Posted on 02/25/2012 1:12:19 PM PST by wagglebee
If abortion, why not infanticide? This leading question is often treated as a canard by supporters of abortion. However, it is seriously argued by two Italian utilitarians and published online in the prestigious Journal of Medical Ethics this week.
Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva are associated respectively with Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, and with the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, in the UK.
They argue that both the fetus and the new-born infant are only potential persons without any interests. Therefore the interests of the persons involved with them are paramount until some indefinite time after birth. To emphasise the continuity between the two acts, they term it “after-birth abortion” rather than infanticide.
Their conclusions may shock but Guibilini and Minerva assert them very confidently. “We claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.” This assertion highlights another aspect of their argument. Killing an infant after birth is not euthanasia either. In euthanasia, a doctor would be seeking the best interests of the person who dies. But in “after-birth abortion” it is the interests of people involved, not the baby.
To critical eyes, their argument will no doubt look like a slippery slope, as they are simply seeking to extend the logic of abortion to infanticide:
“If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.”
How long after birth is it “ethically permissible” to kill infants? Guibilini and Minerva leave that question up to neurologists and psychologists, but it takes at least a few weeks for the infant to become self-conscious. At that stage it moves from being a potential person to being a person, and infanticide would no longer be allowed.
Sick bastards!
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Now, Now, Now! WE should be passing the children through the fire to Moloch. (Sarcasm!)
Why limit it to infants? That trouble creating six year old is certainly not yet a fully formed adult. What of the elderly no longer capable of contributing to the maintainence of my lifestyle? All this reverence toward human life is so 20th century.
Their god is the devil. They are to be pitied.
From the link to the Journal of Medical “Ethics”:
Correspondence to:
Dr Francesca Minerva, CAPPE, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia;
francesca.minerva@unimelb.edu.au
Obama agrees with them. Nice to know these two clowns are tenured and taxpayer supported.
What kind of people are these?
Slippery slope-—always happens.
It is why the Catholic Church remains firm on contraception and birth control pills-—slippery slope to the degradation of women and sex and thus, human life.
The Catholic Church is right again.
All godless people agree with them.
Worldview matters, and we, a nation under God, should condemn such godless people. Their ideas destroy the intent and meaning of the Constitution and destroys the very humanity of man. Virtue is necessary in our Republic and it is the Ethics of Judeo/Christian religion—not hinduism, wicca, allah or other irrational “religions”.
“If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.” "
I'll only point to the logical end of this reasoning here:
Although officially started in September 1939, Action T4 might have been initiated with a sort of trial balloon;[18] in late 1938, Adolf Hitler instructed his personal physician Karl Brandt to evaluate a family's petition for the "mercy killing" of their blind, physically and developmentally disabled infant boy. The boy was eventually killed in July 1939.[19] Hitler also instructed Brandt to proceed in the same manner in similar cases.[20] The foundation of the Committee for the Scientific Treatment of Severe, Genetically Determined Illness in order to prepare and proceed with the massive secret killing of infants took place in May 1939 and the respective secret order to start the registration of ill children, took place on 18 August 1939, three weeks after the murder of the mentioned boy.
Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.
Their arguments are certainly equally applicable to Italian professors ~ and there’s no reason to delay starting out with them ~ certainly there’s currently no shortage of them.
No, not pitied, but disposed of like human refuse.
It's interesting that most pro-abortion people, when confronted by the reality of the logic of this, will flinch. Even Peter Singer, in his heyday, when confronted with the reality of the example of his world-view in his own Alzheimer's disease-stricken mother, flinched (he later copped out by saying his sister shared in the decision as to what to do with their mother). Guibilini and Minerva, at least in the theoretical, do not flinch, but I would not give them any special credit for that. The extermination camps were full of butchers who sent women and young children to the gas chambers with nary a thought, and then went home to their own families at night seemingly none the worst in their consciences.
How long after birth is it “ethically permissible” to kill...
Until about the time the authors are themselves, struck down?
But they have God-given natural rights which are absolute, and it is the God-given natural duty to not violate and those rights.
Epitomy of evil, like obama
Their logic is flawless how ever you will always come up with error when you reason from error.
Satan is alive and well and working in academia.
The organizations that employ these evil persons should be shamed and hounded into firing them. Their employers are just as responsible as these demonic people. It’s weird that as soon as you see the word “Ethics” you know it really means “Evil”.
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