After Birth Abortion

[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?

[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.

[Ironside]

I get it. Graded laws based on graded levels of human life. We've decided what stages of human life can be protected, to what extent, and which ones should only have financial value to the mother in the event of someone else's legal liability. I'm sure that you can't tell me at what point the baby deserves equal protection, beyond "when it's head comes out of the Vagina". That is an arbitrary and old fashioned point in the development of human young, by modern standards.

You're asking sanity to join an American debate about abortion. I'm pretty sure that's an oxymoron. And I'm pretty much agreeing with Ronin.

[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.

[Vladimir]

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.

People in the eastern UK. This is your warning. This is how it starts.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

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.

The problem with this (and the problem with parts of the paper, a with a large part of moral philosophy as it is practiced) is the idea that morality is not based on emotion, that you can be rational without emotions...

[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.

[Viking]

The problem with this (and the problem with parts of the paper, a with a large part of moral philosophy as it is practiced) is the idea that morality is not based on emotion, that you can be rational without emotions...

So, essentially you're saying that most people oppose killing newborns exclusively because it feels wrong? The truth is rather that they equate it with murder, something which has to be explained rationally.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

So, essentially you're saying that most people oppose killing newborns exclusively because it feels wrong?

I said you were making an artificial distinction between rational thought and emotional thought...you are making it again here, implying it has to be one or the other

@PJ, that's an argument for a change in the welfare laws and not an abortion mandate

[Viking]

I said you were making an artificial distinction between rational thought and emotional thought...you are making it again here, implying it has to be one or the other

That is because it does. Emotional thought is a knee-jerk response and does not seek to explain.

[PanzerJaeger]

@PJ, that's an argument for a change in the welfare laws and not an abortion mandate

Changing welfare laws would only subject children to even harsher conditions. The poor will have children whether they can afford them or not. We do not want to return to the days when abandoned children roamed the streets. Terminating such children before they become sentient beings is the most socially responsible and ethically sound option.

[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...

[Sasaki Kojiro]

That is because it does. Emotional thought is a knee-jerk response and does not seek to explain.

What do you think our moral philosophy would look like if we didn't experience sympathy? For example, we see someone in need of help, we have an emotional "knee-jerk" response, and then when we see someone else scorn them we have another. When we think about it, asking ourselves how we feel about these feelings of ours, we come up with a more philosophical explanation.

Changing welfare laws would only subject children to even harsher conditions. The poor will have children whether they can afford them or not. We do not want to return to the days when abandoned children roamed the streets. Terminating such children before they become sentient beings is the most socially responsible and ethically sound option.

Well, I didn't mean getting rid of welfare laws. But we can certainly pay up rather than mandating abortion.

[Tuuvi]

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.

I get the point they're trying to make I just don't agree with what their definition of a person is. To me a human's cognitive function is irrelevant to whether or not it is a person.

And I'll say it again, a life of disability does not have to equal a life of unhappiness and suffering.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Yes, I saw this article on Infanticide reported in the national papers.

firstly, lets be clear about a couple of questions: These are Oxford Dons conducting an ethical argument. I seriously doubt this is an "anti-Abortion piece, I suspect this is a purely ethical exercise.

Beyond that, as far as I can tell the authors are absolutely right, within their ethical framework. If it is morally acceptable to abort a Late-Term feotus, there is no ethical argument you can realistically mount about that feotus having rights once it passes out of the Birth Canal.

Ergo, either you accept Infanticide or your don't accept abortion carte-blanche and you make an effort to construct a more balanced and nuanced position.

As a premature, disabled, and extremely troubled birth-baby I have to say I have never wished I was aborted.

If you want to look at whether it's right to abort disabled feotuses I suggest you look at how many of the congenitally disabled are terminally suicidal.

[Viking]

What do you think our moral philosophy would look like if we didn't experience sympathy? For example, we see someone in need of help, we have an emotional "knee-jerk" response, and then when we see someone else scorn them we have another. When we think about it, asking ourselves how we feel about these feelings of ours, we come up with a more philosophical explanation.

Now you are changing the topic completely. I am not saying that you should deduce why it is wrong to murder; somewhere there must be a starting point. The question is how killing newborns relates to murder. You cannot say "it's a person, end of story". It has to be explained, otherwise I can just claim that my dog is a 'person', because "it really feels like he is one", and therefore I could get you hanged if you killed him.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Now you are changing the topic completely. I am not saying that you should deduce why it is wrong to murder; somewhere there must be a starting point. The question is how killing newborns relates to murder. You cannot say "it's a person, end of story". It has to be explained, otherwise I can just claim that my dog is a 'person', because "it really feels like he is one", and therefore I could get you hanged if you killed him.

