The Ethics of Infanticide

[Irvine511]

My first thought is that your complete lack of curiosity or objectivity would be a detriment to someone entering the field of journalism, but on second thought it's probably an asset. The modus operandi of much of journalism today being to create a narrative and then seek out stories to support that narrative.

Being a good reporter in search of "news" or the "truth" being not nearly as important as being a bien-pensant reporter.

I guess you have been paying attention when you watch Fox News.

 

[INDY500]

You know, I considered taking this opportunity to talk about my journalistic style and describe how you're full of shit, but you and I both know you're just being an asshole. And hey, I probably deserve it for posting something so simple that doesn't encourage discussion, but yeah, we both know you don't know shit about how I actually conduct myself when it comes to writing stories, so let's just move on.

You're right, I only know how you conduct yourself here but the probing mind of a journalism major would be the last thing to spring to mind frankly. Now maybe you log on here to escape school, fine. But why not take the opportunity to practice your major? Ask me a tough question.

How am I full of shit when it comes to "the ethics of infanticide"?

Or better yet, challenge someone you agree with now and then. At least pretend that views and opinions other than yours are worthy of consideration and merit a response other than a simple brush off.

 

[Jive Turkey]

C'mon Peef. Why aren't you trying to impress Indy???

To be honest, the guys that come on here and write as if they're submitting an essay come off as so desperate to be taken seriously, they're a joke. Not to mention many of the arguments being put forth here are nothing but reactionary, caricatured cliches.

 

[anitram]

Now maybe you log on here to escape school, fine. But why not take the opportunity to practice your major? Ask me a tough question.

It's interesting that you're thread police when it comes to Pfan but nary a word to, say, iron horse and his suitability to teach children fundamentals, like you know, reading comprehension. Just an observation.

 

[Diemen]

But why not take the opportunity to practice your major?

How paternalistic of you.

 

[PhilsFan]

You're right, I only know how you conduct yourself here but the probing mind of a journalism major would be the last thing to spring to mind frankly. Now maybe you log on here to escape school, fine. But why not take the opportunity to practice your major? Ask me a tough question.

How am I full of shit when it comes to "the ethics of infanticide"?

Or better yet, challenge someone you agree with now and then. At least pretend that views and opinions other than yours are worthy of consideration and merit a response other than a simple brush off.

You are correct, I do come here to escape school. I'm actually much less abrasive than my posting would indicate, at least as far as how much profanity I use. Sometimes I read my posts and they read a lot angrier than I intended, simply because I casually swear so often.

I never said you were full of shit when it comes to the ethic of infanticide. I said you were full of shit in trying to judge my journalistic abilities based on my venting on an Internet music message board's political forum.

I am sincerely not trying to brush people off. I'm not BVS here. But I'm also rather busy, which is why I rarely post long, in depth posts. Most of my posting here comes from my phone since I got the app a couple months ago. Hence why I can come off a bit blunt. It's not for lack of reading.

My point on this particular topic is, as I said, that this whole thing is a sideshow. It's an opportunity for these Oxford people to get their name out there with a thought experiment, and an opportunity for pro-lifers to try to say "hey, look, these liberals really are in favor of baby killing!" or talk of slippery slopes and what not. The former is more appalling; the latter will have more impact.

"Infanticide" has nothing to do with abortion.

 

[INDY500]

It's interesting that you're thread police when it comes to Pfan but nary a word to, say, iron horse and his suitability to teach children fundamentals, like you know, reading comprehension. Just an observation.

Originally Posted by the iron horse
I believe that the life of a person begins at conception.

Originally Posted by Indy500
And anyone that argues otherwise is a fool (see Barack Obama and "above my pay grade"). But when does personhood begin? I believe that occurs at viability (see Barack Obama and Illinois State Senate votes on "born alive" legislation).

Actually I did. I agree with Iron that life begins at conception but I challenged him on when he thought legal personhood begins. I sadly didn't hear back.

I'm don't mean to thread police but that's the 2nd time in the past week or so that Philly has been able to muster up nothing more than a "dear lord" in response to something that took me considerably longer to write. Kinda irksome.

All I ask is if you're going to "quote" me to disagree with me please have the courtesy to tell me why.

 

[BVS]

I am sincerely not trying to brush people off. I'm not BVS here.

Dear Lord

 

[INDY500]

You are correct, I do come here to escape school. I'm actually much less abrasive than my posting would indicate, at least as far as how much profanity I use. Sometimes I read my posts and they read a lot angrier than I intended, simply because I casually swear so often.

