Parents should be allowed to kill their newborn babies, say European eggheads

[^_^ 5,021]

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

...

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “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’.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9113394/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion-experts-say.html

[_Simpson_ 250]

Probably just a group of Pro-Lifers trolling.

Edited March 1, 2012 by _Simpson_

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Seems reasonable. Are 48th trimester abortions considered late term?

[Ban Hammer 13,548]

they are only about 70 years late with that argument.

[xebec 195]

The premise upon which the article is based the natural, inevitable extension of the basic argument that the pro-choice crowd has long clung to. Their definition of life is fundamentally arbitrary, and therefore subject to reinterpretation. The above cited author's definition is as legitimate as "second trimester" or any other pro-choice definition of "when life begins."