Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed

[Muslim Woman]

A group of ethicists has argued that killing young babies is no different from abortion


By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

29 Feb 2012

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.

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”.

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’.
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“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 also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing.

Once such children were born there was “no choice for the parents but to keep the child”, they wrote.

“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.”

However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.

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”.

Both Minerva and Giubilini know Prof Savulescu through Oxford. Minerva was a research associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics until last June, when she moved to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Melbourne University.

Giubilini, a former visiting student at Cambridge University, gave a talk in January at the Oxford Martin School – where Prof Savulescu is also a director – titled 'What is the problem with euthanasia?'

He too has gone on to Melbourne, although to the city’s Monash University. Prof Savulescu worked at both univerisities before moving to Oxford in 2002.

Defending the decision to publish in a British Medical Journal blog, Prof Savulescu, said that arguments in favour of killing newborns were “largely not new”.

What Minerva and Giubilini did was apply these arguments “in consideration of maternal and family interests”.

While accepting that many people would disagree with their arguments, he wrote: “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.”

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.”

He said the journal would consider publishing an article positing that, if there was no moral difference between abortion and killing newborns, then abortion too should be illegal.

Dr Trevor Stammers, director of medical ethics at St Mary's University College, said: "If a mother does smother her child with a blanket, we say 'it's doesn't matter, she can get another one,' is that what we want to happen?

"What these young colleagues are spelling out is what we would be the inevitable end point of a road that ethical philosophers in the States and Australia have all been treading for a long time and there is certainly nothing new."

Referring to the term "after-birth abortion", Dr Stammers added: "This is just verbal manipulation that is not philosophy. I might refer to abortion henceforth as antenatal infanticide."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...perts-say.html

[~Raindrop~]

That is horribly sick and twisted. I didn't think anyone could be so cruel. Only difference between them and child killers is that the killers get labelled as monsters and they get to walk around promoting their filth and thinking of themselves as some sort of intellectuals.

[Marina-Aisha]

i heard bout this one the news..i think its discussting! if couldnt handle having a child whether its healthly or handciaped then u shouldnt have got pregnant in the first place.Some people cant even have children and ur gonna kill ur own child cos u cant handle it?what kind person r u!!!

[Hulk]

Sounds like the time when the arabs lived in ignorance and used to bury their female babies.

[Sunnie Ameena]

That is sick. I just can't get over the fact that some idiots were actually discussing it. We were blessed with 6 healthy children, but if something had been abnormal (I would never say wrong) with any of our children, we would have loved them the same. Children are truly a blessing from Allah, some just need alittle more assistance than others. Sunnie Ameena

[Ramadan90]

And they are saying that Islam is backwards?! I am disgusted with the western world. I look so forward to get my degree and make hijra from this sick world.

[جوري]

A group of ethicists

Wow how is this ethical?
Now they don't have to pretend to want to kill 'terrorists' anymore they're plain telling you take out what they deem undesirable yourself. 7asbona Allah wa'ni3ma alwakeel.. the more they 'progress' the more animal like they become.

[True-blue]

I think it's rather a tongue-in-cheek article to mock the supporters of abortion.

[Muslim Woman]

I think it's rather a tongue-in-cheek article to mock the supporters of abortion.

I think , they are serious

It's published in a medical journal . Editor says :those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

[CosmicPathos]

how is this any different than aborting a fetus?

If I was not a Muslim, but pro-abortion, I would support this publication as well. Killing disabled infants or fetuses can save healthcare tons of money. You cant have your cake and then eat it. If you want to allow abortion in cases where mother's life is not in jeopardy ( I am not sure what fuqaha have said about rape pregnancies), then also allow this.

[Muslim Woman]

Salaam/ Peace





...whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. 5:32




81:7

Sahih International
And when the souls are paired

81:8 to top

And when the girl [who was] buried alive is asked

81:9

For what sin she was killed

Qur'an Home

[CosmicPathos]

Salaam/ Peace...whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. 5:32

I believe that as a Muslim. But also apply the same definition to the zygote. Zygote has all the capacity to become a human being on its own in an ideal environment (endometrium).

