[Beyond Borders]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/02/...t-persons/

This article was from 2012, but what the..............

Were these guys trolling? If not, I have indeed now seen it all.

Slippery slopes - they exist.

Note the bolded part about "her" feelings.

Quote:

Two ethicists working with Australian universities argue in the latest online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so to should be the termination of a newborn.

The two are quick to note that they prefer the term “after-birth abortion” as opposed to “infanticide.” Why? Because it “[emphasizes] that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child.” The authors also do not agree with the term euthanasia for this practice as the best interest of the person who would be killed is not necessarily the primary reason his or her life is being terminated. In other words, it may be in the parents’ best interest to terminate the life, not the newborns.

The circumstances, the authors state, where after-birth abortion should be considered acceptable include instances where the newborn would be putting the well-being of the family at risk, even if it had the potential for an “acceptable” life. The authors cite Downs Syndrome as an example, stating that while the quality of life of individuals with Downs is often reported as happy, “such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”
Ethicists Argue for Acceptance of After Birth Abortions

Francesca Minerva (Photo: Academia.edu)

This means a newborn whose family (or society) that could be socially, economically or psychologically burdened or damaged by the newborn should have the ability to seek out an after-birth abortion. They state that after-birth abortions are not preferable over early-term abortions of fetuses but should circumstances change with the family or the fetus in the womb, then they advocate that this option should be made available.

The authors go on to state that the moral status of a newborn is equivalent to a fetus in that it cannot be considered a person in the “morally relevant sense.” On this point, the authors write:

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.

[...]

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.

Giubilini and Minerva believe that being able to understand the value of a different situation, which often depends on mental development, determines personhood. For example, being able to tell the difference between an undesirable situation and a desirable one. They note that fetuses and newborns are “potential persons.” The authors do acknowledge that a mother, who they cite as an example of a true person, can attribute “subjective” moral rights to the fetus or newborn, but they state this is only a projected moral status.

The authors counter the argument that these “potential persons” have the right to reach that potential by stating it is “over-ridden by the interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being because, as we have just argued, merely potential people cannot be harmed by not being brought into existence.”

And what about adoption? Giubilini and Minerva write that, as for the mother putting the child up for adoption, her emotional state should be considered as a trumping right. For instance, if she were to “suffer psychological distress” from giving up her child to someone else — they state that natural mothers can dream their child will return to them — then after-birth abortion should be considered an allowable alternative.

The authors do not tackle the issue of what age an infant would be considered a person.

The National Catholic Register thinks that these authors are right — once you accept their ideas on personhood. The Register states that the argument made by the ethicists is almost pro-life in that it “highlights the absurdity of the pro-abortion argument”:

The second we allow ourselves to become the arbiters of who is human and who isn’t, this is the calamitous yet inevitable end. Once you say all human life is not sacred, the rest is just drawing random lines in the sand.

First Things, a publication of the The Institute on Religion and Public Life, notes that while this article doesn’t mean the law could — or would — allow after-birth abortions in future medical procedures, arguments such as “the right to dehydrate the persistently unconscious” began in much the same way in bioethics journals.

[Therapsid]

The utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer's been arguing for early infancy "abortions" for years. The argument is that a newborn is a human being, but not yet a 'person' in the sense that it does not have a sense of self-consciousness or sense of identity. The notion is that only persons have a self-aware internal narrative of themselves as distinct beings with life histories. Hence, apart from the issue of the pain which non-persons (animals and infants) can experience, death in and of itself is only a loss to persons.

I understand the argument, even though I disagree with it. But in the end, if you do agree with their premises, given our modern bureaucratic welfare states, it would lead willy-nilly to state sponsored and regulated infant termination.

No thanks.

I'd rather see a small number of children grow up with terminal diseases than have us enshrine into law the right to snuff out the lives of newborns.

[Beyond Borders]

(07-16-2013 12:43 PM)Therapsid Wrote:  

I'd rather see a small number of children grow up with terminal diseases than have us enshrine into law the right to snuff out the lives of newborns.

I guess I've just been in the dark on this, but I suppose I can see that I should have assumed there were people out there espousing it.

Over my dead body would I ever let a woman take it upon herself to do this to my child.

[jaakkeli]

In a lot of ancient societies infanticide was the norm, not the exception. The Greeks and the Romans would have a patriarch (or the owner of the woman since most people were slaves) check out the newborn and decide whether he'd be allowed to live. Most women of the time would have some of their children killed though they rarely had much say on the issue.

