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Mums should be allowed to terminate new babies - article
Submitted by GaryB on Fri, 2012-03-02 01:29
This article here from Australia beggars belief.
Apparently, a woman's 'right to choose' should include choosing to terminate a baby, after it is born, according to some philosophers. Apparently though, that's only the mother - fathers don't even get a mention.
I'd comment; but to be honest, I'm lost for words.... Quote:
'KILLING newborn babies should be allowed if the mother wishes, Australian philosophers have argued in a prestigious journal.
Their argument, that it is morally the same as abortion, has forced the British Medical Journal to defend its publication of their views.
In an article that has sparked outrage around the world and elicited death threats, Monash University's Alberto Giubilini and the University of Melbourne's Francesca Minerva say that a foetus and a newborn both lack a sense of life and aspiration.
They argue this justifies "after-birth abortion" on the proviso it is painless as the baby is not missing out on a life it cannot contemplate.
The doctors of philosophy argue in the BMJ publication Journal of Medical Ethics that one-third of infants with Down syndrome are not diagnosed in the womb, which means mothers of children with severe disabilities should have the chance to end a child's life after, as well as before, birth.'
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Comments
Infanticide
I do not understand why a culture that allows abortion would not allow infanticide. They are almost the same thing, just outside the womb instead of inside. Laws have given an arbitrary age stamp as to when personhood begins (when a 'person' has rights under our US constitution, such as the "right to life") we could easily change the age of "personhood" to 2 weeks after birth . I laugh when pro-abortionist try and say how unethical infanticide is. How can they form an argument without contradicting their pro-abortion stance?
I have studied infanticide a bit and I believe it was more common then what most people want to believe before abortion was legalized and before modern contraceptives. I am sure lots of newborns were buried out on the farms across America. Infanticide is still accepted in some cultures today in some parts of the world. The study of ethics intrigues me, especially when it comes to the subject of abortion and infanticide. I have (unfortunately) come to the conclusion that historically infanticide may not have been as unethical as it might seem. Done for certain reasons like birth defects and maintaining the survival rate of already established family members (I am thinking of situations when there was no medical treatments available and dying of starvation was a threat). However, I also realize justification like that puts one's thinking closer in line with people like Hitler, Margaret Sanger, supremacists, etc.
In today's modern world I think both infanticide and abortion are unethical and both should be outlawed.
But if I was forced to choose one, I would rather see infanticide legalized than abortion. I think it is more humane, it may discourage some, and it would have fathers share the guilt and responsibility (I would make both parents consent). I see pro-abortion men encourage women to abort, then at the same time shame and blame women for aborting. I don't get that.
In this article it says "mother who is unwilling to care for it outweighs an infant's right to life."
I am not sure wether the omission of "father" is intentional or not. It could even be the author's own interpretation or oversight. I am not sure if the actual study omits fathers as I do not see any evidence the study intentionally making infanticide a choice for mother's without father's equal consent. I could be wrong. Of course there are many flaws in the quote above. In the USA abortion (Roe vs Wade ruling) is based on women's legal right to choose not being pregnant because of the medical risks associated with pregnancy (based on the "pursuit of liberty and life" clause in the constitution). Basically a woman has the right to choose her own health risks. Which of course opens the floodgates for abortion on demand, but, from a legal standpoint, it is about choosing pregnancy not parenthood.
Note: I edited after initial posting. I moved and expanded one sentence.
What's truly horrifying to
What's truly horrifying to me is that Canada is almost at this point. It is legal to abort in Canada up to the point the infant is completely removed from the birth canal, and some doctors will birth a child till it's head is out of the canal, but body remains inside, sever the spin to kill the infant, then complete the delivery. and this is legal. Furthermore, infanticide (post birth killing of a child) can not be treated as murder, but is it's own class, for women only, that has a maximum penalty of 1 year in prison.
My personal stand is that abortion should be illegal at the point where an infant/foetus could potentially sustain itself (not the same as provide for itself). I also don't like the idea of abortion being used as birth control, and thus, should be regulated (perhaps with penalty's/fines for overuse). But overall, I am not usually opposed to the concept of first trimester abortions.
Infanticide and Abortion
Kris, I agree with pretty much everything you say.
Personally, I find "ethics" to be an interesting concept. I believe the double standards and hypocrisy are overwhelming.
In the United States, bull fighting and cock fighting are illegal. Michael Vick went to prison, in part, for fighting his own dogs. Clubbing baby seals in the Arctic is considered evil, even though people do it to support and feed their own families.
But abortion is pretty much a sacrament. The only time abortion isn't a sacrament is when it is done for sex-selection and female fetuses are the one's being killed. This is considered immoral and there are laws against it even in some of the same countries that otherwise allow abortion. (If a homosexual gene is ever discovered, you can bet that it will be illegal for women to specifically "choose" to abort a homosexual fetus.)
I think infanticide and abortion are quite comparable. I don't see how people can support one and not the other. And I agree. Infanticide could be done much more humanely than abortion. Simply call it a "mass of tissue." Euthanize this post-fetal discharge after it is removed from the birth canal. Then pass a law saying that personhood doesn't begin until 2 weeks after birth.
The health hazards from parenthood are far greater than the health hazards from pregnancy. People, especially men, need to work much longer and harder to support a family than they do to support themselves. The fatality rate from workplace labor is about 10 times greater than the fatality rate from pregnancy. So if women can freely choose abortion as a way to control their health risks, then shouldn't men be allowed to freely choose infanticide as a way to control their health risks (or allow "choice for men" or so-called "paper abortions")?