[جوري]

how is this any different than aborting a fetus?

If I was not a Muslim, but pro-abortion, I would support this publication as well. Killing disabled infants or fetuses can save healthcare tons of money. You cant have your cake and then eat it. If you want to allow abortion in cases where mother's life is not in jeopardy ( I am not sure what fuqaha have said about rape pregnancies), then also allow this.

cheaper than money spent killing 'terrorists'.. skimping on healthcare, education, residency programs and social security is a good way to save to be able to provide for Israel and to cut down on this out of control population boom as I understand it...
Chances of a woman getting pregnant from a [''non-consensual rape'' <<not an oxymoron I assure you] are zero to nil ..

[CosmicPathos]

I think it's rather a tongue-in-cheek article to mock the supporters of abortion.

I also wish that is true.

[CosmicPathos]

Chances of a woman getting pregnant from a [''non-consensual rape'' <<not an oxymoron I assure you] are zero to nil ..

its also zero for two spouses copulating 14 days before ovulation.

[جوري]

its also zero for two spouses copulating 14 days before ovulation.

in fact you're only fertile for 3-5 days of the entire month.. however that is made monumentally difficult under duress and I will not get into that here..

[CosmicPathos]

sister, when sperm of rapist and husband are simultaneously present in the tract during those 3 or so days of fertility, chances are rapists' sperm will have competitive advantage. I dont want to discuss a topic of such nature here on Islamic forums, but the point is that the zygote born from a rapists' sperm had no fault of his/her own. I've read that many fuqaha have said that such babies should be carried to term no matter how much it distresses the mother. Others have allowed abortion. But I do stick with the opinion that this innocent baby should not be aborted because he/she was not at fault and should not be killed for someone else's pain (that of mother in this case). Just like how Jesus cannot be put on cross for Adam's original sin.

Sperm competition is a form of male postcopulatory competition. Sperm competition
occurs when the sperm of two or more males simultaneously occupy the
reproductive tract of a female and compete to fertilize her egg (Parker 1970).
...

Mounting evidence suggests that sperm competition has been a recurrent and
important feature of human evolutionary history. Psychological, behavioral, physiological,
anatomical, and genetic evidence reveals that ancestral women sometimes
mated with multiple men within sufficiently short time periods so that sperm from
two or more males simultaneously occupied the reproductive tract of one woman
(Baker and Bellis 1993; Gallup et al. 2003; Goetz et al. 2005; Kilgallon and Simmons
2005; Pound 2002; Shackelford et al. 2002, 2004; Shackelford, Pound, and Goetz
2005; Smith 1984; Wyckoff, Wang, and Wu 2000). This adaptive problem led to the
evolution of adaptive solutions to sperm competition. For example, men display
copulatory urgency, perform semen-displacing behaviors, and adjust their ejaculates
to include more sperm when the likelihood of female infidelity is high (Baker
and Bellis 1993; Goetz et al. 2005; Shackelford et al. 2002).

[جوري]

Sperm needs to swim no? Doesn't find such a medium in rape circumstances!
Believe me I have written enough B.S articles in my day some rejected some accepted.. I know how data is fudged .. use your logic not what's on paper..

[CosmicPathos]

still sis, no justification for killing a zygote if it doesnt physiologically endanger mother's life. a zygote has all the information in it to form a healthy human.

wsalam

[جوري]

& let me tell you how you can critique a study, first confounder in the above is power, the probability that a clinical trial will have a significance is dependent on the sample size.. How many newly raped, newly consummated, women in that window of fertility submitted to such a study? also what kind of study is it? already we know this has to be a retrospective which are poor by nature.. It is the sort of thing that put out to third party outlets and people go around quoting without an in depth understanding.. I was there and now I am here you'll get here too.. let's just hope you end up in a better place than mine..