Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue 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. – The Journal of Medical Ethics
Via The Blaze, h/t john g
Update: The Editor responds.
The slippery slope of the abortionists has hit rock bottom. They are making Heinrich Himmler seem rational.
Rizwan, that also happened in the former Soviet Union. My dad’s cousin Elizabeth, the one whose husband, a teacher, was arrested in 1937 and never seen or heard from again, and whose father and some brothers died the gulags, received a two year labour camp sentence for picking up some oats off the ground that had fallen out of a cracked granary. Her son had to stay with other relatives for those two years. They did not always have enough to eat every day, just enough to be able to keep working. This happened in the late 1940s.
Some of you might be getting tired of these stories, but this is the sort of life we will face if people like the two that are the subject of this thread have their way with us.
I have a better idea, juice them!
Soylent Green!
Paul in Calgary
“we pray everyday for god to bless us with a child”
…ever thought of adopting?
Let’s not get too excited. These are just two young men trying to earn their academic street cred by being “edgy”. Tenure is tough to come by these days.
That the journal would run such an article is more interesting. I expect an announcement stating that the views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of the journal or its editors blah, blah, blah.
But it will be unconvincing given that the explicit purpose of the journal is to advance ethics, not monstrous crimes against humanity.
Curious, isn’t it?
Today’s feminists and “philosophers” use the courts to deny the “personhood” of the unborn child (and now, it seems, even those already born).
Yet until 1929 in Canada, women (feminists or otherwise) were not themselves considered to be legal “persons”. Then a few early feminists challenged the received wisdom of the day and the result was – you guessed it – “The Persons Case”, whereby women were recognized as having full “personhood”.
So yesterday’s “victims” become today’s monsters.
Why am I not surprised?
Libertarian, atheist here.
Simple- “equal rights for unborn women”
pro-‘choice’ women are merely training their future killers
Abe Froman writes, “Simple logic dictates that a fetus is a human being in the physical formation process. It begins when there is a heart beat. . . .”
That’s not logic at all!
Every single human life begins when the sperm penetrates the ovum. Of course, not all “products of conception” make it to implantation in the uterus or to birth. However, all the ones who don’t are unique HUMAN BEINGS. Many argue that life does not begin at conception, as Abe suggests. That’s absurd.
One of the major means of birth control has always been the BARRIER method—keeping the sperm and ovum apart, because, once they join together, a pregnancy has begun. The DNA for the unique human being, who’s just been created by that union, is set—for that human being’s whole life.
Also, if one can’t get pregnant in the traditional way, what happens in a petri dish? Hmmm . . . the sperm and ovum are deliberately united to produce . . . a HUMAN BEING, who will become a foetus, then a baby, then a toddler, then a . . . etc., etc. (Is it OK to kill teenagers?!) That’s how every one of us posting here started and developed.
Our lives did not begin when our hearts started beating! The foetus has been developing for a number few weeks before this complex next stage occurs: a beating heart doesn’t just start out of nothing!
Abe, I’m all in favour of logic. However, I don’t discern logic in your “belief/feeling” about human beings and the beginning of life. And, taking drugs, which is a choice some people make, that ruins their own lives, is quite different from a person in a position of power—the mom and the abortionist—deliberately agreeing to KILL another human being. I’m glad you introduced the idea of logic because your attempted parallel here isn’t logical either!
Ken (Kulak): “Some of you might be getting tired of these stories …”
Never.
We need to hear them. We’ve lived such coddled lives in the West for so long that we can afford to — or we think we can — have 30-something “philosophers” wax eloquent (sic) about human life/not human life in the “high quality,” “respected,” “objective,” and “most influential” Journal of Medical Ethics.
Really? Medical ethics you say?
I’m with lookout on when human life begins — and when we begin to fool around with that, playing God about who gets to live and who gets to die, at any age, we’re finished. I’m afraid the pedigree of these “philosophers” and this “journal of medical ethics” is too highfalutin for me. I’m with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus:
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. … life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live … Deuteronomy 30
Anything else is death to human civilization.
This is right out of the Eugenic’s hand book right up until WW2….they never closed down, just a little different group….they had no problem killing babies….//
It must be Tuesday…………..
