It is said you can tell a lot about a society from the way it treats its people and how its people treat each other.
I won’t bother with a transition or thesis statement: Abortion is a totally acceptable and abhorrent practice in our world. In fact, it is considered a liberating breakthrough for women’s “reproductive rights” — what exactly that means, it’s hard to say — for many. Many states in our republic are fast lanes for abortion. The unborn child need not be at risk or a danger to the mother to see the ax. It only needs to be unwanted.
The slippery slope metaphor is fitting here. If we can abort the unborn, what will stop progressives from one day aborting newborns? Once infanticide is accepted what would stop assisted suicide or euthanasia? Surely one can envision death panels at some point to review societies’ undesirables, especially during the hysteric age of warming and over population, for justification of their existence?
The folks at the Journal of Medical Ethics have already made that leap.
“We claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”
“If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.”
Life Site News adds
The authors do not say at what stage of development it become morally repugnant to kill a newborn baby but leave the question of when a baby moves from being a potential person to being an actual person to be settled by neurologists and psychologists.
The Journal’s blog website actually posted a defense of the publication, while also attempting to grab a piece of moral high ground by sharing threatening and “abusive emails” the authors received in response.
These animals are morally repugnant.
Related articles
- ‘After-birth abortion’ is logically sound: that’s why it will boost the pro-life movement (oyiabrown.wordpress.com)
- Medical Ethics and The Broken Window Fallacy (thepatriotperspective.wordpress.com)
- ‘After-birth abortion’ is logically sound: that’s why it will boost the pro-life movement (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
- Journal of Medical Ethics Paper: ‘After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?’ (newsbusters.org)
- New paper in medical ethics journal argues for infanticide (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
