Posted on 05/07/2012 4:51:54 PM PDT by wagglebee
In February of 2012, a pair of left-wing “philosophers” wrote a paper that claimed that babies aren’t human until they can become cognizant of themselves, aware that if they were to be “aborted” or killed they’d be losing something valuable, their lives.
This, they claimed, justified abortion as well as post birth infanticide. Naturally they had elaborate justifications for their stance and what they wrote is chilling indeed, for it essentially states that only people that think like them are really worth the status of “human,” worth having their lives considered sacrosanct.
The pair, Alberto Giubilini of Milan, Italy, and Francesca Minerva of Australia, held as a central thesis that since abortion is so commonly accepted there had to be a more expansive use for it. That use, the pair decided, should be to cover killing babies born with developmental problems. After all, they said, neither fetuses or newborns “have the same moral status as actual persons,” so this certainly must mean that newborns with catastrophic birth defects could be killed without any moral reservations.
Here is how they justified the non-human status of both a fetus and a born baby.
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.
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. This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.
This is chilling for its cold approach to life, but worse for its vagueness.
Let’s examine the main point of what makes someone a worthy human in these liberal’s minds. They feel that unless someone can understand the “basic value” of their own life, then they don’t count for personhood.
This is so entirely ague that anyone can qualify for elimination in a large number of situations.
The pair mentions that mentally retarded people can qualify for elimination, that they aren’t cognizant of the value of their own lives. But are you aware of yourself when you are in a coma from an accident? Are you any longer aware of yourself if you have Alzheimer’s? How about if you have devolved to infantile status at the end of your life? Should your children have the right to just kill you instead of keeping you alive in that case?
How far does this “thought” criteria go? Can these “philosophers” decide that if you are happy drinking beer, working as a car mechanic, and watching reality TV that this isn’t enough cognition to qualify to be self-aware? Could they decide that unless you think exactly like them, why, you aren’t properly a human? Of course they could because they would be in charge of deciding what “thought” qualifies as enough to make you a real person.
Imagine what this means? It means that the left is leaving behind its reliance on “science” and alighting on “thought” to serve as a basis to assess who is worth what. No longer is mere biology something worth considering. That long-held justification for abortion using the unviable cells argument is now out. Instead we will henceforth set out to determine if people are thinking properly to ascertain if they are worth keeping alive.
Chilling, no?
Worse, imagine how much more dangerous these ideas will become when governments decide to use them as a basis for policy! We will have governments determining who is “worth” being called a human based on how the person being judged thinks.
Extremely chilling, indeed.
LifeNews.com Note: Warner Todd Huston is an editorial columnist whose work is featured on numerous web sites. He has also written for several history magazines, and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture.”
The problem is the "moral status" of bastards who believe this.
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Even if that is true.... So?
So does this mean that if a person doesn’t know they are being killed it’s somehow okay to kill them?
This means someone can shoot the professors between the eyes in their sleep, and they won’t mind since they won’t be aware they are being killed.
So how do the professors know this?
Babies Don’t Know They’re Being Killed During Abortions
Wouldn’t that be true for people ambushed with a bullet to the back of the skull? Or someone who has an OD of sleeping pills slipped into their drink? How does ignorance of your murder make it right?
Using the same logic, wouldn’t a person suffering from dementia be eligible for a good snuffing out?
What about a person in a coma, who couldn’t prove’ their self awareness?
Or if a person is temporarily knocked out?
The list is endless.
Perhaps one of these fine gentlemen would like to demonstrate for us the utility in that belief.
We are witnessing mankind rationalize itself into The Darker Ages.
I expect closet cases Tom Cruise and John Travolta to speak out passionately in defense of the unborn.
Any second now...
...I'm, I'm sure they'll be here any moment...
And we actually think we can have a dialog with these people! It is impossible to find a common ground with these people.
We might as well try having a discussion with a vat of maggots.
Yea, well that works for demonocrats I guess...
Yea, well that works for demonocrats I guess...
Would it be OK to kill anybody if it can be done in his or her sleep?
I see a big fat FAIL here.
I was just about to post a similar statement.........
I would like a government grant to conduct a study where I take these liberal profs, bash them into a persistent vegetative state, then cut them up and see whether they know they are being killed.
I’ve heard some perverse individuals defend abortion on the grounds that it is a “legal activity.”
God takes these baby’s to where these murderers will never enter, they will be judged.
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