They treat ilflife with more respect than humans – Abortion, euthenasia, population control, death panels progressivist secularism is a death cult and the medical profession are the priests.
The hypocratic oath was abominated a long time ago when medicine bacame a tool of the centrally planned state.
batb
“Anything else is death to human civilization.”
Perhaps these philosophers would have a different outlook had they shared my sad experience of seeing Cambodia’s killing fields first hand rather than as a very distant abstract…..
What lookout and batb said.
It bothers me that I am not shocked by this ‘philosopher’. We are all too aware of the slippery slope.
Disgusted but not shocked.
The writing is on the wall.
I would like to think that the fence sitters will be shocked when they read this.
Here is another piece by co-author Dr. Francesca Minerva, in which she suggests that people unwilling to perform abortions should not be allowed to train in or practice medicine.
“What is the point of investing public money and resources to provide a degree in medicine for people who put their moral or religious concerns before the wellbeing of the people they are supposed to cure?”
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2011/07/1782/
The medical ethics boys are just trying to get you used to the idea of killing inconvenient people. Its cheaper than looking after them. PLUS its an opportunity to create a whole new class of Certified Medical Death Technicians. Think of the possibilities for teaching positions!
Rocky View Redneck: the correct translation into English of the text in Exodus is not “thou shalt not kill” but rather “thou shalt not murder”. Self defense and war might be killing, but they ain’t murder.
There are no exceptions listed in the ten commandments.
Mamba, you know the best part is that Dr Minerva is the same type that can’t stand the idea of me owning a gun.
Well natch, Phantom. What if it’s decided that you’re an undesirable? No need to make things unpleasant for everyone.
Remember when pro-lifers warned of a “slippery slope” but no one wanted to listen to them?
Well….
This is a good example of taking an argument or position to its extreme. And, as in this case, by doing so one often ends up actually supporting the opposing argument or position.
(Kinda like an indirect proof or “Reductio ad absurdum”.)
There are really only to clear positions to take in the abortion debate: either life starts at conception (no abortion allowed) or life starts at birth (abortion acceptable any time).
However, most people (incl yours truly) support a more pragmatic approach, i.e. life starts at some time in between conception and birth, prior to which abortion is acceptable, else not.
Admittedly a philosophically weak position, but still reasonably reasonable & definitely practical.
(Perhaps the law of bivalence does not always apply to everything?)
Well, Johan, spin it as you will, life begins at conception, period.
That you “feel” (because that’s all it is) that the beginning of life can be arbitrarily set at another moment in time is illogical—and patently false. The inconvenient TRUTH is what I mentioned in my post above, February 28 at 7:31 p.m.
To get a passing grade, you’ll have to deal with the FACTS, Johan. Good luck with that!
Johan i Kanadasaid: “…life starts at some time in between conception and birth, prior to which abortion is acceptable, else not. Admittedly a philosophically weak position, but still reasonably reasonable & definitely practical.”
Sir, I must respectfully disagree. Its the only philosophically tenable position, if one allows mere facts to enter in to the conversation.
Having studied a bit, I know there is a point at which a fetus -becomes- structurally human. As in physically. It doesn’t start that way, what with being a single cell and all, but it does get that way after a while, and at 22-26 weeks the BABY can survive on its own as a preemie. After 26 weeks you’re killing an independent person, just as much as if you killed a toddler or a grown man.
Nobody in the “debate” seems too interested in mere facts I’ve noticed. That’s because its mostly about power, political advantage and money, like most of these things tend to be. These “philosophers” of the Left seem very motivated to make killing inconvenient individuals socially acceptable because in a single payer medical system, its MONEY in the bank.
And hey, why shouldn’t a “woman’s right to choose” extend after birth? Why not kill the screaming little b@st@rd if its in the way of having a good time? One more useless eater, right? Stack ’em up with the demented old people, the feeble minded, and anybody else who can’t stand up, see lightning and hear thunder. Oh, and the politically unreliable, throw them in. There’s a few people I don’t like, we could add them to the list…
But don’t forget friends, hanging that kid who shot the five other kids at that school in Ohio this week would be MURDER!!! Even leaving a rope and a chair with him would be a heinous CRIME!!!
