Trig-Induced

Let me just say from the outset that this post is almost certainly futile and pointless. But I feel compelled to write it anyway.

Tonight, I watched Alaska governor Sarah Palin accept the Republican nomination for vice president. I watched because, like everyone else, I don't really know much about her, except that, unlike most presidential elections, her presence on the ticket might really decide the outcome. Even if the office of vice presidency isn't any more significant than a warm pitcher of spit, it'll be monumental if she ends up playing king-maker.

But about two minutes into her speech, my interest in her was eclipsed by an arresting image on screen, when she introduced her infant son, Trig, who was born with Down Syndrome. I am generally no more moved by other people's babies than the next young man is, but this particular one really made me sit up and take note, for two reasons. First, asleep in his father's arms, he looked as innocent and peaceful as any other sleeping baby. And second, only about one in five unborn children diagnosed with Down Syndrome is permitted to come into existence in this age of genetic diagnosis. The other 80 percent are aborted.

I am by no means a pro-life crusader. I have been fairly ambivalent about abortion for most of my adult life, and I try at all costs to avoid the running argument over its moral validity, largely because the vitriol that any objection to abortion-on-demand arouses in self-described feminists has often cowed me into silence. I simply don't want to bring that sort of wrath down on my head for daring to inject a "Well, maybe..." into a discussion, because there is no room for maybes.

Notable female figures on the political left are almost unanimous in their scorn for Sarah Palin, and it's no secret why. NOW Chairwoman Kim Gandy is quite representative in her dismissal: "Gov. Palin may be the second woman vice-presidential candidate on a major party ticket, but she is not the right woman. Sadly, she is a woman who opposes women's rights, just like John McCain." You simply have to realize that "women's rights" is equivalent to legal abortion.

But seeing that baby, blessedly oblivious to the incredible hoopla surrounding him, I couldn't help thinking, "Why the hell shouldn't he exist?"

It's a question that deserves an answer. The pro-choice arguments usually deal with the health of the mother, or the severe physical, emotional and financial burdens that child birth indisputably place on the mother. But when four-fifths of unborn babies who exhibit a fairly moderate disability are deemed unworthy of continued existence, another factor is clearly at work. Are people with Down Syndrome so irredeemably defective or undesirable that society is better off without them? And if so, what other defects should disqualify a baby from being born? Is this not, as George Will suggested in a 2005 Washington Post column, "eugenics by abortion"?

I pose these questions not to suggest that abortion ought to be outlawed, but simply to express a long-frustrated desire: That we as a society might be able to debate the issue without being shouted down by the zero-sum zealots, on either side, who label any questioning of their position as the foulest heresy. After seeing Trig Palin and realizing how atypical his existence is, I'd simply like to have a more thoughtful, open debate. One in which both sides come with the attitude that perhaps they don't necessarily own the moral high ground and won't hurl invective at each other for disagreeing. Wouldn't our country be better off for it?