MRS. Z. writes:

Perhaps you saw this article from The Blaze. According to two ethicists from Australian universities, in a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, newborns should not be considered persons, and therefore doctors and parents should be allowed to determine if “after-birth abortion” is the best possible option for the family and society as a whole. According to the article,

The circumstances, the authors state, where after-birth abortion should be considered acceptable include instances where the newborn would be putting the well-being of the family at risk, even if it had the potential for an “acceptable” life. The authors cite Downs Syndrome as an example, stating that while the quality of life of individuals with Downs is often reported as happy, “such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

The argument is based on the idea that newborns are not yet “persons” as defined by laws permitting abortion. They might be human beings, but they aren’t persons, thus they are morally expendable.

At 22 and pregnant, I’m so horrified by this I haven’t much in the way of rational thought to offer, aside from the obvious statements of utter outrage. The reasoning of these “ethicists” points so dramatically to the slippery slope we find ourselves on when we allow ourselves to play God and begin determining who deserves life and who doesn’t. The only thing more shocking is asking yourself the question “what kind of mother would carry a child for 40 weeks, go through the ordeal of delivery and then allow someone to terminate the life of her child?”

I am utterly disgusted.

Laura writes:

The authors of this piece have taken the logic of abortion to its inevitable conclusion. As they point out, if abortion is permissible, why isn’t “after-birth abortion?” However, their point is not to condemn abortion but to argue for the reasonableness of another level of infanticide.

The Journal of Medical Ethics received a storm of protest over the piece. Here is editor Julian Savelescu’s defense:

As Editor of the Journal, I would like to defend its publication. 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. [LAURA WRITES: THE ARGUMENTS FOR HUMAN SLAVERY AND FOR KILLING ALL JEWS ARE NOT NEW EITHER. WOULD MR. SAVELSCU HAVE PRINTED THEM? I HIGHLY DOUBT THE JOURNAL WOULD EVEN HAVE PUBLISHED AN ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF KILLING MOST CATS.]

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. [AGAIN, NOVELTY IS NO DEFENSE.] The paper also draws attention to the fact that infanticide is practised in the Netherlands. [AND CHILD TRAFFICKING IS PRACTISED IN BANGLADESH. DOES THAT MAKE IT RIGHT?]

Many people will and have disagreed with these arguments. However, the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. [IT’S NOT POSSIBLE TO RUN A JOURNAL OF MEDICAL ETHICS WITHOUT “SOME ONE MORAL VIEW.” THE BELIEF THAT ALL ACTIONS ARE WORTHY OF PUBLIC DEFENSE NO MATTER HOW INHUMAN IS A MORAL VIEW. EVEN THOUGH AN EDITOR MAY ENTERTAIN DEBATE ON QUESTIONS WITHIN THAT OVERALL WORLDVIEW, HE STILL CANNOT OPERATE WITHOUT ITS FRAMEWORK. THE PRESENCE OF A MORAL VIEW IS EVIDENT IN THE LIKELIHOOD THAT THE JOURNAL WOULD NEVER HAVE PUBLISHED A PIECE  ON THE IMMORALITY OF ABORTION OR OF ARTIFICIAL CONTRACEPTION OR THE IMMORALITY OF PUBLIC SUBSIDIES FOR INFANT FORMULA OR THE IMMORALITY OF KILLING CHILDREN WITH DOWNS SYNDROME, AS IS NOW COMMON.] It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises. [SO THERE IS A MORAL FRAMEWORK.] The authors provocatively argue that there is no moral difference between a fetus and a newborn. Their capacities are relevantly similar. If abortion is permissible, infanticide should be permissible. The authors proceed logically from premises which many people accept to a conclusion that many of those people would reject. [THIS IS A GOOD POINT. IF PEOPLE ACCEPT ABORTION, THEY SHOULD LOGICALLY ACCEPT POST-BIRTH ABORTION.]

You can read the rest of his arguments here.

