Choosing to value life in all forms

I've followed with great interest the flap over UNC-Chapel Hill biology professor Albert Harris' remark that, in his opinion, abortion is the moral option for parents whose fetus has Down syndrome.

Harris was fully within his rights to express his opinion. As an academic, however, he should have known better than to spend valuable and expensive class time to express a view seemingly based on little if any real expertise. Dr. Harris is an embryologist, not an ethicist.

As for the UNC senior whom Harris' remarks offended, toughen up, girl. A more offensive world awaits once you step off the Chapel Hill campus.

To me, the most significant information revealed by this whole episode was The N&O's report that up to 90 percent of parents who learn they're carrying a baby with Down syndrome decide to destroy the fetus.

I'm not going to pass judgment. Up until a few years ago, had I been faced with knowing my unborn child was afflicted with Down syndrome or a severe handicap, I might have favored taking the same course.

But not any more. The death of an old man totally changed my concept of life. That man was Pope John Paul II.

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I'M NOT PROUD TO ADMIT THIS, but for years I was a bit embarrassed by the Holy Father -- and for him.

Let's face it. In his final years the man was not a pretty sight. His head leaned to the side, his speech was slurred and he had pronounced tremors. During the pope's final visit to Canada, a little girl tasked with giving him a bouquet ran away in fright before she reached the pontiff.

Papal television appearances invariably spawned questions from non-Catholics friends, who asked me why John Paul didn't retire. Popes don't retire, I always replied. They die.

And on April 2, 2005, he did.

As I was glued to the historic funeral proceedings, the central lesson of John Paul's papacy finally penetrated my thick skull: A suffering life is no less important than a robust and full one. His life was a testament to that.

Before he was shot less than two years into his nearly 28-year papacy, John Paul was a rock star. He had movie-star good looks and a voice rich enough to cut commercial record albums. For fun, the man hiked mountains.

This was the John Paul whom I recounted to anyone who would listen. It wasn't until his death that I realized that most of his major contributions to the world and to his church occurred after the decline I wanted other people to forget. It took seeing his funeral for me to understand that the old man who ended his life being wheeled around in a huge and unwieldy chair was every bit as valuable, perhaps more so, than the man who once hiked the Alps.

Having learned that lesson, I now look at the infirm much differently. I'm not blind to their handicaps, but they don't blind me, either. Whether a person has attributes worthy of a magazine cover or is so normal that she's mundane or is severely handicapped, there's nothing more precious than human life.

Whether we see ourselves as God's creation or as the latest edition of man's evolutionary journey, the freedom to live until our body decides it's time to die should be considered both a human and holy right.

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PROFESSOR HARRIS' SOLUTION DENIES THOSE RIGHTS. Given man's track record of human-rights abuses in the 20th century alone, the notion of unilaterally handing to another person the power to decide another's ultimate fate should send shivers up the spines of the religious and secular alike.

Just as chilling is that such an action also implicitly takes away the right to be chronically ill, deformed or anything less than perfect. It eliminates handicap or suffering as an acceptable human condition.

John Paul's death taught me that a suffering and physically imperfect life is no less worthy, a lesson I suspect Harris inherently knows.

For despite his opinion that abortion is the "moral" solution for expectant parents of a child with Down syndrome, Harris said that if faced with the same decision, he would spurn his own advice and choose life.

I can't think of a more moral or humane choice.