We don't need to do this anymore now that we have contraception, abortion and enough surplus to provide for tons of bastard children but it's a little silly to pretend that an act that was considered totally normal for most of human history has suddenly become something so obviously heinous that we don't even need to discuss whether it should be allowed.

[scorpion]

(07-16-2013 01:16 PM)jaakkeli Wrote:  

In a lot of ancient societies infanticide was the norm, not the exception. The Greeks and the Romans would have a patriarch (or the owner of the woman since most people were slaves) check out the newborn and decide whether he'd be allowed to live. Most women of the time would have some of their children killed though they rarely had much say on the issue.

We don't need to do this anymore now that we have contraception, abortion and enough surplus to provide for tons of bastard children but it's a little silly to pretend that an act that was considered totally normal for most of human history has suddenly become something so obviously heinous that we don't even need to discuss whether it should be allowed.

Infanticide in the past was done for practical reasons and was essentially mercy killing babies that were deformed or so frail that they were 99% likely to die in childhood anyway. It was not done out of convenience for the mother's feelings, as this seems to be. Sickening.

[jaakkeli]

(07-16-2013 01:26 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

Infanticide in the past was done for practical reasons and was essentially mercy killing babies that were deformed or so frail that they were 99% likely to die in childhood anyway. It was not done out of convenience for the mother's feelings

No, it was done according to the desires of the father, most often against the will of the mother. Both Greek and Roman societies considered infanticide pretty normal although dislikeable and the most famous philosophers of their time debated it from the perspective of deciding under which conditions infanticide is acceptable, not whether it is acceptable, and most societies considered eg. killing any bastard a moral duty.

The Romans did not view an infant as a person that laws apply to until it was accepted into a family. If the family patriarch would decide against the child, they'd be left somewhere outside where theoretically a passerby could rescue the child and this was a frequent enough occurence that the Romans ended up making tons of rulings on what would happen if a child of free citizens was left to die and ended up rescued by a slave family (so, is the kid a slave or a free man?) or vice versa.

The later Romans tightened their laws on infanticide by exposure largely thanks to Christian influence as Christians ended up picking a Jewish idea that even a child is made in God's image and that killing one is always a sin. Oh and by the way, one driving force behind Christianity taking over Rome was the mass conversion of women and one reason women were drawn to Christianity was that it banned infanticide, taking away the men's right to have their children killed on a whim.

If you asked men to vote on it, infanticide would be much closer to legalization than it would if you asked women. It has always been so and it will always be so. Just because some totally loony liberal writes about infanticide suiting women's feelings doesn't mean women are actually like that.

[scorpion]

You're going off on a non-sequitur with the details of infanticide.

My point is that women were not sitting around en masse in the ancient world killing their babies out of convenience. You seem to be in agreement on that point.

Ancient infanticide is comparable to modern abortion, in the sense that it was seen as a necessary evil and was mostly practiced on the deformed or sickly, but occasionally just on the unwanted. Obviously there was no way for the ancients to determine the health of a fetus before it was born. And sickly or deformed babies would have little chance of survival without modern medicine. So infanticide was the practical and merciful choice.

I also agree that with modern medical technology there is no justification for infanticide.

[Walderschmidt]

I draw the line after the baby is born.

With modern technology - one can determine before it is born if it will be retarded or not or have severe birth defects and can choose then. No need to kill the baby after the fact.


Perhaps I am biased though. I was such a case. I was born three months early, by my father's decision, to see if they could perform an operation to keep me alive. He made the right choice. I am alive and healthy today, with only a scar across my stomach as a reminder.

Lastly, the have to stop using these godawful euphemisms like terminate. We aren't computer programs that you turn on and off. We're human beings.

[Architekt]

Personally, I don't think it's ethical for other someone to force anyone else to abide by their ideals of what is considered ethical. Also, the idea that mothers killing their children is better than putting them up for adoption is abso fucking lutely absurd. How can killing something forever put a woman's mind at ease more than giving it a safe home? I'm inclined to agree that this has to be some kind of troll, surely people can't be that fucking ridiculous

[Grit]

I really cannot fathom how betaness translates to influencing a man's speech and thoughts like this.

The man who redraws the line to favor a woman's choice is a deferring beta by definition.

And it's a stretch to assume he is getting laid by writing scientific journals.

So I can only assume its more ominous: he is getting paid to pursue these kind of thoughts.

The case of the Greeks is a great example of the point I want to make.. Men ordered the destruction of infants that were unfit because the fate of a warring city-state depended on it. Survival of the civilization depended on it.