                                                  — Comments —-

JAMES P. writes:

The UK Telegraph reports on the same utterly revolting article published at Oxford. Here is the Telegraph’s article:

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say
Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevent” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.
By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

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. [JP: I hate to bring up the pesky old Nazis, but they agreed with precisely this logic.]

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”. [JP: Baby killing should be fanatically opposed. The Moloch of liberal society, which now wants to eat babies that have been born as well as the unborn, deserves to be fanatically opposed.]

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’.

“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.” [JP: Only a person with no experience with babies could ever argue this.]

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”. [JP: These Oxford professors are not human beings in the morally relevant sense. They are appalling monsters.]

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.” [JP: As the Germans said, a Life Unworthy of Life.]

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”. [JP: Which is an argument AGAINST abortion, not an argument FOR infanticide, at least if you’re not utterly evil.]

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”. [JP: Why yes, they date back to the early 20th century in Europe!]

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.” [JP: Yup, we got it – the widely accepted premises of liberalism are totally depraved, and the well-reasoned arguments based on these premises lead to murder on a massive scale.]

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.” [JP: Let me get this straight — the people who are AGAINST baby killing and euthanasia are the murderous, witch-burning extremists??? Words fail me. Talk about the deranged, upside-down logic of liberalism.]

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. [JP: That logic is indeed compelling!]

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.” [JP: It should be so referred.]

John Purdy writes:

I am struck by how utterly callow and girlish this professor appears. Am I the only one to be disinclined to put much faith in her ideas? Her expression makes it seem as if arguing for such barbarities is as light as a feather.

Laura writes:

Yes, that’s why I posted it. She has none of the gravitas one would expect in an ethics professor. She seems to be wearing some sort of tank top, as if she’s on the beach. I guess what struck me most though was her happiness. Life hasn’t been bad for her and yet she would deny existence to a child who happens to be born without her intelligence.

Hurricane Betsy writes:

Ramp up the outrage chorus.

Yes, both abortion and killing of a healthy or somewhat chronically ill child are wrong.

It is equally wrong to prolong the lives of extremely defective newborns. There are countless children born with faulty enzyme systems, etc. who don’t even look halfways human, but they are artificially kept alive, then dumped on the hapless parents. This is why (Canadian) Robert Latimer finally got fed up and killed his daughter Tracy. The ghouls running the medical “profession” kept doing surgery after surgery after surgery on that godforsaken child. Look it up if you don’t know the details of the case. Even Latimer’s wife looked the other way. The majority of the population of his small town understood.

The readers of TTH look askance at people who treat their damn dogs like royalty. For my part I’m equally repelled by a society which dotes on a “child” who is barely recognizable as such, so twisted is the face and body, and requiring intravenous feeding, lung clearing with machines, etc., constant cleaning and diapering, endless drugging, and incredible expense to both the family and society as a whole. Not to mention the declining health of the parents, usually the mother.

None of this was even an issue a few decades ago. Badly unsound children died and that was it. People understood that “these things happen” and with God’s grace they would one day be reunited with their once seriously ill child, beautifully transfigured into a state of perfection.

Doctors are playing God, and people don’t know how to let go. They would rather see their child suffering like the damned in hell than let go. I know of a child with a bad case of Hurler’s Disease whose parents got talked into every high tech, expensive procedure known, when the devils who pass as doctors knew perfectly well the child would not survive. But they made sure she suffered first so they could say they’d “done everything.” Right.

Laura writes:

That concern you raise of excessive efforts to prolong the life of a child on machines would have been a worthy subject for the ethical journal to explore. But it’s an entirely different issue. The fact that they considered a Downs Syndrome child worthy of euthanasia shows how far they were from concern for the child who is saved to live on machines for a short time.

Also, their emphasis was on the cost to others and not on any potentially serious suffering and medical torture of a child.

