Murder of the New Born

A paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics, entitled, 'After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?', argues that killing a newborn baby should be "permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled."

The authors of this paper, Alberto Giubilini of the University of Milan and Francesca Minerva of Melbourne University, argue that,

(i) "both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons";

(ii) "the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant";

(iii) and thirdly, they write that, "adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people."

To summarise:

• newborn babies are not actual people, ....

• therefore, killing them is not immoral.

No matter how this policy is 'dressed up,' the brutal reality is that it is an argument pro killing babies.

Of course the arguments marshalled by these ethicists' are not new ... just an extension of the current argument that undergirds the murder of babies within the womb to cater for their killing outside of the womb.

If we accept the ideas on personhood that are held by those who advocate abortion, there is no ethical reason to stop carrying out abortions at the arbitrary point of birth.

The moment we assume the dangerous position of setting ourselves up as the arbiters of who is human and who isn’t, this is the calamitous yet inevitable end. Once we declare that all human life is not sacred, the rest is just drawing random lines in the sand.

As one author correctly pointed out,

"An ethicist's job is like a magician’s. The main job of both is to distract you from the obvious. The magician uses sleight of hand to pretend to make people disappear. But when ethicists do it, people disappear for real."

The suggestion from these ethicists - repulsive in the extreme - actually highlights the absurdity of the pro-abortion argument.

In the UK, in most cases, it is only legal to have an abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy (provided certain criteria are met). But this time limit is nothing more than a line drawn in the sand – a compromise between pro-lifers and their pro-choice opponents. It's a moral fudge simply because we can't agree on when a human being becomes a human being.

This is why these ethicists have taken the pro-abortion argument to its logical extreme, by drawing their line in the sand after birth.

The only totally logical response – and that can't include the 24-week fudge – is to be altogether anti-abortion.

To agree with Scripture, in other words. cf. our previous article on Abortion.