Author told
woman on Twitter it would be immoral not to abort pregnancy if she knew baby
had Down's syndrome
 |
| Richard Dawkins responded to a woman querying a possible Down's syndrome pregnancy: 'Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.' Photograph: Murdo Macleod |
Richard Dawkins has apologised for the "feeding frenzy" triggered by his tweet claiming it would be immoral to carry on with a pregnancy if the mother knew the foetus had Down's syndrome.
The
geneticist's latest Twitter row broke out after he responded to another user
who said she would be faced with "a real ethical dilemma" if she
became pregnant with a baby with Down's syndrome.
Dawkins
tweeted: "Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the
world if you have the choice."
In a fuller
explanation on his website – entitled Abortion & Down Syndrome: Apology for
Letting Slip the Dogs of Twitterwar – the author tried to set the record
straight.
He wrote:
"To conclude, what I was saying simply follows logically from the ordinary
pro-choice stance that most of us, I presume, espouse. My phraseology may have
been tactlessly vulnerable to misunderstanding, but I can't help feeling that
at least half the problem lies in a wanton eagerness to misunderstand."
The
backlash for his comment had included one mother, who has a child with the
genetic condition, saying: "I would fight until my last breath for the
life of my son. No dilemma" while Dawkins said accusations of
"Nazism, vile, monstrous fascistic callousness" and "fireballs
of hatred" had been hurled his way.
He wrote:
"If your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of
happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a
Down's baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might
actually be immoral from the point of view of the child's own welfare."
Dawkins
claimed he had hoped that his million-plus followers would not see his comments,
which would instead only be sent out to the people who follow both himself and
the woman who posed the question. He also claimed there was not enough space in
his Twitter reply to get his fuller argument across.
He added:
"Those who thought I was bossily telling a woman what to do rather than
let her choose, of course this was absolutely not my intention and I apologise
if brevity made it look that way. My true intention was, as stated at length
above, simply to say what I personally would do, based upon my own assessment
of the pragmatics of the case, and my own moral philosophy which in turn is
based on a desire to increase happiness and reduce suffering."
He also
argued: "Those who took offence because they know and love a person with
Down's syndrome, and who thought I was saying that their loved one had no right
to exist, I have sympathy for this emotional point, but it is an emotional one
not a logical one. It is one of a common family of errors, one that frequently
arises in the abortion debate."
Some
Twitter users had supported the God Delusion author, agreeing with his
assertion that there is a difference in deciding on a termination before a
child is born, and suggesting after the child is born that it should have been
aborted.
The Down's
Syndrome Association (DSA) issued a response to Dawkin's initial comment.
They said:
"People with Down's syndrome can and do live full and rewarding lives,
they also make a valuable contribution to our society.
"At
the Down's Syndrome Association, we do not believe Down's syndrome in itself
should be a reason for termination, however, we realise that families must make
their own choice.
"The
DSA strives to ensure that all prospective parents are given accurate and
up-to-date information about the condition and what life might be like today
for someone with Down's syndrome."
Previously
Dawkins caused controversy on Twitter when he said the world's Muslims had won
fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College Cambridge.
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