I see, I didn't realize you were talking about the "is it a person" question specifically. Though I can't say I'd accuse people who spend time with a newborn and say that it's a person are irrational.

edit: and you have to admit, the article basically just claims "it's not a person, end of story".

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 nonhuman 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.

Many or most people think that it is some time during pregnancy that abortion becomes wrong, but they skip right over that.

Or a person might be ‘harmed’ if something were done to her at the stage of fetus which affects for the worse
her quality of life as a person (eg, her mother took drugs during pregnancy), even if she is not aware of it. However, in such cases
we are talking about a person who is at least in the condition to value the different situation she would have found herself in if
she had not been harmed. And such a condition depends on the level of her mental development,
which in turn determines whether or not she is a ‘person’. Those who are only capable of experiencing pain and pleasure
(like perhaps fetuses and certainly newborns) have a right not to be inflicted pain. If, in addition to experiencing pain and pleasure, an individual is capable of making any aims (like actual
human and non-human persons), she is harmed if she is prevented from accomplishing her aims by being killed. Now,
hardly can a newborn be said to have aims, as the future we imagine for it is merely a projection of our minds on its potential
lives. It might start having expectations and develop a minimum level of self-awareness at a very early stage, but not in the first
days or few weeks after birth.

Seems like they just cite some 1972 article.

[Montmorency]

It has to be explained, otherwise I can just claim that my dog is a 'person', because "it really feels like he is one", and therefore I could get you hanged if you killed him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17116882

[a completely inoffensive name]

Owww, congratulation it's a sarcasm. But why not kill baby's what makes the difference. Or when, when does it becomes murder. Not that stupid a question for the omgwtflolrofl'ers among us. Abortion is just a feminist thingie, you must be the first male lesbian I guess

Why U Mad Tho?

But seriously. I am actually pro-life. I just recognize that the values/morals of western society are not quite there yet.

What I do dislike however are angry people like you who get angry at others who then get angry back at you.

We need to allow cheap (I would prefer free) birth control so that unwanted pregnancies are not created. Religion be damned. We also need to suck it up and provide a strong social net/structure for children that are given up for adoption. They fall through the cracks. More incentives to adopt them are needed. Allow gays to marry and form families.

I have said enough for both sides to completely hate me now.

[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

[Fragony]

Why U Mad Tho?

But seriously. I am actually pro-life. I just recognize that the values/morals of western society are not quite there yet.

What I do dislike however are angry people like you who get angry at others who then get angry back at you.

We need to allow cheap (I would prefer free) birth control so that unwanted pregnancies are not created. Religion be damned. We also need to suck it up and provide a strong social net/structure for children that are given up for adoption. They fall through the cracks. More incentives to adopt them are needed. Allow gays to marry and form families.

I have said enough for both sides to completely hate me now.

I'm not angry, neither am I the one with the pavlov reaction, think of what you redicule. It isn't even to be mentioned that it might just be legal murder, joke is on you

[Rhyfelwyr]

We need to allow cheap (I would prefer free) birth control so that unwanted pregnancies are not created. Religion be damned. We also need to suck it up and provide a strong social net/structure for children that are given up for adoption. They fall through the cracks. More incentives to adopt them are needed. Allow gays to marry and form families.

Ah yes the old liberal wet dream. Free bith control, lots of sex education, strong social support for young mothers and homosexual adoption.

Because that totally worked in England*. /sarcasm

brb chav underclass
brb explosion of STD's
brb teenage pregnancy as a lifestyle
brb entrenched welfare dependency

And even with all that support, half of conceptions for under 18's still end in abortions. Because, well a baby would hold you back and you wouldn't get to fulfil your potential and go to college for 3 years to have free sex.

Pathetic, disgusting and inexplicable. Abortion debates leave me hoping that someone is going to wake me up and tell me this is all not real.

* I say England because not all of the above is true for all of the UK

[a completely inoffensive name]

Ah yes the old liberal wet dream. Free bith control, lots of sex education, strong social support for young mothers and homosexual adoption.

Because that totally worked in England*. /sarcasm

brb chav underclass
brb explosion of STD's
brb teenage pregnancy as a lifestyle
brb entrenched welfare dependency

And even with all that support, half of conceptions for under 18's still end in abortions. Because, well a baby would hold you back and you wouldn't get to fulfil your potential and go to college for 3 years to have free sex.

Pathetic, disgusting and inexplicable. Abortion debates leave me hoping that someone is going to wake me up and tell me this is all not real.

* I say England because not all of the above is true for all of the UK

Well, there is a reason I said strong social support. Family unity and support is included in that. I mean, without good parenting to begin with you can't have a civilization....

