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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKilling babies no different from abortion, experts say
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 journals 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 Savulescus former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.
(...)
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.
full: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9113394/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion-experts-say.html
journal article: http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/02/22/medethics-2011-100411.full.pdf
Rick Santorum's head: KABOOM!
unblock
(52,334 posts)leaving aside the obvious argument of whether a fetus' right to life is different from an infant's right to life, the idea that abortion is no different than infanticide leaves out the question of who, exactly has a right to kill an infant?
no one has a right to kill a fetus except the mother (or doctors acting on her explicit instructions) because the fetus is in a very specific state -- inside and physically connected to the mother.
an infant is in no such condition. so who has the right to kill an infant, and on what basis?
it's a bit like saying, hey, if i can kill someone who's broken into my home, then i can also kill anyone i meet under any circumstances.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)They need to read Sandra Day O'Connor's opinion in Casey.
Here is the kernel that I always remember:
The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society....
And here it is in the context of a few of the paragraphs around it:
Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. Our cases recognize "the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.
These considerations begin our analysis of the woman's interest in terminating her pregnancy but cannot end it, for this reason: though the abortion decision may originate within the zone of conscience and belief, it is more than a philosophic exercise. Abortion is a unique act. It is an act fraught with consequences for others: for the woman who must live with the implications of her decision; for the persons who perform and assist in the procedure; for the spouse, family, and society which must confront the knowledge that these procedures exist, procedures some deem nothing short of an act of violence against innocent human life; and, depending on one's beliefs, for the life or potential life that is aborted. Though abortion is conduct, it does not follow that the State is entitled to proscribe it in all instances. That is because the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition and so unique to the law. The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society....
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/casey.html
Almost makes you want to forgive Bush v. Gore. Almost, but . . . . . not quite.
Snake Alchemist
(3,318 posts)TrogL
(32,822 posts)...because children below that age lack self-awareness?
He may have a point. First thing I remember, I was standing under the kitchen table, asking for hot chocolate. That likely would have made me around age 3.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)a simple pattern
(608 posts)doing a modest proposal kind of thing
niyad
(113,587 posts)wandy
(3,539 posts)(Use the Oxford one) shows all most everything about her limited to the last 3 days and other than a short bio, very short bio, all on this topic.
See, those librial spauns of santin won't just stop at killing a few cells ya know.
Put it this way. I am a modest man from the land of pine trees and I can find more creadable information about me.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)especially the part about killing disabled babies.
See also eugenics movement, forced sterilization and Aktien T4.
GeorgeGist
(25,323 posts)For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public
By Jonathan Swift (1729)