Singer defends euthanasia views
The Trenton Times 10/13/99
By RON SOUTHWICK
Staff Writer
PRINCETON BOROUGH -- Princeton University professor Peter
Singer, who has argued that parents should be able to euthanize
severely disabled children, candidly defended his controversial
views in his first local appearance last night.
Since being hired July 1, Singer has inspired protests, calls for
his ouster by presidential hopeful and university trustee Steve
Forbes, and equally passionate defenses of free speech.
Nonetheless, concern for Singer's safety are so severe he
teaches in a guarded classroom.
The event drew a packed audience of 450 students, but no
major protests or problems. Anxious university officials admitted
relief when the event ended without incident.
In his first public appearance, Singer debated Adrienne Asch,
a Wellesley College professor named Blind Educator of the
Year by the National Federation of the Blind. Singer made it
clear that he didn't advocate killing people who simply required
wheelchairs or lacked sight.
However, he maintained that parents should be able to end the
lives of profoundly disabled children if they will never be rational,
independent or self-aware.
"I'm talking about infants and disabled infants," Singer said. "I'm
not talking about people with disabilities."
Singer appeared before a respectful and generally friendly
audience last night. Students peppered Singer and Asch with
the kind of questions Singer said he wanted to inspire at Princeton.
One student asked Singer how he would implement such policies.
Singer shied away from setting out a specific plan. He merely
said parents should be able to consult doctors if they believe their
children will never have a conscious life and merely suffer. He
also acknowledged parents should consult advocacy groups for
those with disabilities.
HOWEVER, he said parents, rather than courts of law, should
play the principal decision-making role in ending a child's life.
Another student asked Asch if Princeton should fire Singer in
light of what the student termed his "monstrous" views.
Asch said Singer should remain at Princeton.
However, she added, "I would hope we see those ideas are wrong."
Asch said the main problem with Singer's philosophy is the idea
that a life-and-death decision should be based on a person's
disability. She said that disabilities should not be considered
"universally bad" but rather as just one of many components that
make an individual a person.
Another student asked Singer if his views encouraged people to
abort or euthanize children who shouldn't be killed because they
have only minor disabilities. Singer said he didn't think that would
happen.
"I don't necessarily see a slippery slope," Singer said.
Asch agreed with Singer on one point. She said Singer is correct
in saying that his views aren't outside the mainstream of medicine
and society as a whole.
"For those people who think there is one monster named Peter
Singer and if they can get rid of him that everything will be fine,
they are wrong," Asch said.
The Bioethics Forum, a student organization at Princeton,
sponsored the debate. Forum president Dan Kraus, a senior,
said the organization set up the event so that students could make
up their own minds about Singer's controversial views.
During Singer's first day of teaching his class, "Questions of Life
and Death," about 250 people came to Princeton's campus to
protest Singer's appointment. The university's security squad
arrested 14 people, many of them in wheelchairs, when they
blocked the entrances to Nassau Hall. Forbes also said that day
he wouldn't give any money to Princeton while Singer is an
employee.
PRINCETON University President Harold Shapiro attended last
night's debate. Just as Singer stuck to his views, Shapiro
adamantly defended Singer's hiring in spite of several well-
publicized protests.
While some people off-campus have attacked Singer, Shapiro said
the scholars and students at Princeton are thrilled to have him in
the university community.
"We don't have too many lectures that draw this kind of crowd,"
Shapiro said.
Singer admitted he has received several angry letters and e-mail
messages from parents of children with disabilities. However, he
read two letters from parents of disabled children who support his
views.
One Connecticut man whose son is severely disabled wrote that
he is angry that doctors prolonged his life and guaranteed him an
existence of suffering. While the doctors spent a few days "playing
with their toys," the man wrote, his son is in "daily pain."
"As a father of a severely handicapped son, I agree with you," the
man wrote to Singer.
Singer read another letter from a woman who wrote that while she
loves her son, she would have had an abortion if she had known
he would have developed cerebral palsy and had other learning
disabilities. "I'm saddened beyond words to think about what he
will have to put up with as he grows older," she wrote.
Singer said children with severe disabilities don't have the same
right to life as normal adults. He noted yesterday was the day
the United Nations declared the global population exceeded 6
billion for the first time. In a world with limited resources, he said
parents should have the right to make choices about ending lives
which will only be lives of suffering.
"We generally don't think people have any moral obligation to bring
other people into existence," Singer said.
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