Thoughtful nugget: Oddly comfortable, deeply wrong

The society we in the West inhabit is a strange place. We are oddly comfortable with truths that, on reflection, are deeply dissonant and even disturbing. For example, we seem quite comfortable with the knowledge that up to twenty thousand children die every day from preventable diseases…We develop policies and practices that welcome people with disabilities into our communities, offering them rights and responsibilities, and at precisely the same time we develop forms of genetic technology designed to prevent them from entering society in the first place.

If Vanier is correct that in France within the next few years there will be no children born with Down syndrome because they will all have been aborted, then something is deeply wrong with our society. As my friend John, who has Down Syndrome, puts it, “That doesn’t make us feel very welcome, does it?” 

John Stinson in the introduction to Living Gently in a Violent World, p. 11-12