Slate reprint of article written by Tucker Carlson in 1996: Jeffrey Greenspoon, M.D. is the director of the high-risk obstetric unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. In the summer of 1995, during the beginning of the debate over partial-birth abortion, Greenspoon passionately defended the procedure, especially in cases where a child might be born with "problems ... incompatible with a normal life," such as Down Syndrome. "A pregnancy that is desired and planned is the foundation for the next generation of productive, healthy Americans," Greenspoon wrote. "The burden of raising one or two abnormal children is realistically unbearable."
He admits that he approves of eugenics—weeding out "babies who don't have much of a viable life." What makes him uncomfortable, he says, is the word "eugenics," which somehow has assumed "bad connotations over time. I think the better terms would be 'genetic counseling' and 'prenatal diagnosis' and 'having a country in which the option to exercise choice in whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy is a right of the people.'" After all, he says, "Sometimes you need to abandon words that have common meanings that connote the wrong ethics or morals."
But only the words have changed.
