Posted on 02/29/2012 12:48:43 PM PST by Pinkbell
The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.
The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.
The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.
They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”
Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.
“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”
As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.
The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”
This is the logical conclusion of the abortion movement, is it not? One of the arguments used for abortion is that what is in the womb is not a person, and a person is then defined by intellect, capabilities, ability to contribute to society, etc. It can be pointed out that those same qualities can be attributed to newborns, the very ill/disabled, and the elderly. Often times abortion supporters sputter around and dodge these points, but those who conducted this study seem to acknowledge this. Instead of then concluding that abortion must end, they decide to open the pool of people eligible to be killed.
They also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing.
Once such children were born there was “no choice for the parents but to keep the child”, they wrote.
They have to KEEP their child? God forbid.
Actually, there are adoptive parents who would be more than willing to take a child with, say, Down Sydrome if the parents consider the child a "burden".
“To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”
Here we go with the state, and that's the problem with government control. The government can decide that a person costs too much and is not worth it. If this was legalized, they'd then advocate euthanasia I suppose. Abortion is already advocated for disabled children in the womb.
They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.
Of course they do. They love to manipulate the language so horrific things don't sound as bad as they are. That's why we have terms like "choice" and "termination".
Both Minerva and Giubilini know Prof Savulescu through Oxford. Minerva was a research associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics until last June, when she moved to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Melbourne University.
Giubilini, a former visiting student at Cambridge University, gave a talk in January at the Oxford Martin School – where Prof Savulescu is also a director – titled 'What is the problem with euthanasia?'
He too has gone on to Melbourne, although to the city’s Monash University. Prof Savulescu worked at both univerisities before moving to Oxford in 2002.
Isn't it wonderful? They are teaching students about ethics? This is what Rick Santorum was referring to when he talked about liberal indoctrination at colleges.
Defending the decision to publish in a British Medical Journal blog, Prof Savulescu, said that arguments in favour of killing newborns were “largely not new”.
That's true. Peter Singer has gone before them.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he added: “This “debate” has been an example of “witch ethics” - a group of people know who the witch is and seek to burn her. It is one of the most dangerous human tendencies we have. It leads to lynching and genocide. Rather than argue and engage, there is a drive is to silence and, in the extreme, kill, based on their own moral certainty. That is not the sort of society we should live in.”
The irony here is staggering. People should be outraged. They are the ones who wish to kill based on their own moral certainty that they are more of a person than the unborn/babies. They are the ones who are dangerous, not the objectors.
Pro-life and Moral Absolutes Ping!
What about when they become smart-mouthed teenagers? Can we off them then?
Is this what is next?
Unbelievably EVIL!
Oddly enough, I believe just the opposite - that abortion is no different that killing a baby, or any other person.
This should be no surprise. Sarah Palin was denounced when she claimed we were headed for death panels...clearly, one can see where this is going.
What about when they become smart-mouthed teenagers? Can we off them then?
Is this what is next?
Those who believe it is okay to kill a child are repugnant. On the other hand, I’m in favor of retroactive abortion, and the persons responsible for writing the article on killing newborns should be first in line.
When values are left up to human whims and the principles of evolution, civilization is completely screwed. Tell me again. Why did we stop Hitler?
This is becoming civil war material.
If we catch anyone killing a live child...all bets are off.
Leftists always get really upset when you expose an inconvenient truth about their policies or beliefs.
Yes it is. Note no sarcasm.
What the hell happened to the West?
Sadly children are killed all too frequently.
I’m old enough to remember when a murder was front page news.
Our “liberal” society has so devalued life that murders are hardly mentioned.
Most lib Dem Rats probably support this.
Murderers at heart.
I know they probably didn’t mean it this way, but they are right.
The authors are little different from Hitler.
They should be repent or be derided for the rest of their miserable lives.
And so the we move down the road of moral relativity.
What exactly are you talking about?
except he’d be going down a port-o-let hole in a more accurate analogy. (Still smiling of course.)
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