'Bad genes' and civil rights at odds, Many policy-makers seek to curb births of those with disabilities even as U.S. and UN seek to protect them NASSAU AND SUFFOLK Edition

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: ANDREW J. IMPARATO AND ANNE C. SOMMERS
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 22.05.2007
• Edition: Combined editions

Although eugenics was eventually dismissed as "junk science," it didn't happen before states authorized more than 60,000 forcible sterilizations and segregated, institutionalized and denied marriage and parental rights to those deemed "genetically unfit." Though society may be inclined to regard [Oliver Wendell Holmes]' detestable opinion in [Carrie Buck] v. Bell as a relic of a time past, eerie similarities exist in contemporary remarks of the well-respected. In the past, eugenicists emphasized the "burden" of disability. Holmes wrote that individuals with disabilities "sap the strength of the State." In recent years, Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has said, "It does not seem quite wise to increase any further draining of limited resources by increasing the number of children with impairments." Across the United States, "futile care" policies have required that the most vulnerable give up their hospital beds - and lives - for those with more "potential." In stark contrast to words such as "defective," "burdensome" and "futile" are the words of civil rights laws that liberate and defend.