Bioethicist Peter Singer doubles down on controversial infanticide stance

Well-known pro-abortion bioethicist Peter Singer recently gave another interview, this time to Vox, in which he reiterated some of his most controversial beliefs: that it’s acceptable to kill infants and people with intellectual disabilities.

Singer was interviewed by Dylan Matthews, who brought up the pushback Singer has received from the disability community.

“I’m curious what you have made of that pushback and if there are points where you’ve changed your mind,” Matthews said, asking, “My sense is that you haven’t changed your mind on the overall framework, but are there empirical questions about what life is like for specific kinds of disabled people where you have?”

Given the opportunity to acknowledge the problem with saying it’s acceptable to kill certain people, Singer doubled down instead.

“I still think there are cases where parents should have the option of ending the life of their severely disabled infant,” Singer said, later explaining, “I continue to think that it’s okay for doctors to offer to take the child off life support, and it’s okay for parents to accept that offer. And I continue to think there’s no real ethical difference between bringing about a child’s death by turning off life support than by giving the child a lethal injection.”

The problem with Singer’s argument is that it’s entirely subjective; the issue of “quality of life” relies entirely upon one person’s perspective of whether or not another person’s life is worth living. That subjective assumption is opinion, not qualitative fact, and “quality of life” does not excuse the murder of another human being. The truth is, there is no acceptable reason to kill another person, regardless of their age, race, gender, or ability.

Singer further claimed that the threat against the disability community isn’t one based in reality.

“I think switching to voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted dying, that movement has made very significant progress in the last 40 years, and I think has greatly reduced the amount of unnecessary suffering. But some people with disabilities are opposed to that as well, because they think pressure will be put on people with disabilities to end their lives,” he said. “That would be a serious consideration if there were clear evidence that that’s the case. But I really haven’t seen the evidence, either about the speech harms that you’re referring to or about pressure on people with disabilities to end their lives. So I continue to advocate for physician-assisted dying.”

That assisted suicide programs threaten disability groups is hardly new information; even doctors who commit assisted suicide in countries like Canada have been issuing warnings about how people with disabilities are being pushed into assisted suicide. In 2019, the United Nation’s first Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities issued a scathing report about how people with disabilities are pressured into assisted suicide. Catalina Devandas Aguilar wrote that she was “extremely concerned” about assisted suicide and disability.

“I have been informed that there is no protocol in place to demonstrate that persons with disabilities have been provided with viable alternatives when eligible for assistive dying,” she wrote. “I have further received worrisome claims about persons with disabilities in institutions being pressured to seek medical assistance in dying, and practitioners not formally reporting cases involving persons with disabilities.”

Numerous people have come forward over the years, directly saying they were told to undergo euthanasia, solely because they — or their loved one — have a disability. Singer appears to be either unintentionally or willfully ignorant about the wealth of evidence regarding assisted suicide and disabilities.

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