I bring this up in the context of the discussion on infanticide and Peter Singer. Moore's mother perceived a minor disability like a club foot to be an imposition and obstacle to her happiness. A club foot made her extremely unhappy. Had the infanticide option been the standard practice for disabled infants, Moore's mother would most likely have wanted the option of disposing of him because her shame was obviously dominant over her love for him. The family would have put pressure on the doctor to do so. Maybe they even would have taken it to court and used the Singer utilitarian happiness equation to extend the right to them to have their son killed even though any objective expectation for him would likely be that he could have passed a "quality of life" test. None-the-less, the mother could argue, her unhappiness outweighed consideration for the life of the child. Would the court agree -- perhaps, perhaps not.
But because the mother could not - because Peter Singer's views are not put into practice - the world got Dudley Moore. Whether one likes him or not as an entertainer Moore managed to deal with the pain inflicted upon him by his mother's early devaluation of him and in the end, financially achieved more success and fame beyond the dreams of both his able bodied parents. And in the end, the parents were proud of him. They were "happy".
What this story tells me is that people/parents are not capable of judging what will make them happy. None of us can know that for sure. It also tells me that nondisabled parents CAN NEVER be trusted to judge the worth of the life of a disabled infant and they should never be given the power.
Moore obviously internalized much of his mother's views because the biography made it clear that he did not have children for fear that the child would have a club foot. Poor baby, I just wish there had been a community of disabled people active at that time who could have helped to spare Moore some of his pain.
-- Marta Russell