Comments on: Fifty babies a year are alive after abortion

Eudaimonia and other pursuits ^ | 11/28/2005 | MT

[mft112345]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1892696,00.html

Headline: "Fifty babies a year are alive after abortion."

Apparently, some human fotuses survive abortion, and this is a growing problem for abortionists.

How can a legal system hold that killing a human life is wrong outside of the womb (but not inside it)? Is there any real difference between killing a human fetus in the womb or immediately after (especially when no one's watching and you achieve the same results)? How can immediate infanticide ever be wrong in cases when it provides the "greatest good to the greatest number" of self-conscious humans?

Bioethics professor Peter Singer writes: "Infants are sentient beings who are neither rational nor self- conscious. So if we turn to consider the infants in themselves, independently of the attitudes of their parents, since their species is not relevant to their moral status, the principles that govern the wrongness of killing non-human animals who are sentient but not rational or self-conscious must apply here too." Based on this understanding, should any mother of a newborn infant in a neonatal care unit be allowed to end its life for personal reasons?

Those who believe in an objective, transcendent basis for right and wrong find it hard to justify infanticide. This can even be a problem at the emotional level for those who believe right and wrong are entirely subjective or the accidental byproducts of human evolution. (At the emotional level, babies are harder to kill because they can cry when fetuses can't. Looking at their faces also releases oxytocin in our blood streams, which produces feelings of affection.)

If we accept that infanticide is objectively wrong, how can we justify abortion-on-demand? Some say killing in the womb is right because it's legal, but do legislative and judicial bodies always make something "right" by condoning it? Recall the legal support for slavery in the United States and the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Others suggest public opinion support makes abortion right, but public opinion is also deeply nuanced on this issue. (Majorities often tell pollsters that they object to allowing a woman to have an abortion for personal reasons.) Even so, like courts and lawmakers, the general public can also go astray. Popular support for the torture and execution of suspected witches didn't make these actions just. Likewise, a shift in public opinion to favor abortion for any reason would not make abortion-on-demand right.

Another common argument is that that a fetus deserves no legal protection in the womb because it's not human. If not a human fetus, then what is it: a bird, fish or reptile fetus?

A similar argument suggests that a fetus is nonhuman or subhuman before delivery because it has no "viability," meaning it is "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial help." The rapid advance of neonatal medical technology continues to undermine this argument for abortion-on-demand.

The traditional arguments supporting wide-spread abortion-on-demand are deeply flawed. It's easy to label any group of humans subhuman.

It's not the killing of subhumans that's mentioned as the problem in the story (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1892696,00.html). No, the survivors are the problem, so abortionists will have to kill subhumans more efficiently if they want self-proclaimed humanists to continue looking the other way.

[FeeinTennessee]

This is a shocking view of the babies that have been aborted. A friend of mine put these pictures up on her blog as she responds to a sick article in the L.A. Times (warning, the pictures are graphic, but need to be seen):

http://msunderestimated.blogspot.com/2005/11/abort-child-be-born-again.html

[Zack Nguyen]

A baby born alive after an attempted abortion is a real quandary for pro-choicers. Really, how do they handle it? "Hey, you should be dead! I'm not talking to you!"

They are the living embodiment of the bankruptcy of the pro-choice philosophy.