Racist abortion is evil--but eugenicist abortion is ok?

Neo-conservative celebrity William Bennett made a handsome career as a political appointee--first with the National Endowment for the Humanities, then as secretary of education, and finally as the first "Drug Czar." (incidentally, all of those positions were in federal agencies not authorized by the Constitution.) He then spun off an even more lucrative career as a public tutor, as the credited author of a ghost-written compilation of stories entitled The Book of Virtues and later as director of various ad-hoc neo-con front groups, such as Americans for Victory over Terror.

In his latest guise as a talk-show host, Bennett provoked outrage by suggesting that it would be possible to reduce the crime rate by aborting all black children. His point, of course, was that while some people might see that course of action to be statistically valid, it would be utterly abhorrent. Liberal commentators who regard abortion as the central sacrament of their political creed assailed Bennett with gleeful, hypocritical abandon.

Patricia E. Bauer, mother of a child with Down syndrome, underscored one aspect of that hypocrisy in an October 22 syndicated column. "If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?" writes Bauer.

Bauer's daughter Margaret, who has Down syndrome, "represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion," she continues. "I don't know how many pregnancies are terminated [through abortion] because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 percent or 90 percent."

"As Margaret bounces through life, especially out here [in California], the land of the perfect body, I see the way people look at her: curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed," she continues. "I know that most women of childbearing age that we encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living. To them, Margaret falls into the category of avoidable human suffering. At best, a tragic mistake.... A drain on society."

"I have to think," concludes Bauer, "that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman's right to choose whether to have a baby; it's also about a woman's right to choose which baby she wants to have."