UK Article - Seriously?

[_Ceeboo]

An article in the United Kingdom Telegraph.

Wow! I was blown away!

What say you?

Peace,
Ceeboo

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.







A group of ethicists has argued that killing young babies is no different from abortion Photo: Alamy









By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

1:38PM GMT 29 Feb 2012



2073 Comments





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’.



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“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”.

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.

“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.”

However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.

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”.

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.

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”.

What Minerva and Giubilini did was apply these arguments “in consideration of maternal and family interests”.

While accepting that many people would disagree with their arguments, he wrote: “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.”

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.”

He said the journal would consider publishing an article positing that, if there was no moral difference between abortion and killing newborns, then abortion too should be illegal.

Dr Trevor Stammers, director of medical ethics at St Mary's University College, said: "If a mother does smother her child with a blanket, we say 'it's doesn't matter, she can get another one,' is that what we want to happen?

"What these young colleagues are spelling out is what we would be the inevitable end point of a road that ethical philosophers in the States and Australia have all been treading for a long time and there is certainly nothing new."

Referring to the term "after-birth abortion", Dr Stammers added: "This is just verbal manipulation that is not philosophy. I might refer to abortion henceforth as antenatal infanticide."

[_Bond James Bond]

This is a story about the article. Actual article? And I'm going to go out on a limb and assume this is not the mainstream opinion of ethicists.

[_just me]

Could you link to the original please? The way you have C&P'd is very confusing.

[_Quasimodo]

Like everyone else, I'm curious where you found this, Ceeboo. It sounds a little suspicious.

[_bcspace]

I put it up on the MDD in the News forum and there apparently are some LDS who implicitly agree with it. I certainly don't. Neither does the Church.

[_Ceeboo]

Hey people,

Sorry, I don't know how to link the information (All I did was to copy/paste after I found it)

I just did a search for the United Kingdom Telegraph, then looked up the story. Someone else asked me to take a look at it.

Anyway, if anyone else knows how to post the link, I would appreciate it.

Peace,
Ceeboo

[_Morley]

Link.

[_Ceeboo]

Link.

Thanks, Morley (I appreciate you doing that) :) (Just wish I knew how you did it) :)

Peace,
Ceeboo

[_just me]

Thanks, Pa. I will try to take a look at it after church today.

Ceeboo, I'm not sure if I will up to actually commenting on or discussing this topic. But I will post to let you know either way.

[_Hoops]

interesting that those who are so quick to condemn God for His alleged moral failings seem to be taking a wait and see approach here. The writers seem pretty clear to me.

But let's move on...

I applaud the writers for their willingness to embrace what is clearly the next step to morality apart from God. Morality is simply a function of a highly ordered society and therefor there is no moral imperative to life until that life can contribute in a meaningful way. In fact, social darwinism demands this view - if one is willing to be honest. Let's see how consistent the aah's on this board are really willing to be. That sound you hear is the clippety-clop hoofbeats of a furious retreat. But then they're left with explaining why.

The religionist, otoh, demands that life be protected simply because it's life. Life is enough.