Yet the Left continues to wonder why gun sales are on the increase among the Bitter Clingers/Angry White Males in Flyover Land… F- me. I’m going to go have another coffee now before I barf, the sheer wretchedness of these people, its all too depressing.
Lance, thanks for the update. Just read the editor’s WHINGING, which amounts “How dare you question us, you filthy peons! We are PhD’s!”
If they’d asked a ten year old what was going to happen, the kid would have told them it was going to be ugly. So my quality of mercy is somewhat strained, to mangle the Bard.
My swear word and death threat free comment is being held for moderation, we shall see if it gets in. Some other SDA comments made it, good to see you guys and gals kicking liberal @ss out there.
Phantom >
“…the sheer wretchedness of these people, its all too depressing.”
Hence my reluctance to post about this.
You nailed my thoughts about it anyway. The hypocrisy and malformed reasoning behind these creatures is really too much to bear.
Francesca Minerva’s Oxford U web page.
http://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/staff/staff/research_associates/dr_francesca_minerva
Nice outside, not-so-nice inside.
Here’s another one:
http://unimelb.academia.edu/FrancescaMinerva/Followers
Hey Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, your moms called: they’ve decided they want after-birth abortions.
Hey Knight. Still didn’t get that second coffee yet, been blood-hounding this thing a little.
Looked at a couple of other blogs, and really nobody is going to like this thing, but from what I see Official Western Government is going to use this argument to pass laws allowing people to kill babies, as they have ALREADY DONE in Holland.
I have to say I militantly have no use for the Catholic Church argument regarding birth control and “morning after” pills, I think they are just wrong. But the liberal “scholars” have gone so far out into freakazoid territory that they are literally recapitulating Hitler’s Final Solution. Its the same Eugenics argument in a new jar.
Dad’s generation didn’t beat the Nazis, just drove them into hiding. Now they are coming out of the woodwork, we’re going to have to beat them again. Only this time they aren’t all conveniently in one place we can bomb the crap out of, so it’ll be even harder.
F_!!!! Now I’m getting coffee. Screw it.
Common sense & decency, good ethics, moral compass, right vs wrong.
To some these simple yet fundamental concepts do not seem to have any meaning any more.
@john brooks
Have not ruled it out , it is soo hard to do now days ,and costs alot of money. sad to say but it is the truth. rightn ow we are gonna try to have our own , and if in a couple years we don’t succeed we will probly try to adopt.
re. the update – I love the ways of lefties. When they’re criticized for something particularly egregious they immediately assume the victim position and start shrieking about hate mail and death threats. I notice that Mark Steyn doesn’t whine about threatening emails very often, and I’m willing to bet he got more last week than Dr. Minerva will get in her lifetime.
And “racism”. Of course, racism. Where would they be without “racism”? But Muslim isn’t a race, and mocking wops for being wops is… well, they’re just Italians.
(I like how the outrageously outraged editor accidently concedes that this paper is totally unoriginal. “The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris in defence of infanticide, which the authors call after-birth abortion.” Yes, we know. We don’t have a problem with you and Fran and and Al because we think you’re the three most scintillating minds in your field. We know you’re hacks. We just think you’re evil hacks. And when you concede that you’re completely derivative hacks, I’d say you thereby concede by implication that you published this sick little piece purely for publicity. You got some.)
I believe the US Constitution states “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, doesn’t that make abortion a direct violation of said Constitution?
Cus’ if you kill him or her before he or she is born isn’t that persons right to life being denied?
You cant pursue your happiness if your chopped up and in the dumpster in the alley either.
Yeah, Free, I agree with you. But they use legalese to get around it—at least here in Canada. Our Supreme Court activists defined “person” as a human being whose umbilical cord has been cut and who is breathing on his/her own. Before that moment, the human being is not a legal person—and the law only protects “persons”. Neat, eh?
I’d imagine that the US Supreme Court used a similar sleight of hand, as in, the human being needs to actually be BORN to enjoy constitutional rights.