I never said you were full of shit when it comes to the ethic of infanticide. I said you were full of shit in trying to judge my journalistic abilities based on my venting on an Internet music message board's political forum.

I am sincerely not trying to brush people off. I'm not BVS here. But I'm also rather busy, which is why I rarely post long, in depth posts. Most of my posting here comes from my phone since I got the app a couple months ago. Hence why I can come off a bit blunt. It's not for lack of reading.

Well, I'm rather busy as well but, speaking for myself, if I'm going to respond I try to engage the topic. Not that I'm against going for the cheap laugh now and then though.

"Infanticide" has nothing to do with abortion.

From Philadelphia now less: Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell charged with murdering 7 infants with scissors - New York Daily News

Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell charged with murdering 7 infants with scissors

BY LAUREN JOHNSTON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, January 19, 2011

A doctor who ran a "house of horrors" abortion clinic has been charged in the deaths of one woman and seven babies who prosecutors say were born alive then killed with scissors.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who treated mostly poor and immigrant women, was arrested Wednesday along with nine employees from his West Philadelphia Women's Medical Society - among them a high school student who performed medial treatments with no license.

Gosnell, 69, raked in millions over 30 years performing illegal and late-term abortions, prosecutors said.

Officials described his squalid clinic like something out of a horror movie

"There were bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses were scattered throughout the building," said Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. "There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose."

Gosnell has been named in at least 10 malpractice suits, but Williams said state regulators ignored complaints about his clinic and that the office hadn't been inspected since 1993.

Patients endured barbaric procedures at the hands of the twisted doctor, officials charged.

Gosnell "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," Williams said.

Police stumbled into the grisly scene at Gosnell's clinic last year after responding to a drug-related complaint.

His medical license was then suspended and the clinic shut down.

I only bring this up because late-term abortions are performed on no less viable infants using the subjective loophole of "the woman's physical or mental health." I support an exception for "the woman's life" by the way. And that pro-choice groups are against ALL state bans of late-term abortion.

And I need someone to explain to me why a late-term abortion is legal if the procedure goes well but if it is "botched" and the baby is born alive it is infanticide to cut the back of its neck with scissors?

 

[LemonMelon]

That initial article is so bad that it reads like something pro-lifers penned to sabotage their opponents. Or a really misguided Onion piece. I can't believe anyone would be stupid enough to use that verbiage to get their point across. It's like they wanted to invalidate their own points.

Not that I agree with even a syllable of it. I just would have appreciated them attempt to bullshit me a little.

 

[PhilsFan]

Well, I'm rather busy as well but, speaking for myself, if I'm going to respond I try to engage the topic. Not that I'm against going for the cheap laugh now and then though.

I only bring this up because late-term abortions are performed on no less viable infants using the subjective loophole of "the woman's physical or mental health." I support an exception for "the woman's life" by the way. And that pro-choice groups are against ALL state bans of late-term abortion.

And I need someone to explain to me why a late-term abortion is legal if the procedure goes well but if it is "botched" and the baby is born alive it is infanticide to cut the back of its neck with scissors?

Fair enough. It's certainly something I need to work on, I can agree with that.

Here's my problem with all of that: as soon as you start saying you are for exceptions for the woman's life (or rape), then the conversation has to be about enforcing that. Do you need to have court battles over whether this woman's life is really in danger? Do I need a judge to sign off and say this woman was really raped? I don't like the idea of women who sincerely want an abortion for good reasons like that (and let's be clear: health dangers and rapes are very good reasons for having an abortion) having to get jerked around in the courts.

I think better health information and sex education are the real answers for continuing to lower the number of abortions every year. But some things like health and rape are going to be unavoidable issues, and punishing women for circumstances outside of their control is absurd if you ask me.

 

[LemonMelon]

As I stated, I think there is more common-ground agreement when people really think about this issue than the vocal extremists on both sides will have us believe. I'd like to prove that.

I think this is a great point. Partisanship and extremism (I find both concepts more damaging with every passing year; politicians who create division by rallying their party with extremist views about abortion make me sick) limit the ground we can make in limiting the number of abortions each year, and it's really important that this goal is made clear. For every "baby killer" label slapped on a pro-choice individual, we take a step back. This issue is about human life, and the preservation thereof. Nobody worth listening to is encouraging abortion as end to itself, and like Peef said, education is a great way to circumvent the issue that most of us can agree on. It's a whole lot wiser to focus on that than obsess over trimesters and piss each other off.

