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Journal of Medical Ethics Says Newborn Babies not People, Can be Killed
FrontPage ^ | August 10, 2013 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 08/12/2013 4:02:47 AM PDT by NYer

And why not? If we go on defining human life down, we’ll end up determining that anyone can be killed at any time in the name of the greater good.

That’s where this road of warped ethics inevitably leads.

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.

You know, if you’re going to call for murdering babies, maybe you need to drop the “Ethics” part. If you’re going to be the worst people in the world, at least stop calling your behavior ethical.

The journal’s 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”.

Apparently the values of a liberal society involve killing newborn babies. And if that’s so, is it fanatical to be opposed to killing newborn babies or is it fanatical to advocate killing them?

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Perhaps a study can be done which would discuss the moral status of people who deny the right of infants to live.

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “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’.

Call it the Fetusization of babies.

“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.”

As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.

The authors therefore 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 preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.

Wendy Davis would be proud.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he added: “This “debate” has been an example of “witch ethics” – a group of people know who the witch is and seek to burn her. It is one of the most dangerous human tendencies we have. It leads to lynching and genocide. Rather than argue and engage, there is a drive is to silence and, in the extreme, kill, based on their own moral certainty. That is not the sort of society we should live in.”

No, the society we live on should urge the murder of infants based on the moral certainity of ethical professionals such as these.

 


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: abortion; defectivenewborns; disablednewborns; infanticide; life; murder
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To: NYer

They went wrong from the beginning:

“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.”

Redefine “person” in any way you want and you can do anything you want with them. Dehumanization is the normal first step for tyrants and bigots. It is how the Fabian Socialists did it. It is how the Nazis did it. These “Ethicists” are just following the established Socialist tradition.


41 posted on 08/12/2013 6:06:55 AM PDT by Seraphicaviary (St. Michael is gearing up. The angels are on the ready line.)
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To: NYer

What kind of convoluted nonsense it this.

Anyone who has kids knows that a baby doesn’t show much of anything in the first few weeks. Eat, sleep, and excrete. Getting used to the world is more than enough work for them.

That the baby doesn’t do partial differential equations in the first few days is not an excuse to kill it, even if it is retarded.

How low can you get.


42 posted on 08/12/2013 6:12:34 AM PDT by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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To: NYer

Prediction: Sooner or later some assailant who manages to take out one of our elitist political rulers with a bullet is going to try and use the defense that he was just carrying out “a retroactive abortion”.


43 posted on 08/12/2013 6:13:44 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: DownInFlames

“Where does it stop. At what age can a human be involuntary terminated. 65, 70, 80?”

Coming soon.


44 posted on 08/12/2013 6:17:59 AM PDT by headstamp 2 (What would Scooby do?)
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To: NYer

The natural progression of abortion on demand.


45 posted on 08/12/2013 6:18:35 AM PDT by headstamp 2 (What would Scooby do?)
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To: Ouderkirk

“ethics” are what Humanists substitute for morals.


46 posted on 08/12/2013 6:19:36 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: NYer

You can see the progression: Ok, when do they realize they are themselves a being?

When they can walk? When they can talk? Ok.

Next is we can kill others whenever we think they’ve lost the smallest attribute of being a human.

Demonic.

But, it will come as our society continues to collapse under Marxist brainwashing from our educators and media.....barring divine intervention and revival.....

Looks like Christians need to learn Russian and be ready to move.....

Who woulda thunk it.......


47 posted on 08/12/2013 6:36:43 AM PDT by Arlis (.)
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To: NYer

We have been down this same road before. My parents’ generation had to go to war to stop the madness when it became a core value of the National SOCIALISTS in Germany in the 1930’s. The creation of the nation of Israel was justified in part because an extension of this same mindset concluded that Jews were not persons. The National SOCIALISTS in Germany set into motion an industrial-scale effort to murder every Jew they could get their hands on.


48 posted on 08/12/2013 6:40:13 AM PDT by theBuckwheat
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To: headstamp 2; DownInFlames
Where does it stop. At what age can a human be involuntary terminated. 65, 70, 80?”

Coming soon.

Social Security was constructed on the pyramid principal that young workers can support the aged as their population shrinks. This was before the legalization of abortion. Roe v Wade has resulted in the elimination of 50 million taxpayers. As a result, the pyramid has now flipped. The baby boomer generation that legalized abortion, is now retiring. The younger generations, diminished by the loss of tax paying citizens, is being taxed higher in order to support the burden of the retirees.

It won't take long before the youth are elected to office and they will feel justified to legalize euthanasia in retaliation for those who eliminated their peers. Mark my words!

49 posted on 08/12/2013 9:01:07 AM PDT by NYer ( "Run from places of sin as from the plague."--St John Climacus)
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To: NYer
From the article. They aren't even pretending that it's in the best interest of the baby. These people are advocating murder for selfishness and convenience. But then again that's what conventional abortion abortion is about and it's been the law of the land here for a generation.

In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasise 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. Therefore, 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. Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.

50 posted on 08/12/2013 9:20:28 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: NYer

This is not new. I heard a pro-abortion activist talking about “post-partum” abortions several years ago.


51 posted on 08/12/2013 10:36:12 AM PDT by jim_trent
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To: jim_trent

It is anti-science to say that babies are not people


52 posted on 08/12/2013 10:39:26 AM PDT by GeronL
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To: Clean_Sweep

“It wont be long from now when they say the same thing about adults with defects.”

No, it will go further than that. An older person at 60 or 70 or 80 or 90, will lose their “person” status, be considered not a “person” anymore, and medical care will be denied until this human entity dies. If an older person is not working anymore, I think that will be the guideline to determine that person is not be a person anymore and may be killed by denying health care.


53 posted on 08/12/2013 10:46:51 AM PDT by Marcella ((Prepping can save your life today. I am a Christian, not a Muslim.))
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