[Viking]

I see, I didn't realize you were talking about the "is it a person" question specifically. Though I can't say I'd accuse people who spend time with a newborn and say that it's a person are irrational.

The definition of "person" is one way to approach the matter. You talk about peopling spending time with a newborn, but evidently this newborn is wanted. It's like saying "I hear you are a fan of the death penalty, yet you got a wife?"

What I want is rational discourse telling us why this is wrong. I think most people would agree that there is a big difference between killing a grown up person and tearing apart a zygote (the one-celled organism that is created from sperm and egg). If they were not, they would need to come up with a rational argument, because it is not at all obvious why this should be similar. Hence, there must also be later points where it is not so clear whether it is morally right or not to kill the organism. This further implies that there must a logical reason why killing a newborn is wrong, otherwise one says that it is wrong in itself (which would be interesting..). I've also established that there seems to be a clear link between murder and abortion on a moral level.

edit: and you have to admit, the article basically just claims "it's not a person, end of story".

Not going to say that I am a great fan of their paper (or the opposite, for that matter). As a matter of fact, I have only read excerpts from it. I am mainly interested in the morality concerning newborn/foetuses.

However, even if their reasoning should be faulty, that does not provide an excuse to get all emotional. In fact, I won't even bother to accuse the majority those that have sent death threats to the authors of actually having read the paper.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The definition of "person" is one way to approach the matter. You talk about peopling spending time with a newborn, but evidently this newborn is wanted. It's like saying "I hear you are a fan of the death penalty, yet you got a wife?"

What I want is rational discourse telling us why this is wrong. I think most people would agree that there is a big difference between killing a grown up person and tearing apart a zygote (the one-celled organism that is created from sperm and egg). If they were not, they would need to come up with a rational argument, because it is not at all obvious why this should be similar. Hence, there must also be later points where it is not so clear whether it is morally right or not to kill the organism. This further implies that there must a logical reason why killing a newborn is wrong, otherwise one says that it is wrong in itself (which would be interesting..). I've also established that there seems to be a clear link between murder and abortion on a moral level.

There's a number of things that go into it. Once the baby has been born you are past the point where there is danger to the mother, so the argument that it is potentially a person has a lot more force. That's perfectly rational. The authors argue about a continuing concept of the self, but all they say is things like "it can hardly be said" etc. If you don't know whether something is murder or not, it's wrong to do it, even if you believe that it isn't. That's a very basic rational argument. I also think the " looks like a person" cut off for abortion has some merit, but that's a whole different moral argument (you should have strong reasons to override your conscience).

I think it's quite possible that newborns psychological capacity is as they say, but that would still only be an argument for infanticide being an option in the case of some serious medical conditions.

However, even if their reasoning should be faulty, that does not provide an excuse to get all emotional.

What's so bad about getting all emotional? This idea seems bizarre to me.

[Viking]

Once the baby has been born you are past the point where there is danger to the mother, so the argument that it is potentially a person has a lot more force.

How does the second part of the sentence follow the first?

That's perfectly rational. The authors argue about a continuing concept of the self, but all they say is things like "it can hardly be said" etc. If you don't know whether something is murder or not, it's wrong to do it, even if you believe that it isn't. That's a very basic rational argument.

You will never know something with 100% accuracy, you are going to have to make an estimate. If there was a previously unseen serious defect with the baby, the equation changes a lot, for example. Other things that can change the equation is relevant advances in science.

(you should have strong reasons to override your conscience)

Absolutely.

What's so bad about getting all emotional? This idea seems bizarre to me.

If it makes a person turn to name calling, death threats and hollow statements, it is a pretty bad thing for the debate.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

How does the second part of the sentence follow the first?

I don't understand what you mean...women die during childbirth and from complications during pregnancy...but there is no risk to them after the birth...don't you think that even if a newborn doesn't have a "continuous concept of the self" or whatever it is in the article, that the fact that it will is a strong reason to keep it alive?

You will never know something with 100% accuracy, you are going to have to make an estimate. If there was a previously unseen serious defect with the baby, the equation changes a lot, for example. Other things that can change the equation is relevant advances in science.

And if you have to make an estimate, surely you err on the side of caution? They didn't deal with the question in the article as far as I could see.

[ICantSpellDawg]

don't you think that even if a ________ doesn't have a "continuous concept of the self" or whatever it is in the article, that the fact that it will is a strong reason to keep it alive?

Obviously not

[Visor]

On this topic, a friend of mine had a son who was fine after birth, but around 8 months later something happened (I don't know the full story) and he is now autistic. Would you consider the "abortion" of this child fine?