“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. He then expresses a profound bigotry against people with cognitive and developmental disabilities (emphasis added):įor me, the knowledge that my 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. It would also break the spine of unconditional love, as our children would have to earn their place by possessing requisite capacities.Ĭonsider the recent statements by Singer, published in the Journal of Practical Ethics, in which he explains why he would not adopt a child with Down syndrome. Were society ever to adopt Singer’s bigoted anti-human exceptionalism views, it would mark the end of universal human rights, opening the door to tyrannical campaigns against the most weak and vulnerable - you know, the kind of people that the Singers of the world deem resource wasters. To Singer, moral value primarily comes from intellectual capacities, and that means 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. (He actually supports infanticide because babies - whether disabled or not - are, in his view, not “persons.”) 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.