The Journal of Medical Ethics recently published are article justifying the killing of newborn infants, “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?”
Here is the abstract:
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 authors are from mainstream, establishment universities. The journal is mainstream and respected.
Hard to know what to make of this article. It’s not as bad as it seems. It doesn’t reflect the way the overwhelming majority of people think. It’s been roundly denounced, and not just by religious people.
But it’s also not a good sign. I doubt the journal would have published a moral case for slavery, or one for race-based hierarchies, not matter how well-argued. I doubt they would publish an article arguing the homosexual acts are immoral. However, when it comes to killing newborns, our academic culture thinks it a topic worthy of discussion and debate.
As I said, not a good sign.ˇ
March 1st, 2012 | 2:36 pm
See here:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/02/28/infanticide-moves-off-the-fringe/#comments
March 1st, 2012 | 3:06 pm
I doubt the journal would have published a moral case for slavery, or one for race-based hierarchies, not matter how well-argued. I doubt they would publish an article arguing the homosexual acts are immoral.
I understand the point you are trying to make, but since it’s a journal of medical ethics, it is difficult to imagine it publishing an article on any of these topics no matter whether it was for or against.
However, when it comes to killing newborns, our academic culture thinks it a topic worthy of discussion and debate.
The article actually makes much the same case regarding infanticide as pro-lifers do: If you don’t believe that life (personhood) begins at conception, then any line you draw regarding when personhood begins is arbitrary, and if you draw it at the end of the first trimester, you could just as easily draw it in the “fourth trimester” and kill children up to three months of age.
March 1st, 2012 | 3:14 pm
Re: “adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people” – you may want to use the basic premise of Paul Swope’s April 1998 “Abortion: A failure to communicate” ( http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/11/004-abortion-a-failure-to-communicate-49 ) to respond to this point. It should at least be acknowledged that our most at-risk population, young women on the success track, as described by Dr. Carl Landwehr (Life on the Rock – Prolife Message – Fr Mark and Fr Anthony w Carl Landwehr – 11-18-2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJcR8cz0eHY ), is prone to regard the “adoption option” as an existential threat.
March 1st, 2012 | 3:49 pm
David Nickol said “The article actually makes much the same case regarding infanticide as pro-lifers do”
While in some fashion accurate, this statement is deceptive. The logic is the same [after conception any line assigning personhood to the developing child, whether in the womb or not, is arbitrary], but it is employed to reach entirely opposing conclusions. The article argues that since abortion is permissible, killing newborn infants should be permissible as well. Pro-lifers argue that since killing newborn infants is not permissible, abortion should be impermissible as well. Thus I think it would be more honest to say that the article “employs the same undertsanding of human development”, not that it “makes much the same case”.
March 1st, 2012 | 4:25 pm
this statement is deceptive . . . it would be more honest to say
John V,
It was not my intention to be deceptive or dishonest. I stick by the statement as far as it goes. Many pro-lifers see the paper as unintentionally pro-life, because they agree with its reasoning. That is, they believe that if you accept abortion, you can’t convincingly oppose infanticide. They are relying on abortion supporters to buy the paper’s argument, be appalled that they have been exposed (to themselves and others) as supporters of infanticide, and adopt the view that personhood begins at conception. Therefore, I maintain that they are making the same argument, but for opposite reasons, the argument being that abortion-supporting “line drawers” ought logically to be seen as infanticide supporters. It goes without saying that the authors of the paper are supporting infanticide and pro-lifers are condemning infanticide. But the argument is the same: If you support abortion, you support infanticide. The authors of the paper want their readers to say, “Yes, I support abortion, so I will support infanticide.” Pro-lifers want people to say, “I don’t support infanticide, so I can’t support abortion any more.” But both sides want abortion and infanticide to be seen as equivalent.
March 1st, 2012 | 4:45 pm
Hard to know what to make of this article. It’s not as bad as it seems. It doesn’t reflect the way the overwhelming majority of people think. It’s been roundly denounced, and not just by religious people.
Trial balloon?
March 1st, 2012 | 6:19 pm
We should be terrified by the fact that After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? does not terrify everybody who reads it.
Consider some history. The prosecution in the WWII War Crimes Trials pointed to a key source of the deterioration of ethics that resulted in the Nazi killing program. That was the book The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value, by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, which was first published in 1920.
Dr. Hoche was a professor of psychiatry from Freiburg. Dr. Binding was a highly respected penal law expert. They openly advocated euthanasia as the humane and cost effective approach to dealing with the incurably sick against their will. Nazi justification of their policy of extermination referred to the reasoning of Binding and Hoche. Consider how fast that policy expanded from killing those who were physically or mentally disabled to killing nearly anybody who was displeasing to those in power in any way. Consider also the fact that the Journal of Medical Ethics is now publishing papers that attempt to justify killing healthy, born human beings, not restricting itself those with an incurable illness. That in itself must take at least five years off the slide down the slippery slope that ends in “legal” mass homicide. (The article fails miserably unless, I suppose, one is completely oblivious to the lessons of modern history.) It should terrify us that otherwise rational people respond to this paper with anything other than contempt and horror.
