Killing a baby is the same as getting an abortion (1 Viewer)

[kfnmpah]

KILLING newborns is morally the same as abortion and should be permissible if the mother wishes it, Australian philosophers have argued in an article that has unleashed a firestorm of criticism and forced the British Medical Journal to defend its publication.Alberto Giubilini, from Monash University, and Francesca Minerva, from the University of Melbourne, say a foetus and a newborn are equivalent in their lack of a sense of their own life and aspiration. They contend this justifies what they call ''after-birth abortion'' as long as it is painless, because the baby is not harmed by missing out on a life it cannot conceptualise.
About a third of infants with Down syndrome are not diagnosed prenatally, Drs Giubilini and Minerva say, and mothers of children with serious abnormalities should have the chance to end the child's life after, as well as before, birth.
But this should also extend to healthy infants, the pair argue in the BMJ group's Journal of Medical Ethics, because the interests of a mother who is unwilling to care for it outweigh a baby's claims.
The academics call an infant, like a foetus, only a ''potential person'', but they do not define the point at which it gains human status, saying this depends on the baby's degree of self-awareness and is a matter for neurologists and psychologists.
Julian Savulescu, the journal's editor, said the authors had received death threats since posting the article last week, via the publication's own website and online discussion forums.
His goal was ''not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument,'' wrote Professor Savulescu, from the University of Oxford. If others made a similarly refined case for recriminalising abortion he would also publish that.
''What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited … Proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat.''
Steve Clarke, the chief executive of the advocacy group Down Syndrome NSW, said the paper was ''very theoretical''.
''I don't think it does have any relevance or insight for the real world. It is so beyond our social mores and values that it is beyond the pale and I wouldn't want to dignify it with any further comment,'' he said.
Bernadette Tobin, the director of the Plunkett Centre for Ethics at St Vincent's & Mater Health and the Australian Catholic University, said the Melbourne academics should ''speak forthrightly'' and use the word infanticide if they wanted to persuade people that killing newborns and terminating pregnancies were equivalent.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lif...rks-outrage-20120301-1u61l.html#ixzz1nu8u7MtW


um...

 

[Lolsmith]

It's a fair cop if you agree with their logic and that being your justification for abortion being legal

Would having less Down Syndrome sufferers alleviate stress and resources from the health sector? Is this not a positive eugenics position to take?

 

[katie tully]

I dont understand what the problem is.

 

[scuba_steve2121]

lol of course having an abortion is the same as killing a baby or potential life if you will. at least now we can abort babies before the mother has to go through all that shit that comes with a pregnancy, for a baby that will either A be unwanted or B a drain on the family. back in the day before we could abort you had infanticide, a dreadful practice that many families had to go through. I have a sister with down syndrome and my parents have told me that if there was a way to know back then, my sis would have been aborted, but of course now they are stuck with what is essentially a 4 year old with anger issues, that will never leave them till the day they die. And don't get me started on the 10,000's of dollars of medical costs associated with having a baby with down syndrome.

 

[sointoyourself]

Abortion is murder.

 

[soloooooo]

That article is stupid.

 

[IamBread]

People are stupid.

 

[katie tully]

What is the difference between killing an animal and killing an infant? If you are ok with killing an animal in any capacity then you should be okay with killing an infant.

 

[a c]

Singer et al. argued that we should judge an animal on it's functional abilities, what it can actually do.

A newborn baby is cognitively, physically, much less developed than an adult dog, pig etc. So killing a child is less morally questionable than killing a pig, which are killed in their millions daily.

If the child has serious disabilities etc that will make it's life unbearable, it will die soon anyway, or the parents have insufficient capacity to care for such a child, probably a good idea to end it now

 

[a c]

Just read this article educate yourself, it is very short read it

http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----03.htm

"To describe a being as 'human' is to use a term that straddles two distinct notions: membership of the species Homo sapiens, and being a person, in the sense of a rational or self-conscious being. If 'human' is taken as equivalent to 'person', the second premiss of the argument, which asserts that the foetus is a human being, is clearly false; for one cannot plausibly argue that a foetus is either rational or self-conscious. If, on the other hand, 'human' is taken to mean no more than 'member of the species Homo sapiens', then it needs to be shown why mere membership of a given biological species should be a sufficient basis for a right to life.

Rather, the defender of abortion may wish to argue, we should look at the foetus for what it is - the actual characteristics it possesses - and value its life accordingly."

etc

 

[soloooooo]

What is the difference between killing an animal and killing an infant? If you are ok with killing an animal in any capacity then you should be okay with killing an infant.

On this Earth humans (including infants) are at the top of the food chain and life hierarchy. Animals are below us. Whether this is morally correct or not is irrelevant, it's how it has been done for millions or years and will continue to do so.

 

[Lentern]

On this Earth humans (including infants) are at the top of the food chain and life hierarchy. Animals are below us. Whether this is morally correct or not is irrelevant, it's how it has been done for millions or years and will continue to do so.

Whether this is morally correct or not is irrelevant? What the fuck are you?

 

[soloooooo]

Whether this is morally correct or not is irrelevant? What the fuck are you?

?

 

[Lolsmith]

Whether this is morally correct or not is irrelevant? What the fuck are you?

He is a sociopath

 

[Bored_of_HSC]

What is this concept to a "right" to life?

Should life be a "right" if it's completely shit and the pains outweigh any abstract sense of significance?

 

[katie tully]

Mandatory life.

Interesting how many people who are pro 'right to life' are not pro 'right to end your own life'

 

[Lolsmith]

Mandatory life.

Interesting how many people who are pro 'right to life' are not pro 'right to end your own life'

because they're all god botherers

 

[katie tully]

Shooting an infant out of a cannon is the same as an abortion (with a cannon)

 

[Lolsmith]

cannobortion

 

[soloooooo]

Idiots in this thread list:
katie tully
Lolsmith