Killing of new borns allowed, they have no right to life

[Doozer]

By Stephen Adams in London

Thursday March 01 2012
PARENTS should be allowed to have newborn babies killed as it is no different from abortion, medical ethics experts linked to*Oxford University
*have argued.
Newborns are not "actual persons" and do not have a "moral right to life", they say. Parents should be able to have a baby killed if it turns out to be disabled, or for any other reason that would allow an abortion, they add in an article in the 'Journal of Medical Ethics'.
The authors had received death threats following its publication, said the journal's editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, who is the director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
He said that those who had made abusive and threatening responses 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 Dr Alberto Giubilini and Dr Francesca Minerva.
They argued: "The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a foetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual."
They explained: "Both a foetus 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."
The authors 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 a baby killed if it turned out to be disabled when born.
They added, as an example, that many cases of*Down Syndrome
*were not identified by pre-natal testing.
"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," they wrote.
Justifiable
They did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others, but that morally they were no different from abortion as already practised.
Defending the decision to publish the article, Prof Savulescu said that arguments in favour of infanticide were "largely not new" and his journal was not to "promote some one moral view.
It is to present "well-reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises".
He said the journal would consider publishing an article arguing that, if there was no moral difference between abortion and killing newborns, then abortion too should be illegal. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
- Stephen Adams in London



Discuss

[mer]

killing a baby is murder its way different than abortion, anyway what person in a right frame of mind wud kill a newborn baby? if they dont want the baby put it up for adaption and the baby might have a bright future ahead of it. killing an inocent newborn baby is just cruel how cud you after carrying that around for 9 months? jasus i dont understand some people in this world

there is people that try so hard in this world to have a baby and it doesnt work for them, life is the greatest gift in the world!!

and killing a baby i think that person shud be shot in the face to say they are not human!!

[very shy guy]

killing a baby is murder its way different than abortion, anyway what person in a right frame of mind wud kill a newborn baby? if they dont want the baby put it up for adaption and the baby might have a bright future ahead of it. killing an inocent newborn baby is just cruel how cud you after carrying that around for 9 months? jasus i dont understand some people in this world

there is people that try so hard in this world to have a baby and it doesnt work for them, life is the greatest gift in the world!!

and killing a baby i think that person shud be shot in the face to say they are not human!!

Whats next,kill the old because they are living too long?,right wing fanactics.

[Mousey]

Destroy All Humans!!!

[BootSlick55]

It's an academic paper and therefore an argument purely based on a certain implacable logic. It may be the case that the authors are attempting to undercut the pro-choice argument through an absurdist equivalence (in the style of Swift's A Modest Proposal)

My own view is that abortion should be permitted up to 21 years.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

[saoirsemac]

i feel that if a babby is born that has massive problems that will lead to it being in pain and having to get extensive operations and the possibliity of surviving or having a normal life should be considered

would it not be more humain to put down the above case than let it suffer for a few years going through countless operations for it then to pass away

is it fair to put a small child through that much pain for the selfishness of the parents

agree i see it more in the sense of euthasia, why bring a child into the world, who life is greatly reduced an impacted by a disabilty, i mean we had a case where a mother was delighted her child which 2 who was born with a brain and needs many machines to keep her alive its wrong the child wnt thank you, if a parent feels they cant cope then maybe there shud be an option, i agree in euthasia in adults too but thats a different matter

[Dub Lad]

agree i see it more in the sense of euthasia, why bring a child into the world, who life is greatly reduced an impacted by a disabilty, i mean we had a case where a mother was delighted her child which 2 who was born with a brain and needs many machines to keep her alive its wrong the child wnt thank you, if a parent feels they cant cope then maybe there shud be an option, i agree in euthasia in adults too but thats a different matter

Cause of a disability you want to kill babies? Just because a parent can't cope you don't just go around killing them jesus, you're talking about murder here.

[saoirsemac]

Cause of a disability you want to kill babies? Just because a parent can't cope you don't just go around killing them jesus, you're talking about murder here.

im not talking about downs here but severe cases, children born without rectums, serve physical deformation, internal organs outside the body, no brain etc etc, im talking about exterme cases here,

yes right to life, but wud u want a life of pain, and maybe be brain dead, ur just trapped there,

thats not a life

[Dub Lad]

im not talking about downs here but severe cases, children born without rectums, serve physical deformation, internal organs outside the body, no brain etc etc, im talking about exterme cases here,

yes right to life, but wud u want a life of pain, and maybe be brain dead, ur just trapped there,

thats not a life

Ok firstly the rectum, they can infact treat this and as time goes on science and medicine get's better and gives a better quality of life, but it can be done, but if you considered that as severe that baby would be dead now? because you deemed it a severe case?
As for organs outside the body yup it has happens and over the decades medicine has caught up and you can detect and treat these issues.

[Skeletor]

im not talking about downs here but severe cases, children born without rectums, serve physical deformation, internal organs outside the body, no brain etc etc, im talking about exterme cases here,

yes right to life, but wud u want a life of pain, and maybe be brain dead, ur just trapped there,

thats not a life

well said when the disability is so severe there is no quality of life