March 1st, 2012 | 7:11 pm
As the father of a disabled child, I find this view very disturbing, but, I am afraid, it is not new. Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins, for example, have both expressed very similar opinions. See, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bi81JcddWc,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF3VTu5lR_o&feature=related,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAhAlbsAbLM&feature=related, and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWkJ6cZ0FY8&feature=related
March 1st, 2012 | 7:27 pm
The article actually makes much the same case regarding infanticide as pro-lifers do: If you don’t believe that life (personhood) begins at conception, then any line you draw regarding when personhood begins is arbitrary, and if you draw it at the end of the first trimester, you could just as easily draw it in the “fourth trimester” and kill children up to three months of age.
Indeed, which is why we shouldn’t be drawing any lines, but must respect and protect all human life from conception to natural death and why, indeed, even the indiscriminate use of contraception, which seeks to deny life, is very problematic. But we are children of our first mother, who was tempted by Satan to believe that she could “be like God, knowing good and evil”.
March 2nd, 2012 | 12:36 am
Frankly, the situation exists because of large-scale connivance of the Christians about which CS Lewis warned in Reflections on Psalms where he wondered that modern Christians no longer engage in riots to protest blasphemy and other wrongs. He said that not rioting is a mixed blessing.
It is clear that even well-meaning and orthodox Christians are not going to take any action such as boycott of this journal and its authors and the wrong-doers are going to escape scot-free as usual.
Has Peter Singer been picketed?. Has Will Williamson been ostracized?. Even the current President who also argued and fought for infanticide, he is sure to be feted if he ever ventures among orthodox Christians who are ever-patrioti
March 2nd, 2012 | 4:48 am
I agree, this article is not a good sign. George F. Will, brilliant conservative columnist, once asserted that Peter Singer, who advoctes infanticide at least in certain cases, is the prochoice side’s “worst nightmare.”
Of course, he said that because most prochoice people would never dream of advocating for late abortions or infanticide. But Singer, does.
Could it be that Singer is morphing himself from worst nightmare to mere bad dream, to even good dream? The fact that a well respected journal would allow for an article that advocates for a position rather similar to Singer’s, vis a vis the unborn, is evidence that, sadly, yes. If so, this would be my worst nightmare, to say the least.
Clearly, we all have a moral duty to protect the weak and innocent, and in my view, the weak and innocent that need protecting, are the unborn and postborn humans, disabled humans, and animals.
March 2nd, 2012 | 8:35 am
Gian –
There’s a phrase that fits…
March 2nd, 2012 | 11:06 am
Of course, he said that because most prochoice people would never dream of advocating for late abortions or infanticide. But Singer, does.
Charles Camosy, an ethicist and moral theologian who among many other things writes for Catholic Moral Theology, has a special interest in Peter Singer, and he wrote this over on dotCommonweal in a discussion about the paper:
Camosay will respond to the infanticide paper in an article to be published in a future issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. Here is a link to that response in its current form.
March 3rd, 2012 | 2:38 am
It’s merely the logical conclusion of the argument for legalizing abortion. (We knew there was a pony in there from the first.)
Bad? Absolutely.
After someone “goes there”, as they say—once the forbidden is made even faintly respectable by its mention in polite society—after that, the Deluge; it will be discussed as readily as if it were not the horrible and unthinkable thing that it is. Because these respectable academics broached the subject, the subject shall be fully exploited and made respectable.
Unfortunately, humanity is incredibly good at deceiving itself into believing that its actions are motivated by high ideals—even Medical Ethicists from Oxford.
March 3rd, 2012 | 4:54 am
Hi David: Thanks for the link.
March 3rd, 2012 | 3:16 pm
Hi, David Nickol,
Along with Bret Lythgoe I thank you for the link.
Camosay writes:
It is “difficult to claim” anyone is a person persuasively if those to whom your claim is addressed have already decided that the segment of the human family under consideration are not persons, since personhood is entirely subjective. There are no “personhood-detectors” or “soul-o-meters.” History attests to the fact that those members of the human family who are the victims of the bigotry of the times are often declared something less than full “persons” by those in power, such as happened to Blacks in the U.S, and as happened to Jews in Nazi Germany. (One would think the bigots would eventually come up with something original, instead of making the worn out, over-used claim that the victims of their bigotry are not “persons.”)
