A paper entitled Post-birth abortion why should the baby live? written by a group of philosophers from the University of Melbourne in Australia has stirred up a big controversy with. They've put forward the idea that, if abortion is allowed for certain babies, there is no reason not to also permit "post-birth abortion" in cases where abortion would have been acceptable during pregnancy.
Anyone interested in reading the full paper can read it in the Journal of Medical Ethics connected to the respected British Medical Journal but I'll give you a taste of why people all over, online and offline, are outraged by the piece. Their argument is disgusting to most people who possess even a shred of humanity, but fascinating at the same time.
The authors of the paper start off describing the possible circumstances in which people often resort to abortion and then go on to drop the bomb: A serious philosophical problem arises when the same conditions that would have justified abortion become known after birth. In such cases, we need to assess facts in order to decide whether the same arguments that apply to killing a human fetus can also be consistently applied to killing a newborn human.
Their argument is that a fetus and newborn are "morally equivalent", and the subsequent idea that infant killing is justified rests on the assumption that abortion is also ethically justified which, as we know, lots of people reject outright. The philosophers develop their argument by saying that harm can only be done to a "person", who would have been prevented from reaching aims that they made for themselves by the harm done. Newborns are not "persons" and can form no aims, and so killing them does no "harm".
The whole paper is morally disgusting, but this is where it turns pathetic too. Their definition of harm is really silly, and also totally disregards harm done to society if infant killing were to be permitted. The paper focuses on mentally and physically disabled infants, but holds that "post-birth abortion" on healthy babies would also be morally OK.
What do you think about this paper? What influence do you think this idea will have in the next few decades? I'm still hoping that the paper was written by slightly sick pro-lifers who are hoping to help people "see" that abortion is morally wrong.
Your thoughts on this
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