Lord of the Fleas is quite wrong. Woman have always been persons at law. The case he misrepresents as “the Persons Case” did not change that, but indeed demonstrated at length that it had always been so.
ebt @4:51 – but… the CBC Candian Heritage Minute…
Julian (the editor) made a dramatic and unjustified leap with his last paragraph. It doesn’t matter on which side of the political spectrum you come from, when you attack a fundamental belief, you will get crazed fanatics (and even rational people depending on the nature of the attack) jumping up and down. It has nothing to do with “deep opposition … to liberal values” but rather deep opposition to that which challenges any fundamental belief. Guess what responses he would have had to an article stating that abortion is morally equivalent to genocide and abortion practitioners and their willful patients are morally equivalent to murderers? The fanatic left would go nuts. The knife cuts both ways. You’d think he would know that — ethics is not a term of the left.
Posted by: Ed Minchau at February 28, 2012 11:20 PM: “the correct translation into English of the text in Exodus is not “thou shalt not kill” but rather “thou shalt not murder”. Self defense and war might be killing, but they ain’t murder.
There are no exceptions listed in the ten commandments.”
Thank you, Ed! That works for me.
I thought these two posts where must reads.
RitaJoseph Collapse
It is both disturbing and regrettable that the “choice”
being proposed in this article has chilling similarities to the Nazi process of
‘selection.’
Do these authors even know where the concept they use
“lives…not worth living” came from?
Do these authors know that they are following in the
footsteps of two once distinguished but now infamous German academics: the
jurist Karl Binding of the University of Leipzig, and Alfred Hoche, Professor
of Psychiatry at the University of Freiburg?
Way back in 1920, Hoche and Binding argued that “…the
principle of ‘allowable killing’ should be extended to the incurably sick… The
right to live must be earned and justified…Theirs is not a life worth living;
hence their destruction is not only tolerable but humane.” The crucial work — “The Permission to
Destroy Life Unworthy of Life” (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten
Lebens) included as “unworthy life” not only the incurably ill but large
segments of the mentally ill, the feebleminded, and “retarded and deformed”
children. More than that, the authors professionalized and medicalized the
entire concept. And they stressed the therapeutic goal [i.e. the intention] of
that concept: destroying life unworthy of life is “purely a healing treatment”
and a “healing work.” (Robert Jay Lifton:”The Nazi doctors: medical
killing and the psychology of genocide”p.46 (1986)
The Nazi directors of the German abortion and euthanasia
programmes embraced the concept of ‘life unworthy of life’ (See the policy
speech by Gerhard Wagner (head of the Nazi physicians association): “Rasse und
Bevölkerungspolitik,” Der Parteitag der Ehre, vom 8, bis 14, September 1936.
Offizieller Bericht über den Verlauf des Reichsparteitages mit sämtlichen
Kongreßreden, Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1936, pp.150-60).
The authors of this current article appear to be ignorant
also of the fact that the term “after-birth abortions” is not
original either: it was already in use by Hitler’s physicians:
“Making widespread use of the Darwinian term ‘selection’,
the Nazis sought to take over the functions of nature (natural selection)… in
orchestrating their own ‘selections’, their own version of human evolution…Newborn
infants with Down syndrome were identified at birth and placed on a register for
lethal medical treatment after a perfunctory examination by a board of
‘specialist’ doctors: the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of
Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses (Reichsausschuss zur
wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden), headed
by Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal
physician. On August 18, 1939, the
committee issued a decree that required reporting of all newborns and infants
under the age of three with suspected “serious hereditary diseases.” These “diseases” included Down’s syndrome,
deformities, paralysis, deafness, blindness, and others. While physicians had
been unofficially killing babies “unfit to live” since at least 1933, the
creation of this committee officially authorized such killings. Dr. Karl Brandt explained the aim: “The
objective was to obtain possession of these abortions and destroy them as soon
as possible after they had been brought into the world.” (Henry Friedlander: The Origins of Nazi
Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1995, PP.57-8)
“A questionnaire was prepared in which the attending
physician provided a detailed history. The doctors also made predictions about
the baby’s future quality of life. The questionnaires were then sent to a
committee of physicians who determined whether to give the child a mark of “+”,
which recommended extermination.”
(Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust and people with Disabilities. A Report by Disability Rights Advocates, California,
2001 pp. 13-14.)
Perhaps the only excuse for the atrocities being proposed by
these authors today is that they are either too callow or too ignorant of the
Nazi precedents to what they are advocating to resurrect in this current
Journal article.
