Richard Dawkins Retweeted My Article, and What We Can Learn From That

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

Professor Richard Dawkins at Lib Dem Party Conference, Bournemouth Sept 09. Credit Alex Folkes/Fishnik PhotographyAs you may have heard, the Twitterverse exploded in late August when Richard Dawkins tweeted that it would be immoral to not abort a baby diagnosed with Down Syndrome.

He wrote a blog post clarifying his views the following day, and I wrote an article to help pro-life people understand what Richard Dawkins actually believes.  I explained that while his view is offensive and I disagree with it, it does follow naturally from Dawkins’ beliefs that first-trimester babies are not yet persons.

Here is an excerpt from the article on why I wrote it:

Just like in any dialogue with a pro-choice person, we should start by trying to understand Dawkin’s views, and after what I’ve seen on social media in the last week, I’m concerned that many pro-life people don’t get where he’s coming from.  We should be trying to figure out the answer to this question: Why is Dawkins particularly in favor of abortion when the child is diagnosed with DS?  (I’ll give you a hint: It’s not that he hates people with DS)

I strongly disagree with Dawkins’ views on abortion, but now that I’ve read his article, I’m going to try to explain why I believe his view isn’t as offensive as his first tweet was.  One of the reasons we launched Equal Rights Institute is to help pro-life and pro-choice people to have better dialogues.  I believe a necessary condition of having a good dialogue is accurately understanding what the person in front of you actually believes, which is rarely clear in the beginning of a conversation.  I think trying to get into Dawkins’ shoes will be a good exercise.

To read the rest of the article, go to EqualRightsInstitute.com/Dawkins.

The day after I published the article, Richard Dawkins himself retweeted it to his one-million followers.

richard dawkins retweet with arrow

Understanding What Richard Dawkins Actually Believes About Abortion and Down Syndrome

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

dawkins3-314Richard Dawkins created a firestorm last week when he responded to one of his regular followers on Twitter who said she didn’t know what she would do if she found out she was pregnant with a child who had Down Syndrome.

Pro-life people as well as parents of Down Syndrome (DS) children were outraged and social media blew up as a result of this tweet: