12 - Rationality, Personhood, and Peter Singer on the Fate of Severely Impaired Infants

Summary

“The one thing having a child does is make a philosopher out of a parent.” So opens an op-ed piece in the aftermath of the infamous Baby Doe case, an infant with Down syndrome whose parents reluctantly made a decision to let their infant die. If having a child makes every parent a philosopher, having a child with cognitive disabilities makes a philosopher who becomes a parent a far humbler philosopher.

I was a philosophy graduate student when my daughter Sesha was born. She was picture-perfect at birth. It wasn't until Sesha was 4 months old that we suspected a problem. At 6 months, our pediatric neurologist suggested that we visit another doctor for an assessment. This neurologist gave us the news straight – straight up, nosoda, noice, and no palliatives. A two-minute exam and the words “Your daughter is severely to profoundly retarded.” When we returned home, I was violently ill. My poor husband had to care for both Sesha and me that terrible night.

Now, I am not suggesting that I took the news worse because philosophy was my chosen trade. But loving Sesha and loving the life of the mind forced me to think – to feel – differently about that latter love. My own child could not share its treasures, could not even remotely approach that which had, I had thought, given my life its meaning. I hadto reassess the meaning and value of cognitive capacities as the defining feature of humanity. I discovered that a love for one's child transcended any denumerable set of defining characteristics.