Statement of Marca Bristo Regarding the Hiring of Peter Singer, April 17, 1999

STATEMENT OF
MARCA BRISTO, CHAIRPERSON
NATIONAL COUNCIL ON DISABILITY

REGARDING THE HIRING OF PETER SINGER

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, APRIL 17, 1999

Good afternoon. My name is Marca Bristo and I am the Chairperson of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency advising the President and the Congress on public policy issues affecting the 54 million Americans with disabilities and their families. I want to thank Christopher Benek and Princeton Students Against Infanticide for inviting me to participate in today's event.

I have read Peter Singer's Practical Ethics, and I am extremely concerned that Princeton University has chosen to honor the author of this dangerous work with an esteemed position that will influence the way future leaders of America and the World will think about the value of a disabled person's life. I am not a philosopher or an ethicist, but I know what is right and what is wrong. Condoning the murder of infants is wrong. Devaluing the life of a human because of her disability is discriminatory, hateful, and bigoted. Peter Singer can package his ideas as utilitarian, practical, ethical, logical, even reasonable if he chooses. The plain truth is that Peter Singer thinks people with disabilities have lives that aren't worth living.

Singer's arguments have a seductive way of pulling you in and convincing you that parents should be able to dispose of their baby after it is born if that baby has a serious disability like spina bifida, hemophilia, or Down syndrome. In one passage, he reasons:

When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the haemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.

Singer argues that disabled infants may be killed ethically because they are not sentient beings. Sentient or not, babies with disabilities grow up to be children and then adults with disabilities. As an adult, this same person will likely have a much different view of his quality of life than his parent might have had based on the doctor's predictions at the time of birth. Studies have shown that people with disabilities usually have a much higher perception of the quality of their lives than people without disabilities have for them.

Wrapping his ideas in philosophical and academic rhetoric, Singer argues that parents who want to have two "normal" children and inadvertently end up with a disabled child should be able to kill the disabled child and "replace" it with a non disabled child. On page 188 of Practical Ethics, Singer writes:

It may still be objected that to replace either a fetus or a newborn infant is wrong because it suggests to disabled people living today that their lives are less worth living than the lives of people who are not disabled. Yet it is surely flying in the face of reality to deny that, on average, this is so.

Singer's core vision, that the life of a person with a disability is worth less than the life of a person without a disability, and therefore it is okay to kill infants with disabilities if that is what the parent wants to do, amounts to a defense of genocide. It is sad that just as Dr. Kevorkian has finally been recognized in a court of law as being a criminal for acting on the basis of similar beliefs in the case of physician assisted suicide, Princeton sees fit to hire a proponent of infanticide to teach ethics to undergraduates.

Parents of a newborn with a disability are often in a state of shock and adjustment for a long period after the baby is born. Once this phase is over, most parents come to value their child with a disability and to learn about the benefits the entire family can realize from the perspective this child brings them. Singer would like to give parents an easy out so they can go ahead and have another child to "replace" the defective baby. What parents in that situation need is information and support so that they can give that child the best possible chance to develop into an independent adult. They don't need a nudge from their doctor or their insurance company to put the baby out of its misery (and save the insurance company a few hundred thousand dollars as part of the bargain).

I recognize that Princeton is an academic institution and that a free flow of ideas and vigorous debate must be fostered in such a setting. However, I question whether Princeton would hire a faculty member who argued that parents should be permitted to kill their infant daughters so that they could have a son. Would Princeton hire a professor who advocated terminating healthy babies born into poverty on the theory that their quality of life would be less than that of a baby born into an affluent family? No. The University would draw a line and say that the marketplace of ideas has no place for such patently hateful, harmful, barbarous views. And yet, I am here today because, for me and millions of people with disabilities, Peter Singer's ideas belong outside the marketplace of dignified academic discourse.

Moreover, to the extent that Singer's ideas are given the prestigious imprimatur of Princeton University, their influence may soon be felt in American public policy. Singer's views on euthanasia for the terminally ill, coupled with pressures from managed care companies to keep health care costs down, may result in patients being pressured by their physicians to terminate their lives rather than undergo costly treatment or live in pain.

I am here today because I cannot stand by and watch one of the world's leading academic institutions elevate such dangerous ideas. As my good friend and the esteemed leader of the disability rights movement Justin Dart, Jr., has warned, if Singer comes to Princeton, "the prestige of Princeton will seem to condone the murder of babies with disabilities where this barbarian practice still exists." Moreover, the students exposed to his ideas will go on to run universities, government, fortune 500 companies, and other seats of power and influence.

I am here today with a heavy heart. And yet when I look at the list of the Board of Trustees of Princeton University, I maintain some hope that this group may still reconsider its decision to hire Peter Singer. Princeton University does not condone hate. Princeton University does not abide racism or anti-semitism or homophobia. Princeton University should not abide Peter Singer.

On July 26, 1990, when President George Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law, he quoted from the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." The United States Congress and the President have recognized the fundamental rights of people with disabilities to make choices, pursue meaningful careers, live independently, and participate fully in all aspects of society. I am hopeful that Princeton University will move promptly to demonstrate its commitment to these principles as well.