But infanticide is not likely to become legal because it would give men the same rights as women if it was consistently applied. And we can't allow men to "walk away" from their obligations. A woman's body, a woman's choice (unless specifically aborting a female fetus), a man's responsibility.
Yes, ethics is an interesting concept.
I don't see what the big
I don't see what the big deal is... I have always been in favor of that. The human brain isn't fully formed until well after childbirth and newborn can't really have memories or anything else at that point. The people who get freaked out by this are sometimes the ones who are against any kind of abortion anyway. Some people are even against the idea of contraception. Anyway, it makes a lot more sense to me than safe haven laws. As a potential father, I think both things could really hurt for a long time, but the idea that my own child is out there somewhere and nothing I can ever do gives me the right to claim it as my own is a lot more distasteful than the idea that there is just no child out there, period, even though there could have been. I'm also in favor of paper abortions for men and I think a man should be allowed to walk away even after birth. I don't think that women should have these sorts of rights if men don't, as is the case now.
As I recall
As I recall, both the Romans and the Greeks practiced infanticide, for various reasons during some portions of their histories. I guess we're returning to that model: life has value if its convenient for me. Otherwise, off to the woods with it.
When it comes to deciding who gets to live and who gets to die, most of us prefer it be "thee" rather than "me." I prefer to believe that every life is sacred--as opposed to "wanted" or "unwanted." Life is not just a matter of me getting my way. I believe greater issues are involved.
Am I the only one here who sees this as scary?
Okay, let's get this straight.
This isn't an abortion issue. I know that when it comes to abortion people go crazy, and that people - rightly so - get polarised into different views. I think that's pretty natural, given that there is in effect a sliding scale of life; does a sperm count as life, no. Does a 10 year old child, yes. It's not so much a question of whether we switch from one accepted state to the other, it's more a question of where and when.
But this isn't about abortion. This is about one parent, one gender, potentially having the ability to extinguish the life of another living breathing human being, for their own emotional health or to improve the quality of their life. Sound familiar? It should - that's exactly what we see several times a year when some poor sap of a husband gets killed by his wife. After all, she couldn't bear life as a divorced single parent sharing access to the kids and without ALL the money.
And not only that, but just how slippery is the slope? Once we reach a point where a newborn baby has a right to live only as long as the mother decides so, then what exactly qualifies as newborn? One month? Two? Six? What about when they start talking, can they still be disposable then? At a year? Two? Five? So we define that this human doesn't have a right to life (as far as the mother is concerned) because it can't sustain itself? That would wipe out half the teenagers on the planet. So what if the Romans, or the Nords or the Celts practiced the same thing? I'm sure they did.
I'm equally sure that we practised cannibalism, tribal retribution, ritual murder, rape and pillage, burning of witches and who knows what else back in the day. That isn't a reason to consider those practices as morally correct for today.
What we are seeing in almost every facet of modern Western society is a shift towards women's needs, desires and wants being sanctified as demands we must all meet. This is just one more - and one extremely dangerous - shift in the same direction.
@ GaryB
Just to clarify, I didn't intend my statements as approval of what our ancestors did. I had hoped we had evolved past those practices. I'm appalled that apparently we haven't. Your last paragraph sums up well where we're heading--whatever Lola wants, Lola gets, no matter what the price men and children have to pay.
Does study actually say only "mother" should have the right?
I am still a little confused as to wether the actual study from the British Medical Journal (the original source of all the follow up commentary articles, like the one posted) actually says "mother" without any regard to father's consent. Has anyone seen the actual study?
The article posted above is about wether the Joural really needed to post an article in defense of the original study. So what we have is an article, about another article, about another article.
In the link provided to the article that defends the study it says this "if family circumstances are such that it puts intolerable strain on the family to look after a baby with a profound disability- then you should be able to have a very late abortion.....i.e. after the baby is born...."
I do not see any place in the referenced article that implies a mother should act alone in choosing infanticide (I just skimmed over the article, but I did not see the term "mother" used at all) . So I am wondering if using the term "mother" to paraphrase the referenced article is just an oversight or poor choice of words, when the author should have said "parents" or "family".
i will check
Kris, I am not sure re the use of the term mother, but I will check.
I don't believe it is likely to mean anything else though, even if that word isn't used. After all, only mothers have any say as to current terminations, and society only seems to forgive/forget/tolerate infanticide when it's the mother who commits it, NOT the father. But you are right, I don't know for sure.
Okay, I think I got to the
Okay, I think I got to the original article here (I made a mistake in my previous post. It's from Journal of Medical Ethics, not the British Medical Journal):
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/02/22/medethics-2011-100411.full
After reading it, I do not believe they are speaking about a mother being able to make a decision of infanticide against a fathers consent or input.
In the beginning of the article it says this (this is the only sentence in the whole article that implies a mother would make the decision all by herself):
> "This could happen in the case of a woman who loses her partner after she finds out that she is pregnant and therefore feels she will not be able to take care of the possible child by herself."
Then the majority of the article is about the effects of infanticide on society, and the study's conclusion that fetuses and newborns are the "moral equivalency".
Then towards the end it says this:
> "On the other hand, not only aims but also well-developed plans are concepts that certainly apply to those people (parents, siblings, society) who could be negatively or positively affected by the birth of that child. Therefore, the rights and interests of the actual people involved should represent the prevailing consideration in a decision about abortion and after-birth abortion."
A mother technically isn't
A mother technically isn't able to adopt away a child over a fathers objections, but many states have made it far to easy to keep a father out of the loop, or far too difficult for a father to claim paternity for the purpose of having his objections rejected. The outcome, regardless of the intent of the study, will be mothers being able to feign ignorance of the father and killing a child, but no father could do the same