pleased by such intellectual slovenliness.
If you cannot fill the needs of the State, you have no purpose!
Yeah, sign me up for that/sarc
By this guys thinking, Casey Anthony would be considered a hero.
This so called 'objectivist' writer is a drain on society and should be aborted.
Not too surprising he appeared on Maher’s show. One, the scum of the earth and the other even worse.
1. Where do we draw the line, when deciding which humans to sacrifice for the greater good?
2. How high would unemployment go, if we had no need for helping professionals?
He said when they first found out, they were devastated. He then said the child had turned out to be a tremendous blessing to them. He said he was full of love and affection.
This guys probably doesn’t like Bridget McCain either.....
Hitler felt the same way.
What I find most distressing in the comments section to Provenza’s despicable rant are those that actually see Palin’s decision to have her baby despite his being afflicted with trisomy-21 as a POLITICAL decision.
Soon the objectivists will find a reason to kill a less-than-perfect baby at the moment of birth and to euthanize anyone who may be a burden on society later.
The future I wish for Nicholas Provenza would get me banned. I invite you all to speculate and talk amongst yourselves.
Yes, my kids are a financial burden. So is the Federal government. Guess which one I would rather kill?
That’s exactly what their ideology tells them.
And it stems from the rejection of the Creator and the Christian worldview.
A human, in the “evolutionary” worldview, is an animal walking upright, that’s alive for 70 yrs, and doesn’t exist before or after. He seeks to accumulate as much power and stuff to himself during those 70 yrs as possible, and pass on his genes. He has no worth to the transcendent society except for what he provides to it minus what he takes from it.
A human in the Christian worldview is an eternal being created in God’s image. He transcends all societies and material existance. He has inherent worth as God’s creation. His purpose while alive is to glorify God with that life.
I have a friend with three sons, two healthy and normal and one with a mental disability. She loves all of them, but she always says with deep love and affection of her “special” baby — “he’s the one that will always love me completely, that will never lie to me, and that will never ever knowingly break my heart - and that’s worth a lifetime!”
Yep. From the folks perfected the junk science of eugenics. I was born three months premature in a Third World country, at a time when medical science told my parents I had almost no chance of surviving. If by some miracle I did, I would be retarded, blind, etc. (i.e. a major burden). They recommended I be separated from my mother immediately after birth and left in a quite corner to die. Well, that didn’t happen. I turned out alright...(so far, so good). Lil’ Trig will do just fine too. He’ll end up giving back in so many ways more than he receives. I can’t wait to see the little guy rumbling around the Whitehouse and driving the staff crazy!
Terribly false reasoning. Such zero sum logic is not “objectivist” but irrational, and in a manner common among the far left, whose axiom is always that all things must be rationed because all things are in critical shortage. In turn, critical shortage must always be assumed, because that is the only condition in which rationing makes sense.
Say there are two people with one apple. By leftist logic, they should divide the apple, under the assumption that it is the only apple. Even if it is pointed out that the two people with one apple are in a grocery store, next to a bin full of apples, then the leftist would assume that they don’t have enough money to get another apple.
If this is the case, then they would say that all money should be divided equally, so that both of these people will have an apple. And yet the grocery store is across the street from an apple orchard full of ripe apples, free for the taking. It doesn’t really matter that the person who doesn’t have an apple doesn’t like apples, or even if he is allergic to apples.
The bottom line is that the world has vast amounts of apples, yet the leftist is so narrow minded, and actually philosophically compelled to assume shortage and rationing, that they are incapable of accepting any other process than socialism.
To make matters worse, time and time again, socialism has proven that it can only, at the best of times, provide rotten and wormy apples, but eventually it will provide no apples, yet demand all the resources in the world to not provide apples.
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