Holy crap what was this Australian thinking?

[DuckiesDarling]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/6510781/Outrage-over-newborn-abortion-claim


Killing newborns is morally the same as abortion and should be permissible if the mother wishes it, Australian philosophers have argued in an article that has unleashed a firestorm of criticism and forced the British Medical Journal to defend its publication.
Alberto Giubilini, from Monash University, and Francesca Minerva, from the University of Melbourne, say a foetus and a newborn are equivalent in their lack of a sense of their own life and aspiration. They contend this justifies what they call "after-birth abortion" as long as it is painless, because the baby is not harmed by missing out on a life it cannot conceptualise.
About a third of infants with Down syndrome are not diagnosed prenatally, Drs Giubilini and Minerva say, and mothers of children with serious abnormalities should have the chance to end the child's life after, as well as before, birth.
But this should also extend to healthy infants, the pair argue in the BMJ group's Journal of Medical Ethics, because the interests of a mother who is unwilling to care for it outweigh a baby's claims.
The academics call an infant, like a foetus, only a "potential person", but they do not define the point at which it gains human status, saying this depends on the baby's degree of self-awareness and is a matter for neurologists and psychologists.
Julian Savulescu, the journal's editor, said the authors had received death threats since posting the article last week, via the publication's own website and online discussion forums.
His goal was "not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument," wrote Professor Savulescu, from the University of Oxford. If others made a similarly refined case for recriminalising abortion he would also publish that.
"What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited ... Proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat."
Steve Clarke, the chief executive of the advocacy group Down Syndrome NSW, said the paper was "very theoretical".
"I don't think it does have any relevance or insight for the real world. It is so beyond our social mores and values that it is beyond the pale and I wouldn't want to dignify it with any further comment," he said.
Bernadette Tobin, the director of the Plunkett Centre for Ethics at St Vincent's & Mater Health and the Australian Catholic University, said the Melbourne academics should "speak forthrightly" and use the word infanticide if they wanted to persuade people that killing newborns and terminating pregnancies were equivalent


Words just fail me on this. Please note they had to close comments on the story on that news site as many many people are outraged over this.

[Long Duck Dong]

I read the part about painless death and choked on my coffee, we do not even grant that right to the terminal ill and the elderly,....

I can see what they are saying, in regards to infants born with brain function well below any level of awareness, that they were essentially be living vegetables... and people have that lil brain function or less, are on life support and the option comes available of turning off life support...... but that doesn't make their statements any less controversial.......

as for the ethics of the statement about the right of parents to terminate the life of a healthy infant.... it would take a very good argument for me to consider that as a option, when fostering and adoption are more viable options......

[Gearbox]

"What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited ... Proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat."
That's what I find interesting and probably what those philosophers wanted to provoke too. They give the 'moral go ahead' for newborn infanticide reasoning that it has exactly the same principles as abortion, but it's not viewed as acceptable as the latter.
Maybe we fear that if it were made legal that lots of people would opt for it, and we'd eventually accept it much the same as abortion?
There could also be the fear of other things that we value, being devalued further along the line?

[tenni]

For me, the first and most important thing to be cognizant of is that this was published in a medical ethics journal. The question or issue is a valid question to be discussed on an academic level. I don't think that many of us are "qualified" to enter into an academic medical ethic question as this. I was not disturbed by the issue at all. I didn't choke on my coffee..well if I drank coffee ;)

My own mind, is not set in a present position to consider the euthanasia of newborns who are healthy. But the question about when does cognant humanity begin in a life form is just a flip side of the question of abortion and what point that is ethical to be performed or not. I recall reading where infants are born with only the brain stem functioning that is keeping the heart and breathing continue but no other signs of brain activity. The similar question that arises when someone is declared brain dead and life support is ended. I may be wrong but a large number of these infants do die within days or weeks.

What would be more of a concern for me, is if /when radicals take this medical ethical question and attempt to justify their argument against abortion. I see that as more like that might happen. I wonder if it might be used to further diminish intelligent academic discussion and funding of such journals etc.

[darkeyes]

What would be more of a concern for me, is if /when radicals take this medical ethical question and attempt to justify their argument against abortion. I see that as more like that might happen.

I suspect, tenni, that is precisely what this is all about...part of the chipping away at abortion process... scientists and medical professionals often discuss what to us is unthinkable.. it is in the nature of what they are.. but with regard to this story, and leaving aside the controversial issue of abortion as we undesrtad it and practice it, such a development would surely be an end any illusion that medical professionals seriously adhere to the hippocratic oath... euthenasing terminally ill or aged people who wish it is one thing... doing so on any human being such as proposed here is quite another.. there can be no consent to anything by a new born infant..

[12voltman59]

This is kind of a crazy flip side aspect to the notion being fostered now that "life begins at conception" so using even something that can stop conception should be outlawed---it really does seem like every aspect of our world has totally gone bonkers----maybe its time for their to be a total reset of the human race so we can give it another try---sure seems like we have made this run at it a total, as we used to say in the service, "Cluster Fuck"

[elian]

Yeah, at first I thought they were advocating for the right to kill healthy newborns..which to me really IS murder. This type of ethical question is exactly why I don't think I could get into the medical profession. They are hard questions to answer. I was born premature (my mom told me she literally held me in her hand), I did suffer for it at least a little with some physical problems. But, I'd like to think by all accounts I'm a fairly healthy adult now. I know a lot of folks who have children born with autism and other "disorders". They love their children very much and accept them for who they are, even though raising them sometimes requires a lot of extra effort.