 

[yolland]

And I need someone to explain to me why a late-term abortion is legal if the procedure goes well but if it is "botched" and the baby is born alive it is infanticide to cut the back of its neck with scissors?

Because our legal system, like all others in the world, implictly treats physical separation from the mother's body i.e. birth as grounds for the granting of basic rights as a separate and distinct individual before the state.

Obviously it isn't necessary to formally ascribe rights to some earlier stage in order to restrict abortions. Several Western European countries, for example, permit abortion without restrictions through the first trimester or first 4 months, after which it's illegal save for medical necessity as verified by a doctor...and they resolved all this without decades-long epic battles over "personhood," "consciousness," "ensoulment" etc. It's partly our exceptional commitment to individualism that gets us into trouble.

Has there been an upswing in infanticides -- or even murder -- since Roe v Wade?

Infanticide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the United States the infanticide rate during the first hour of life dropped from 1.41 per 100,000 during 1963 to 1972 to 0.44 per 100,000 for 1974 to 1983; the rates during the first month of life also declined, whereas those for older infants rose during this time.[105] The legalization of abortion, which was completed in 1973, was the most important factor in the decline in neonatal mortality during the period from 1964 to 1977, according to a study by economists associated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.[106]

The OP-linked article is an academic position paper from two Italian bioethics postdocs, and their topic--active non-voluntary euthanasia, never mind what they call it--is a longstanding debate topic in bioethics (as are voluntary and involuntary euthanasia). Passive non-voluntary euthanasia (the withdrawal of life support from patients unable to consent) is legal under certain narrow circumstances in numerous countries, including the US; active non-voluntary euthanasia isn't legal anywhere, though the Netherlands will waive prosecution of doctors who euthanize infants under very narrow circumstances defined in protocols developed and ratified by the Dutch National Association of Pediatricians. (Note, BTW, that third-trimester abortions are NOT legal in the Netherlands and that the aforementioned protocols grew out of that country's longstanding internal dialogue on voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia, NOT its internal dialogue on abortion policy.) Clearly, the OP paper is far more radical than this, since it dismisses internationally standard assumptions about infants as rights-bearing subjects of law, arguing that all qualifications concerning the permissibility of infant euthanasia are thus "morally irrelevant."

That could certainly be criticized as (among other things) slippery-slope thinking, since as Pearl pointed out, it relies on arbitrary, intangible distinctions which could be applied to older children as well. But like PFan said, this isn't a real-world slippery slope; it's not a policy document, and the only reason it's attracted mass media attention (and attendant death threats for the authors) is because it uses what even its authors admit is the "oxymoron" "after-birth abortion." The reason I compared that upthread to "calling smothering someone to death 'withdrawl of life support' " was to underline the stupidity of conflating ethical debates which are kept separate for good reason, regardless of whether one personally believes both acts to always be wrong. The defining problem of the abortion debate is that granting rights to fetuses would inherently undermine the liberty of the person already granted to an existing category of legal subjects: women. Nothing like that circumstance pertains in the debates over the various forms of euthanasia.

To be honest, the guys that come on here and write as if they're submitting an essay come off as so desperate to be taken seriously, they're a joke.

I don't think I like the way you looked at me when you said that.

 

[Jive Turkey]

I don't think I like the way you looked at me when you said that.

hahaha, the irony being that, before I got to this part of your post, I was honestly going to respond "You are so smart and informed, yolland!". And was being completely sincere. But now you don't get that anymore
But for real, your style is consistent with your substance

My comment wasn't directed at anyone that currently posts here, though. I won't say who, but it used to really stand out to me when they did. Yous guys are are cool as far as I'm concerned

 

[INDY500]

Because our legal system, like all others in the world, implictly treats physical separation from the mother's body i.e. birth as grounds for the granting of basic rights as a separate and distinct individual before the state.

Obviously it isn't necessary to formally ascribe rights to some earlier stage in order to restrict abortions. Several Western European countries, for example, permit abortion without restrictions through the first trimester or first 4 months, after which it's illegal save for medical necessity as verified by a doctor...and they resolved all this without decades-long epic battles over "personhood," "consciousness," "ensoulment" etc. It's partly our exceptional commitment to individualism that gets us into trouble.

And the stubborn commitment some have had over the years to putting natural law before legal positivism. Or in other words seeking what is right rather than what is legal.

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
--Letter from a Birmingham Jail

I consider it appalling that the country I proudly live in has some of the least restrictive laws on late-term abortions. But, as everybody likes to say in this forum, "the world spins forward." Sometimes even for unborn humans.