Whenever bigotry is sanctioned by law it is eventually seen as a gravely immoral catastrophe of immense proportions. This will one day be the case with the abrupt withdrawal of the protection of law from children in the womb, who are the victims of contemporary bigotry. What is disturbing though is that it took a bloody civil war, the carnage of which was unprecedented, and a world war that took the lives of 2.5 percent of the population of the entire planet, to make slavery and Jew-gassing unthinkable. What will it take to purge us of our bigotry towards the child in the womb? If God does indeed make nations rise and fall according to His inscrutable judgments, chastising them and letting them continue, or wiping them off the face of the Earth, then we are in for some hard times of some kind or another.
Consider the thought of Abraham Lincoln on this subject:
Camosay also wrote:
That would be much more meaningful if it was accompanied by criticism that was at least as harsh as that, that was directed at those who engage in “legal” homicidal attacks on innocent human beings, which, unlike mere words of hate and vitriol, are lethal. If Camosay thought about it, he would realize the bigotry and the lethal attacks on innocent human beings it has led to is what is “absolutely disgraceful.” Are we called to love the perpetrators of these attacks? Yes. Are we called to be in solidarity with them? I don’t think so, at least not according to St. Paul:
March 3rd, 2012 | 3:49 pm
By the way, I consider women who have aborted their children, for the most part, victims of those who have perpetrated “homicidal attacks” on innocent human beings.
I expressed my thoughts on who the perpetrators were in a post here:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/11/08/personhood-in-mississippi/
Posted by harry at November 10th, 2011 | 5:40 pm
March 3rd, 2012 | 11:15 pm
Harry, I read your many comments on that other topic and must say God bless you for speaking up for the unborn. I am grateful that you post here.
You made this comment:
“Humanity preceded the state and brought it into existence. It is time for humanity to knock Caesar off his high horse and put him in his place, reminding him that it is not his to bestow or withdraw the inalienable rights of humanity; it is his only to protect them. That is, of course, because those rights are just that — inalienable — they didn’t come from the state, and the very reason humanity brought the state into being is to protect those rights”.
you were discussing abortion, but I think it applies to the current controversy over the HHS mandate. I frequently find myself wondering who Obama thinks he is—that he can issue orders by fiat that take inalienable rights away from citizens. Caesar on his high horse, indeed.
March 4th, 2012 | 1:45 pm
I frequently find myself wondering who Obama thinks he is—that he can issue orders by fiat that take inalienable rights away from citizens.
President Obama is the democratically elected president of the United States. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed by democratically elected members of the House and Senate. The bill added to the already existing powers of the Department of Health and Human Services to regulate insurance coverage, and the “contraceptive mandate” was promulgated by the same procedures as any other HHS regulation. None of this happened by fiat.
In our form of government, basically nothing can be done by presidential fiat. There are checks on the executive branch and the judicial branch that make government by presidential fiat impossible. A legislative challenge to the contraceptive mandate has already been passed by the House but killed by the Senate. There are a number of legal challenges already in progress against the mandate, with no doubt more to come. I would not want to estimate the chances of the mandate surviving other than to say that at this point, it seems to me it has a reasonable chance. The imposition of the provisions being objected to on the grounds of “religious liberty” is more than a year away. If the “contraceptive mandate” survives legislative attempts to repeal it and is upheld by the courts, there is simply no way of attributing it to presidential fiat.
So I think it can be said that Obama thinks—quite correctly—he is the legitimately elected president of the United States using the power invested in him by the United States Constitution carrying out personally, and through his legitimately appointed Cabinet members, his legitimate responsibilities in executing laws democratically enacted by the House and Senate.
If the things Obama does during his administration survive legislative attempts to undo them, and pass muster in the courts, then people who disagree with Obama and his policies have a right to vote against him in the upcoming election. If Obama is re-elected, he can only carry out his policies for another four years and then must leave the presidency for good. This is how American democracy works.
In short, talk of presidential fiat is nonsense.
March 5th, 2012 | 8:26 am
Ah yes, Obamacare, which Nancy Pelosi explained had to be passed first and then we’d discover the nature of the beast. we discovered some of it when he dropped the HHS mandate bomb on our heads, then scuttled back to the White House to mysteriously produce the noncompromise two days later.
Obama seems to believe he is the highest authority, that we are not endowed by another, higher authority with inalienable rights. If he believed that, it would not have occurred to him to infringe on our first amendment rights. He is just a president. He is not really our Creator, granting us rights and taking them away. He just plays one from time to time.
March 5th, 2012 | 8:38 am
Hi, David Nickol, Peg,
This piece can be read in its entirety here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-overreach–obamacare-vs-the-constitution/2012/02/16/gIQAmupcIR_story.html
March 8th, 2012 | 11:03 pm
I believe that the “legitimacy” invoked by Obama, et. al., is just a thin veneer over an audacious power grab. There is no reason whatsoever for the conflict with the Church. Whatever else it may be, the mandate is a blatant attempt to neuter any sources of moral authority other than what by 218 representatives, 51 senators, and the president agree to. And thus do we devolve from citizens to subjects.
Obamacare is just the weapon of choice today, and mere questions of constitutionality concern them not.
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