Simon Moore and his daughter Alice both have a genetic condition called Treacher Collins syndrome, or TC. Throughout his entire childhood Simon was mocked and bullied by other children and adults for having physical differences imparted by TC. Simon says that his baby girl will be reaffirmed every day – that he will always tell her she is beautiful… and she is! Just look at the precious images in the article published here.
TC affects facial structure and hearing, so Simon and Alice use a special hearing aid and have similar facial characteristics, including eyes that droop due to the way their bones developed.
Sadly, in a world where “diversity” is supposedly embraced, people with TC are targeted for destruction before they are even born precisely because they are different. In fact, Simon and his wife, who conceived the baby via in-vitro fertilization (IVF), were given the option of choosing a “detect and destroy” approach that would have eliminated any of their embryos who had TC. But Simon and his wife say that they “didn’t care” if the baby shared her father’s trait, because they would love her regardless of what she looked like.
One particularly cruel child branded Alice a “gargoyle” when he saw her, and neighbors of the Moores have said that the couple was “cruel” for giving her Life instead of choosing abortion. But we must ask: cruel to whom? Certainly not Alice, who benefited from not being dismembered after her condition was diagnosed at 16 weeks’ gestation.
Perhaps, on the other hand, the couple was accused of “cruelty” for contributing a perceived imperfection to the community. Rather than embracing Alice for her beauty and humanity, she is the target of discrimination by subscribers to the ideal that physical perfection lends dignity and value to humans, and lack of physical perfection qualifies a person for discrimination and derision.
The Moore’s are subjected to the profoundly misguided “quality of Life” argument, by which proponents of abortion argue that no Life is somehow better than a Life that involves being different. According to this philosophy, abortion is thought to prevent suffering; the hole in the plot, obviously, is that abortion strews every variety of suffering and anguish on the preborn and their families.
Thankfully, Alice’s fate rested in the loving and accepting hands of her parents, who intend to give her every ounce of respect that she deserves simply because she is human. When Life-or-death decisions regarding persons with so-called “low quality of Life” are left in the discriminatory hands of some medical professionals and government authorities, however, people like Alice face the horror of a utilitarian approach to human Life.
Burke Balch, a bioethical expert who opposed legislation that would allow discrimination against Texas patients to be perpetuated, said: “…all too many consider that certain levels of physical or mental disability bring a person’s ‘quality of life’ below a tolerable minimum. A judgment whether the quality of one’s life is worth living is a very subjective one.”
