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.
So they have no problem with sex-selection post-birth abortion because there are a number of cultures where a girl is a real burden on a family, a maggot in the rice.
Since they carry every premise to its logical conclusion.
Def. “ethics”: academic term for subversion of morality
Why limit it to newborns? There are a lot of 2 year olds that their parents would want to strangle, as well as obnoxious teenagers.
It would be doing society a favor to consider the euthanasia of otherwise healthy people who have welfare as their only means of support for generations.
Likewise, our prisons are bulging at the seams with violent psychopaths who can never be allowed to walk the street. We used to euthanize such people at frequent intervals and we are none the worse for having done so.
But this leads to the biggest push for euthanasia.
Democrats, along with anarchists, fascists and communists.
People who hate America, and are filled with feelings of hate, anger, inferiority, superiority, bigotry, perversion and every other vice known to man.
It’s just better to realize that they will never be happy, are a threat to themselves and others, and are a waste of resources.
/dripping with sarcasm
Not at all. It is simple the normal thinking of eugenicists. The human being is distinguished from other beings by his/her self-consciousness. The factual problem.of course, is that some of them are troubled about dophins but not by the evidence that a child in the womb is aware of things at an earlier stage than we once thought the case. Children at birth were once thought o be blank slates. But it is quite possible that some people remember being born, and even before being born have come to know the voice of their mothers.
Peter Singer of Princeton preaches the same.
Honestly....Why would any rational parent send their child to Princeton? Why not just have them jump in a septic tank?
What will they think of next.
Everything is only a potential whatever because this is the necessary stage to go through to get to be “x”. A chapter is only a potential book, a seed only a potential tree, clay only a potential pot. Just because something doesn’t magically appear full-blown does not mean that it can be thrown out or nothing would ever become anything.
To borrow the quote “the story 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual”; the story “The Pre-Persons” was a warning, not an instruction manual.
In “The Pre-Persons”, you could have kids put to sleep up to the point where they could understand abstract thought - in the story, that was defined as ability to do algebra. An adult decides to challenge this system, by saying he had a head injury and forgot upper math.
There is no “Moloch” and there never was.
This strikes me as a hasty and undiscening statement. Hinduism, for instance, is vast, and comprehending its entire significance would require years of study, and of course humility --- the willingness to be patient and persisting in goodwill --- which is the gateway to all wisdom.
Writing the whole thing off as "irrational" --- a one-word dismissal tout court --- does not show a just and discerning spirit.
I refer you to someone well-versed in reason, Natural Law, and Catholic philosophy, who would offer a more appreciative assessment of Hindu thought: namely Joseph Ratzinger.
Ratzinger was (is) very much a student of Paul Hacker and his mammoth work on Hinduism, which he used as part of the courses he taught on fundamental theology. With neither invidious prejudice nor uncritical approval, Ratzinger grasped some of the essential reason in Hinduism, e.g. Karma conceived of as a science of cause and effect, having many congruities with Natural Law as it is understood in the West.
You might wsant to look into that.
Birth control puts toxins into the body—it is unnatural and can cause birth defects and other evil effects on future children. Birth control pills encourage cancers and who knows what other abnormalities-—as with abortion which is closely linked to breast cancer because of the abrupt unnatural change in hormones in the body. It is also contaminating all water supplies.
The evil aspect of contraception and abortions are hidden from all women. You never have “no effect” from putting known toxins into the body. Deliberately harming the body is immoral and destroying the water supply is even more immoral.
Deliberately putting toxins into your body to prevent the consequences of deliberate immoral actions is always evil and reduces women to sexual objects to be used solely for lust. It reduces them to an object for lust—as does prostitution and other immoral acts.
When you have the possibility of creating life—there is more respect in the consequences of acts which creates responsible acts which NEVER destroys the aspect of the sex act from the beauty of creating life. That elevates the worth of the sex act which makes women more protected because of their ability to produce life. It is elevating and a powerful aspect of womanhood—which was elevated in our society until Cultural Marxists pushed Hefner and the pill to destroy morality and that connection of sex and life. It is nihilism.
Birth Control removes consequences of immoral acts which encourages them. Welfare does the same thing—get used to an unnatural “good” and it determines your character which always leads to a vice.
Immoral acts ALWAYS degrades human beings to mere objects for one’s selfish needs. Doing things which harm the body, so you can misuse it in unnatural ways is immoral.
Isn’t Hinduism, Pantheism? They don’t believe in one God—America is founded on ONE God—and that God is a Judeo/Christian God. That is my point. If you remove that God—where some believe in Mother Earth-—you remove the very Standards which deal with Right and Wrong—which come from the Bible—not Hinduism.
I am not saying there is nothing good about Hinduism—of course, there is—but there is much evil, too and ideas that led to a horrendous culture. I am talking about what Churchill said about it==Hinduism and Islam, when England ruled that nation. There is no comparison to Christianity-—NONE, as D’Souza himself has stated in “What’s so Great About Christianity.” I believe he should know since his parents were Hindu, I think.
Not only did CS Lewis state that Christianity was the most perfect religion but D’Souza premise in his book which I read, “What’s so Great About Christianity?” had the same premise: That of all religions, Christianity is the most rational religion based on the perfect example for life that Jesus Christ gives—and his elevation of all people, not just certain groups, even the lepers—as no other religion does. BUT, it also is about Free Will, where people are their own agents.
It was no accident that USA was founded during the Age of Reason and before Voltaire and the Enlightenment did their total damage on Christianity like the Marxists/postmodernists did to destroy Reason and Logic which Christianity always has championed. In fact, they say there is NO SEPARATION of Faith and Reason. NONE. You are not human if you separate the two—there is always faith in something.
We have seen societies that put their faith in Marxism/Atheism/paganism etc. and they are all ugly, ugly cultures especially for women and children. Christianity is what rid the world of slavery, child sacrifice, pederasty and homosexuality—all widely practiced in other cultures except with the orthodox Jews who were more exclusive than Christians.
Up to two years.
See Cass Sunstein’s “complete lives” system.
2 to 40
May God come back soon so that an end it put to this type of child sacrificing.
I dispute this contention, but the prevalence of the contention is remarkable.
When women abort, many say that she "must have" been ignorant of the baby being a baby [and thus not morally culpable], or must have been told to have the abortion by someone else [with that alleged someone else being said to have all/most of the moral culpability], or she must have been "driven to it" by ever-so-desperate circumstances [putting the moral culpability on poverty or society].
Is it simply to horrible of a fact to face that women - mothers - are willfully killing their own daughters and sons (via abortion) in full awareness of what they do?
They do hide all the statistics and data that prove abortion is connected to Breast Cancer. They also don’t publicize all the hormones in our drinking water and the connection of the birth control pill and breast cancer which spiked after a decade after the “pill” was introduced.
The Marxist use language so people don’t regard the “fetus” as a human being. They call it “pro-choice” instead of pro=kill===they lie about facts and try to hide the evil of their acts by sugar-coating the act. They start with young children to “educate’ them into moral relativism to destroy Judeo/Christian Ethics. The schools (since Dewey) no longer teach Virtue and Morality which is did since Aristotle—school’s purpose was to teach Virtue since it is necessary for free people who are not addicted to their material world. If you have no virtue—you have no control over yourself.
Do you think some liberal CNN debate moderator will bring this issue up when it's us vs Obama on the stage? Don't hold your breath.
Sam and Dean. Demons on aisle 666.
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