Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Autumn 2016 17 in a statement on his website, but still did not back down: “Parents who care for their chil- dren with Down syndrome usually form strong bonds of affection with them, as they would with any child. . . . I have sympathy for this emotional point, but it is an emotional one, not a logical one. . . . “If your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of hap- piness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare.” 1 As advocates for people with disabilities were quick to point out, Dawkins’s assump- tions about Down syndrome are not borne out by research. A 2011 study, for instance, found that 99 percent of individu- als with Down syndrome were happy with their lives, and that 97 percent of their parents and 94 percent of their siblings reported feelings of pride. 2 Only 5 percent of siblings were willing to trade their brother or sister with Down syndrome for a sibling without it. Yet citing quality-of-life studies does not get to the root of Dawkins’s argument for aborting babies with disabilities: the fear of suffering. Xenia Hausner, Blind Date, 2009 The artist Xenia Hausner, born in 1951, is a painter whose pictures focus on the mysterious world of human relationships, with all their unknowns, fragmentariness, and risk. Hausner is a member of Women without Borders, an organization that seeks to promote communication between women in Europe and the Arab world. She lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. Image used by permission of the artist.