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 16in 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.” * 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. ** 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.