James P. writes:

“Hurricane Betsy” writes that it is “equally wrong” to abort normal fetuses, or kill healthy or somewhat abnormal babies, as it is to prolong the lives of extremely defective newborns. This is manifestly false. Killing healthy babies is always wrong, period, as is withholding “ordinary” medical treatment from slightly defective babies who would survive if given such treatment. In these cases you are inflicting harm on a child that would survive in the absence of such harm. This is clearly more reprehensible than actively killing a defective child who would not survive in the absence of extraordinary medical treatment, or passively allowing such a child to die (both of which are, nevertheless, still morally reprehensible).

There are many very defective children in the world who have survived thanks to medical intervention. One wonders if they would agree with Betsy that they should have been allowed to die.

Laura writes:

Yes, it is not “equally wrong” or anywhere close to the same thing to abort a child and to prolong a child’s life through extraordinary medical intervention, even if that intervention causes immense suffering and does not save the child.

Alissa writes:

Hurricane Betsy wrote:

They would rather see their child suffering like the damned in hell than let go.

Maybe that’s because “letting go” has a different significance today than yesterday. A couple of parents would rather see their child suffer because they don’t want to associate themselves with the general connotations of letting go (which is perhaps the greatest suffering). If they let go of their child, they want to do it for his best interests and because they believe that he will be alright in the afterlife, not because they believe that children are some STD. With creatures like the professor above, no wonder parents are apprehensive of letting go.

Daniel S. writes:

So eugenics is bad when practiced by Nazis, but good when advocated by liberal “ethics” professors? Liberalism is at its core a nihilistic cult of death. Not even the Mohammedans have such little regard for human life (the Koran clearly prohibits infanticide, especially of girls).

Jesse Powell writes:

There are three different kinds of harm that come from the practice of abortion on demand based on the woman’s choice. The first is the harm done to the child in development before the child is born him or herself. Abortion being legal in the first place is based on the premise that this harm does not exist or is not important enough to matter. The other two harms from abortion however are harms that directly impact the social and family structure itself. The second harm is the devaluation of life itself; viewing children as a mere “choice”, as a mere means to satisfy adult ends; that the child exists to serve the needs or desires of its mother rather than the proper moral order of the child’s parents acting in service of the needs of the child and the betterment of future generations. The third harm is the denial of the father’s reproductive or parental rights; explicitly demeaning and devaluing the fatherhood role both in terms of what the child needs and in terms of the man’s legitimate right to place fatherhood as a central aspect of his identity and purpose as a man.

Mrs. M. writes:

It’s hard to even formulate a response to such a disgusting article – especially the subsequent defense that this topic is worthy of discussion by reasonable “persons”! The only thing I agree with is their recognition that you cannot distinguish between a pre-born and born human being.

Right after finishing your post, I came across this piece:

Excerpt:

“If I had known Ronan had Tay-Sachs (I met with two genetic counselors and had every standard prenatal test available to me, including the one for Tay-Sachs, which did not detect my rare mutation, and therefore I waived the test at my CVS procedure), I would have found out what the disease meant for my then unborn child; I would have talked to parents who are raising (and burying) children with this disease, and then I would have had an abortion. Without question and without regret, although this would have been a different kind of loss to mourn and would by no means have been a cavalier or uncomplicated, heartless decision. I’m so grateful that Ronan is my child. I also wish he’d never been born; no person should suffer in this way—daily seizures, blindness, lack of movement, inability to swallow, a devastated brain—with no hope for a cure. Both of these statements are categorically true; neither one is mutually exclusive.”

The author goes on to bemoan the fact that her mother did not have the right to find out she had a disability and abort her! She challenges Rick Santorum to meet her son, but seems oblivious to the fact that his 3 year old daughter Bella is disabled and has had major medical issues. I saw a clip of Karen Santorum speaking eloquently on the mindset they encountered within the medical profession that advises parents that some people are not “worthy” of care. (I wish I had the link, as she knows her stuff as a trained NICU nurse). Not only would Rick Santorum affirm little Ronan’s humanity and right to life, little Bella probably would too.

Laura writes:

The woman in the Slate thread is flagrantly contradicting herself, stating on one hand that she loves her child and on the other that she wishes he was never born. I believe she does not truly wish he was never born, she is only seeking attention and pity. Given the amount of duress she has probably experienced as a result of her child’s suffering and his medical treatment, I think it is fair to say that she is unbalanced and should not be taken seriously. If she had a week away from the constant pressure of caring for him, she would might see things differently.

