After Birth Abortion

[Tuuvi]

I have read arguements on this before from Peter Singer about premature babies and how we should let them die.

The fact they have greatly increased chance of disability and neurological impairment was he argued really being imposed by us because of our own selfisness.

Reading the article it's pretty much the same idea for babies who are not premature but have increased potential for disability.

It's a difficult call too be honest I dont think I could argue against it if I knew the kid would suffer for the rest of there lives, I mean I would be choosing a life of disability for someone.

I've met people who were born pre-maturely and they turned out just fine. When I was born I got stuck in my mother's birth canal and the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck so I lost oxygen at birth. Then to top it all off when I was still a newborn I got meningitis. The odds were against me and despite all that I don't have any disabilities or impairments. IMO we shouldn't end someone's life when there's a chance that nothing will be wrong.

And even then, a life of disability doesn't mean a life of unhappiness. We all suffer to some extent, whether we have a disability or not.

[gaelic cowboy]

I've met people who were born pre-maturely and they turned out just fine. When I was born I got stuck in my mother's birth canal and the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck so I lost oxygen at birth. Then to top it all off when I was still a newborn I got meningitis. The odds were against me and despite all that I don't have any disabilities or impairments. IMO we shouldn't end someone's life when there's a chance that nothing will be wrong.

And even then, a life of disability doesn't mean a life of unhappiness. We all suffer to some extent, whether we have a disability or not.

Each situation is differant the doctors will advise the parents of the risks and they make there choice.

The choice is there's to make because they and the baby will live with the consequences.

You miss the point people like Singer and the ones in the OP's link are making though, these babies have not fully developed cognitively as people yet. An adult disabled person has a personality and cognitive ability however impaired and naturally deserves life.

Babies on the other hand are basically hairless chimpanzees who develop there faculties later, it does not mean we love em any less but we might have to acknowledge it. (it's a terribly utilitarian view but then these are extreme situations)


Sometimes we really do have to ask if the choice to have a child was really as selfless a choice as we might like to pretend.



It's too easy to just dismiss these ideas as crackpot or fascist but the reality is we make choices like these everyday we just pretend there not the same.

Me as I said already I am quite fine with hypocracy and just pretending it wont happen to me I am Irish after all it's our nature.

[Ronin]

am I the only one that reads this as an anti-abortion piece that is simply using a reductio ad absurdum stance in regards to liberalized abortion?

I mean the buttons it's design to push are pretty obvious.

[Populus Romanus]

As a teeneager I not fully developed cognitively either. So should someone have the right to after birth abort me? This goes far beyond just newborns.

[gaelic cowboy]

As a teeneager I not fully developed cognitively either. So should someone have the right to after birth abort me? This goes far beyond just newborns.

Absurd arguement as pointed out by Ronin already, you have a personality and a host of other things like a theory of mind that mark you out from an tiny infant.


now swiftly moving on

[Vladimir]

Interesting. I suppose this had to happen but I'm having a difficult time taking this at face value.

This is, of course, wrong but I wonder if there's something else they're getting at. Maybe it's just an academic exercise. Are their arguments well founded?

[Graphic]

Are there actually people in this thread advocating the legalization of killing full-term babies after they're born?

Is it International Troll Day? Am I asleep?

[Viking]

Apart from the name, "after-birth abortion", I agree with parts of the ethics; and did indeed write something similar in the previous abortion thread here in the Backroom.

Not sure if making this legal is the right the thing to do, but in itself, do not view it as a particularly wrong thing to do. The reaction to this paper, though, has been very predictable: based on emotions rather than rational consideration.

[PanzerJaeger]

Are there actually people in this thread advocating the legalization of killing full-term babies after they're born?

Is it International Troll Day? Am I asleep?

Such legislation should be a fiscal priority. The social costs of supporting severely disabled children are extremely high and growing as new and advanced treatments are implemented. There is an entire infrastructure built up around the care and support of disabled children that represents enormous social wastage. Billions in state funds, research investments, medical equipment expenditures, and the efforts of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of health care specialists are squandered each year in order to keep children alive that will live short, unfortunate lives of little social contribution. It is a sort of socialized cruelty to subject these children to lives of misery and disability in the name of selfish and antiquated religious conceptions of the value of life, and it reflects a level of hubris our modern welfare states can no longer afford to tolerate.

Further, the (often unplanned) children of the very poor, even if healthy, are more often than not a drag on state resources throughout their lives. The deficit between their (usually single) parent's income and the cost of supporting them is made up by the state. In the US alone, billions upon billions of dollars are paid out in child tax credits just to keep the nation's poor children from starving in the streets. As they enter adulthood, these children as a whole become the least productive members of society. Without the familial resources to take advantage of the significant educational opportunities available in modern welfare states, they gravitate towards low skilled manufacturing and service jobs - jobs that are rapidly disappearing. They end up coalescing into ghettos that become giant drains on the resources provided by the more productive aspects of society.

This procedure should not only be legal, but mandated for such people. Child rearing should require a state license that is based on a thorough analysis of the parents' ability to properly support a healthy child. After birth abortion would be critical in enforcing the licensing process.

[Kralizec]

The premise of allowing abortion is that you can't expect women to carry a fetus to term if they don't want to; most states limit them to first trimester or similar in cases where there's no medical reason involved. This obviously doesn't apply to post-natal "abortions". Even if we were to accept that newborns are not entitled to personhood because they're not sentient yet it doesn't follow that they're the property of their mother and that they can be discarded at will.

As for some of the posts in this thread agreeing with the paper - I'll assume that my cognitive functions for sarcasm detection are failing me...

[HoreTore]

Edit: Whoops! Commented before I saw that this thread had reached three pages.

I'm sure it's well into gunbortion-land by now. I won't know though, no way am I going to read through it... Abortion debates are fantastic in their own way; they go on and on and on, making people write thousands of words, and at the same time not bringing up a single new idea or perspective.

Honestly, it is quite spectacular in all its nonsense.

Anyway, the OP reminds me of the time a philosophy professor at the uni in Oslo proposed phsycal punishment(whippin') instead of jail, to start off a debate on a more humane treatment of prisoners.

My hunch tells me these guys are playing the same game...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Edit: Whoops! Commented before I saw that this thread had reached three pages.

I'm sure it's well into gunbortion-land by now. I won't know though, no way am I going to read through it... Abortion debates are fantastic in their own way; they go on and on and on, making people write thousands of words, and at the same time not bringing up a single new idea or perspective.

Honestly, it is quite spectacular in all its nonsense.

Anyway, the OP reminds me of the time a philosophy professor at the uni in Oslo proposed phsycal punishment(whippin') instead of jail, to start off a debate on a more humane treatment of prisoners.

My hunch tells me these guys are playing the same game...

You do condescension so well, it must be deliberate.

I don't think this is actually a big academic troll, I think it's the natural evolution of the argument.

It's what happens when you adopt unprincipled positions, they are taken to logical extremes.

[Whacker]

am I the only one that reads this as an anti-abortion piece that is simply using a reductio ad absurdum stance in regards to liberalized abortion?

I mean the buttons it's design to push are pretty obvious.

Now that you put it that way, I'm steadily moving in that direction as well, but still undecided.

[Fragony]

am I the only one that reads this as an anti-abortion piece that is simply using a reductio ad absurdum stance in regards to liberalized abortion?

I mean the buttons it's design to push are pretty obvious.

You are so clever, of course it is