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.Unsurprisingly (but hysterically) the scientists complain that they're getting death threats. Hey Doc, what makes you think that you yourself are a person, subject of a moral right to life? Pot, meet kettle.
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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.”
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’.
But let's take this idea and run with it. After all, this concept is as old as time, and the the old Roman Pater Familias had life and death power over his children. And all the kids marching for gun control is pretty annoying right now, so why don't we just extend co-blogger ASM826's excellent idea of no rights for kids until they turn 21 to allow post-birth abortion of them until they are 21?
I mean, the idea is no more stupid than the one that just got published in a Journal that deigns to call itself "Medical Ethics". And scientists wonder why the public trusts them less than in years past.
Shockingly that article is no longer on the web at the link you or the Telegraph provided.
ReplyDeleteFred, that certainly is interesting. I'm pretty sure I had that browser tab open for 3 or 4 days, but now even Google isn't (easily) finding the article. It's gone down the Memory Hole.
ReplyDeleteThe article is still there, I was just able to pull it up but I had to refresh a couple of times. Maybe lots of traffic causing issues.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a perfect (and completely disgusting) example of the kind of reasoning that comes out of the Social Medicine State. Take this quote justifying the killing of babies born with Downs Syndrome for example: “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 are justifying the killing of kids when it threatens to cost the government too much money to care for them.
Seems to have been moved--perhaps hidden.
ReplyDeleteSearching for the article title on the site shows a new location:
http://jme.bmj.com/content/39/5/261
It's my observation that medical ethicists exist to give cover to those wanting to step outside the bounds of generally accepted morality. It's as if a doctor or hospital said, "Rationalize a way for us to do what we want to do because a fair reading of the Hippocratic oath is giving us problems."
ReplyDeleteI always want to reach for a gun when I read of someone being described as a "bioethicist." They're always wanting to kill the helpless, be it a baby, a disabled person, or a senior citizen.
ReplyDeleteRe: "bioethicist," I was about to say they couldn't very well call themselves biomoralists...
ReplyDelete...but then I thunk 'er over a little more, and realized they do have a moral sense: it's just that it's the moral sense of a pit viper.
It's a 5 year old article, uniformly panned by multiple letters to the editor
ReplyDeleteJB, the Internet is forever.
ReplyDelete