After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?

From the “Journal of Medical Ethics,”

After-birth abortion:
why should the baby live?

Can you believe that this is actually the title of the paper that was presented?

People mocked the Pro-Life supporters for warning that this was the next step.

Here is the abstract from the article:

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.

This is hard to believe, even though it is the anticipated next step in the eugenics agenda.

The actual paper is found at After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?.

A condensed report of the paper can be viewed at Ethicists Argue Killing Newborn Babies Should Be Allowed.

From the body of the report, here is the basic argument:

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.

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. This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.

So now new born babies are not persons.

They are human but they are not persons who have a right to life.

Mentally retarded individuals are persons but have no value and therefore no right to life!

The beginning paragraph for the conclusions section says:

Conclusions

If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.

This is no longer a “slippery slope.”

This is an Avalanche!

• Now both the unborn and the newborn are not persons but only potential persons and therefore have no right to life.
  
• Also, now, the mentally retarded, though persons, have no value, and therefore no right to life.
  
• 
  
• 
  
• Who’s next? It is not much of a stretch to say that people with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and Cerebral Palsy have no value and therefore may be killed.
  
• Next, those with AIDS may be counted as a burden and having no value and may therefore be removed from the roles of the living.
  
• Next, the unemployed?
  
• Next, the uneducated?
  
• Next, the uninsured?
  

Unless you are in the elite group defining the list, sooner or later ...

- - -