We should not go down that path again.
Eric Robert Meckley Collapse
Let us take a moment to investigate the ironic contradictions in this “defense” that undermine the very assertions it puts forth. Early on, Mr. Savulescu writes:
“The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris in defence of infanticide, which the authors call after-birth abortion.”
What is published, by the editor’s own admission is not new or novel. However, rebuttals of the argument put forth by Giubilini and Minerva are required to be written:
“…coherently, originally and with application to issues of public or medical concern.”
So, then, I am curious why the article in question was published if its arguments are “not new,” and indeed have been “presented repeatedly?”
It would seem that Savulescu answers this question through the assertion that:
“The novel contribution of this paper is not an argument in favour of infanticide – the paper repeats the arguments made famous by Tooley and Singer – but rather their application in consideration of maternal and family interests. The paper also draws attention to the fact that infanticide is practised in the Netherlands.”
However, this merely shows the limits of Mr. Savulescu’s reading. I would entreat him (along with the illustrious peers who reviewed this “original” piece) to read Dr. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” (pub. 1729, full text available here: http://bit.ly/9iEUj). In so doing, they will find (much to their chagrin, I am sure) that Dr. Swift has preempted them most completely, surpassed them in depth, soundness, thoroughness of argument and logic, and indeed has even gone one step beyond Giubilini and Minerva by proposing a constructive use for the “after-birth aborted,” rather than merely making fuel for the incinerator or fill for the trash dump.
Iin light of the previous work published by Dr. Swift, all claims to novelty for this article are now bankrupt. This makes clear a rather frightful double-standard with which the editors of The Journal of Medical Ethics evaluate submitted articles.
A similar contradiction is revealed at the end of the post when Mr. Savulescu explains:
“The Journal does not specifically support substantive moral views, ideologies, theories, dogmas or moral outlooks, over others. It supports sound rational argument. Moreover, it supports freedom of ethical expression.”
and then concludes the post writing:
“What the response to this article reveals, through the microscope of the web, is the deep disorder of the modern world. Not that people would give arguments in favour of infanticide, but the deep opposition that exists now to liberal values and fanatical opposition to any kind of reasoned engagement.”
So, The Journal does indeed “specifically support” certain “moral views, ideologies, theories, dogmas or moral outlooks, over others,” namely a particular iteration of “liberal values” which lays claim to the ability to determine what is an acceptable mode of discourse and what is not, and what qualifies as “reasoned engagement,” and which seems (by implication) to value “freedom of ethical expression” over the rights of “potential persons.” (This, I suppose, might also explain The Journal’s peculiar understanding of novelty.) The ironic contradictions of this defense, and the overly simplistic (not to mention rehashed) logic of the original article belie Mr. Savulescu’s claims to objectivity, let alone his logical and scholarly abilities of discernment.
I will refrain (at least, for the present) from dealing with other aspects of this “defense” or the logic of the original article itself, let alone Mr. Savulescu’s (intentional?) failure to acknowledge the article’s consideration of social interests, which could lead (justifiably) down some very dark paths indeed.
In closing, I could say that this whole ordeal (which would be rather laughable, were its implications not so insidious) reads more like a bad high school newspaper than a peer-reviewed journal. But that would be unfair to the editors of Memorial’s Genesis student magazine, 1999-2003.
http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2012/02/28/liberals-are-disgusting-in-defence-of-the-publication-of-after-birth-abortion/#comments
So this ‘journal’ costs over $200 for a paper subscription. Maybe they should increase the price to $300 and hire some researchers of their own.
They’ve just published a piece that covers ground not just plumbed by Nazi Germany in the run up to WW II; Johnathan Swift apparently made a better argument for authors’ case in 1729.
The fools in pajamas have struck again.
I especially liked these comments, posted by Eric_Dunham, to the ‘journal’s editor: “There is a deep disorder in academia that causes its participants and advocates to dismiss the disbelief of humanity at large. Academia is no longer a bastion of intelligence, nor is it a wellspring of knowledge. It is a clique of self-admiring, self-aggrandizing, self-proclaimed “intellectuals” that ignore the basic tenets of humanity at will, and contemn any who dare to criticize them with anything but the academically approved language and form that they (the intellectuals) propone”.