Dr. Peter Singer recently wrote "Why We Must Ration Health Care" for the New York Times magazine.  If you are not familiar with Dr. Singer, he has been making an argument for killing babies with disabilities - that is, children actually born - for more than a decade.

Consider this statement from his work, Practical Ethics:  

Regarding newborn infants as replaceable, as we now regard fetuses, would have considerable advantages over prenatal diagnosis followed by abortion. Prenatal diagnosis still cannot detect all major disabilities. Some disabilities, in fact, are not present before birth; they may be the result of extremely pre- mature birth, or of something going wrong in the birth process itself. At present parents can choose to keep or destroy their disabled offspring only if the disability happens to be detected during pregnancy. There is no logical basis for restricting parents' choice to these particular disabilities (emphasis mine). If disabled newborn infants were not regarded as having a right to life until, say, a week or a month after birth it would allow parents, in consultation with their doctors, to choose on the basis of far greater knowledge of the infant's condition than is possible before birth. (You can read his argument in more detail here.) 

To my knowledge, he continues to believe this would be a benefit to parents and to society.  And rather than being ostricized for it, he holds a prestigious position at Princeton University and is given the signifcant forum of the New York Times magazine to continue to make his argument that we are nothing more than the sum of our productivity.

Fortunately, over time, his arguments just get stale.  For example, he has offered this tired argument against people with disabilities for more than a decade, and writes about it again in his New York Times article:

This method of preserving our belief that everyone has an equal right to life is, however, a double-edged sword. If life with quadriplegia is as good as life without it, there is no health benefit to be gained by curing it. That implication, no doubt, would have been vigorously rejected by someone like Christopher Reeve, who, after being paralyzed in an accident, campaigned for more research into ways of overcoming spinal-cord injuries. Disability advocates, it seems, are forced to choose between insisting that extending their lives is just as important as extending the lives of people without disabilities, and seeking public support for research into a cure for their condition (emphasis mine). 

Now, the problem isn't that the argument doesn't have merit - it certainly does, if you agree with his basic premises about people and utility.  But if you believe, as the Bible instructs, that God creates people with inherent, eternal value, then his argument has no merit at all.  None.

When God creates people with disabilities (Exodus 4:11), or ordains that they experience disability at some point in their lives, then he has purpose in it for his glory and for our good. Their inherent value as people is not diminished; in fact, God himself says he will be their shepherd and their strength:

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice. Ezekial 34:15-16

Thus, the argument that one must 'choose' between extending life or addressing disease and disability is a false one.  Disability advocates (and everyone else) can freely embrace both: it is good that babies with disablities be born and it is good that we look for ways to lessen disease and suffering in the world, because both embrace the fact that God has created a human being, in his likeness, with inherent worth.

So, understand what is coming at you - logical, culturally pervasive, and exceedingly evil.  Don't use utility as the reason why people with disablities should exist or receive services, as I have argued before here and here.

Dr. Singer and his philosophical camp cannot understand this.  They are confounded that we will not embrace their utilitarian view of the world.

So be it.  We will be called fools.  We will be termed unwise.  Someday, I expect, we will have some form of health care rationing that clearly states that people with disabilities and older people are of less worth than people who are 'normal' and 'productive.'  

In the meantime, we can pray that the creator of the universe would help us and remember this instruction from Philippians 2:4-11:

4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.