If a child is brain dead, and it really is proven so then all that is left is an empty shell - that has to be a terrible thing to go through, so much grief but but what can you do?

[Hephaestion]

"....Brain dead...."

The child or the authors and publishers

".........The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases ....... including cases where the newborn is not disabled”......... "

That is NOT disabled


".......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........."

What a way to solve other problems with non persons e.g. old age pensioners, the unemployed, or even a problem 'race' of big nosed sloping forehead individuals with stars of David upon them perhaps lumped together with homosexuals.


Dumb asses. The graffiti above the toilet rolls in Uni must have been correct "Philosophy Degrees - help yourself"

[Gearbox]

It's exactly the slippery slope that they are trying to bring to the forefront. All you have to do is to go back to Germany in the 30's to get an example of exactly what they are intending to make policy. Empathy, sympathy, compassion, obligation, and sanctity are all words that are doomed for antiquity. Here's a quote that I always found fascinating at what the implications of it are; Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.
I doubt very much that infanticide will become a legal practice. Although the newborn is claimed to have the same depersonalised state of being as a foetus, it will not be viewed as such. BUT if that wasn't the case, infanticide would not only be legal, but accepted for all the reasoning of foetal abortion too.

That is ALL it takes. Once any particular 'kind' of Human becomes non-Human/devoid of value to any particular other, empathy, sympathy, compassion etc are irrelevant. Acts of 'wickedness' against them are simply acts with no moral significance.
Those acts are not confined to the wicked, evil, cruel etc though. They are for all of that 'moral' from the 'hater' to the 'lover'. 1930's Germany is a good example of that.
We KNOW we are capable of pretty much anything, and that's scary!

[DuckiesDarling]

I doubt very much that infanticide will become a legal practice. Although the newborn is claimed to have the same depersonalised state of being as a foetus, it will not be viewed as such. BUT if that wasn't the case, infanticide would not only be legal, but accepted for all the reasoning of foetal abortion too.

That is ALL it takes. Once any particular 'kind' of Human becomes non-Human/devoid of value to any particular other, empathy, sympathy, compassion etc are irrelevant. Acts of 'wickedness' against them are simply acts with no moral significance.
Those acts are not confined to the wicked, evil, cruel etc though. They are for all of that 'moral' from the 'hater' to the 'lover'. 1930's Germany is a good example of that.
We KNOW we are capable of pretty much anything, and that's scary!

Exactly, Gear

As Pastor Martin Niemoller put it so eloquently.

"First they came for the communists
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me"

When we depersonalize anything, whether it be a certain color people, a certain religious people, a certain sexuality people, that is dangerous. There is no room for any race on this planet but the human race. We are all here together and when they start trying to dehumanize part of the human race, who is going to be left to speak for us when they do the same.

[darkeyes]

I know I may sound picky but dont mean to, but the full version of the poem reads

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

It is one the most profound little poems about oppression and persecution I know and have quoted it many times including several times in forums.. a little boy I know read the poem and was quite moved by it... it struck an nerve.. he had always been picked on at school and wrote an additonal verse to sum up his feelings.. what he added moved me almost to tears. His words were:

I am a little boy and weak
If no one is left
Who speaks for me?

Thank you for reminding me of it. It kind of sums up my feelings about the subject of this thread.

[Godoki]

Maybe his mother should have exercised that right when she had him....

[zanybrainy]

Could this have been written in the same vain as Thomas Swift's A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick?



Here is the wikipeida link for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal)

[BiDaveDtown]

I'm sure Casey Anthony and Susan Smith will agree with these Philosophers. ;)

I am against this, and I am against abortion unless the woman has been raped, is a victim of incest, or will die if she gives birth to a child. I am not for abortion just because a woman and a man, did not use any of the many and very highly effective methods of birth control such as using a condom correctly and having the woman use a type of birth control as well, and barebacked, got pregnant and then they decided that they don't want a child or want to put a child up for adoption.

[Hephaestion]

Well knock me over with a feather.


".......Dolphins and whales have their own language, expressions, and personalities. Their intelligence may be different to ours, but it is certainly comparable. But they're still often trapped in cruel conditions arguably akin to slavery.

This year, a group of scientists, conservationists and ethics specialists have started pushing for cetaceans - whales, dolphins and porpoises - to be recognised legally as "non-human persons", with a fundamental right to life and to not be exploited......"

[Hephaestion]

Could this have been written in the same vain as Thomas Swift's A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick?

Here is the wikipeida link for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal


Interesting Zany. It would be good to know that we've all been had; an experiment? However, the tenor of the response from the publishers suggests that it was a serious submission in a supposedly serious journal.

Additionally, one recognises that, if one wants to be famous nowadays then one generates controversy - supposedly 'there is no such thing as bad publicity'. One begs to differ here (that's a bit like the old advert of 'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM'. From professional experience may be they should've).


From Swift

".............A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragoust........"

could be taken in the same vain as the hamster organ in Pythonesque humour. However, In the context of a recent murder of a 15yr old in the UK on purported witch exorcism by people originating from central Africa and the practice of undifferentiated 'bush meat' eating in that part of that continent even that obvious satire is difficult.