Mrs. P writes:

“They would rather see their child suffering like the damned in hell than let go.”

I believe that comment may have the power to resurrect the deceased Michaela Odone mother to Lorenzo Odone also deceased.   I  can almost hear her protesting from her grave.  At the age of five Lorenzo became ill and was eventually diagnosed with ALD which is a degenerative disorder that damages the brain and the adrenal glands leading to death in a couple of years of onset.  (This was in the mid 80’s.) It is a rare disorder affecting primarily boys between the ages of five and ten.

At the time of Lorenzo’s diagnosis little was known about the disorder and there was no treatment for it.  Lorenzo’s parents, Michaela and Augusto Odone refused to accept the prognosis.  They refused to accept that their son was destined to die and that nothing could be done about it.  They refused to let go.

Even though the Odones were not scientists and possessed no medical schooling, they worked feverishly for three years researching the disorder intent on finding a treatment that would help their son.  Sometimes this put them at odds with the doctors and scientists studying this disorder who thought the Odones’ efforts were bound to be futile.  As they worked nearly night and day to find a treatment, Lorenzo grew worse and worse.  Eventually he lost his sight and much of his hearing.  He could not talk.  He became nearly completely paralyzed.  He had to be fed through a tube.  He endured seizures.  Finally the Odones came up with a formula consisting of olive oil and rapeseed oil they hoped would help their son.  They named it Lorenzo’s oil.  Although the formula could not repair the damage that had already been done to Lorenzo’s brain, it apparently halted or at least greatly slowed down the progression of the disorder so that Lorenzo was able to live several more years.  He was 30 when he died of pneumonia.

Now many people have trouble understanding how anyone in Lorenzo’s condition (paralyzed, blind, hearing impaired, mute) could have any quality to his life.  Some people might think he would have been better off dead.  Surely he suffered.  But he did have quality to his life.  His parents, primarily his mother, saw to that.  The Odones moved to a bungalow early in his illness and turned the living room there into Lorenzo’s room.  They were not going to hide him away in some far off bedroom.   He was to be the center of attention.  He was treated with respect.  Mrs. Odone demanded that everyone treat Lorenzo with respect.  She made sure his day had structure and meaning to it.    Certain that his mind had remained intact, she read to him all the time from a wealth of literature.  She taught him how to communicate by blinking his eyes and moving his fingers.  She made sure he was exposed to beautiful music.  She surely must have filled his mind as well with detailed visions of sunsets, snowfalls, street scenes at Christmas for him to relish and enjoy.  She and her husband devoted their lives to him.  They did not let go and just let him die.  They took action and clung to hope.

As a result of their efforts to save their son from death, their formula has helped other children who have been diagnosed early enough with this disorder.  Some of these children go on to live a symptom free life.

Certainly there are times when we need to let go of a loved one and allow them to die.  I wonder what Michaela Odone would say to us about that if she could speak.  Perhaps she would warn us to be very careful and not let others make us feel it is our “duty” to family and society to let go.

Laura writes:

I don’t believe Hurricane Betsy was advocating that a seriously ill child like Lorenzo does not deserve to live or that parents should not go to extraordinary lengths to save and care for children like him. She was pointing to extreme cases in which doctors lose sight of the overall condition of the terminally ill child and expose him to torturous and invasive procedures which may concern one aspect of the child’s condition but only minimally improve his chances of longterm survival. Medical technology can be abused. A four-year-old child with a brain tumor who has had years of chemotherapy and radiation, as well as countless diagnostic procedures that are painful in themselves, may live somewhat longer if the treatment is continued, but the parents may reasonably decide, in the face of the child’s suffering and the poor prognosis, to bring him home and let him die in peace.

There are no simple rules for those situations. Each one is different and the prejudice should always be toward saving the child, which is now overwhelmingly the case in childrens’ hospitals.

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