Shocking article considers whether babies have 'moral right to life'. WARNING: distressing content

[chandellina]

following on last week's abortion thread, anyone care to jump in on this one?

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.

Telegraph story

Some arguments are wrong, some philosophical thinking is flawed. Not all philosophical thinking has the same value.

Some philosophical thinking may be based on underlying political objectives. It may be a justification for some political policies. Undervaluing human life, equating it with animal life, may be a justification for population control and reduction policies such as some green policies.

'Why are human beings special?'

This is the heart of the matter. Religion has no doubt that humans are special and why.

There are some people and some political movements who don't think they are special. They think they are using up the planet's resources and are "destroying" the planet and the habitat of the dung beetle.

These people are most often the elite and they spread the philosophies that devalue humans.

For FUCK'S sake, are we STILL having The Abortion Debate in 2011. Jesus Christ.

ABortion was not invented so that evil women could do what they've always wanted and KILL babies mwahahaha.

It has always existed so that when men INSIST on sticking their dicks into women WHO DO NOT WISH TO CARRY THEIR CHILD, the woman then has some recourse.

For the record, I refused to have scans with both of my children until they insisted I had one at 35 weeks each time to check the amniotic fluid was okay.
Eugenics is a COMPLETELY different issue. It's an old old trick to muddy the water by adding eugenics to an abortion debate.

The debate that goes on and one.. as men in power quibble over women right to body autonomy.

If politicians i.e MEN are THAT concerned about "the unborn child" then they should stop sticking their dicks into women, or find a woman who wants to bear their child. Easy peasy.

oh, it's 2012...

makes it even worse

No one is talking about rounding up and culling the disabled. And, actually, I'm quite capable of entering into a discussion about euthanasia in the full awareness that one day it might be me in a coma or reduced to a severed head and a little finger, or my DS, for that matter. Remember Jaymee Bowen? Her father fought a huge public court battle for her to be given a new and experimental cancer treatment. He won, she was given the treatment and while her life was prolonged it wasn't improved, in fact she allegedly said that she would rather have died sooner and suffered fewer side effects.

To my knowledge there is no philosopher who denies that human beings are members of the human species (and for good reason as the statement is tautological!). Membership of a species is a biological question. There are some interesting issues here, e.g. we can discover new chracteristics (whales give birth to their young) that leads us to re-classify a speciment (from fish to mammal), or we can still question the correct species clasification of a speciment (I believe that there is still debate over whether pandas belong to the raccoon family or the bear family), and we can even mix species and create chemeras, but all these are biological questions.

Personhood is a question about moral status. It's easiest to see the question when you consider what we should do with the alien. Aliens land, they are friendly towards us, they seem to have an organised society, to enjoy things like the arts, to be able to communicate with us, etc. - what do we do with them? Would it be permissible to eat them? To harvest their organs for our use? To let them loose in a woods and shoot at them from helicopters for fun? How do we decide on their status?

Do tell me to shut up when you get fed up with me! Philosophers have a long tradition of going on for too long and pissing off everyone starting with poor Socrates!

Most of my interactions lately are with the baby so I am craving adult conversations!!!

FGS, can we please stop the 'why do you want to murder my baby?' posts? NOBODY HERE IS ADVOCATING KILLING CHILDREN! [bangs head on wall]

Ethics debates are about critically re-examining what we consider 'common sense' and daring to ask the difficult questions. Most people think that pregnancies resulting from rape are somehow more 'deserving' of abortion - why? Most people think early abortion is better than late abortion - why? Most people think that a newborn baby - even though barely more sentient, intelligent or autonomous than a cat - deserves protection and respect more than a cat. Why why why? Can't you see that it is when we delve beneath the 'Just because', when we really explore the why, that we might come up with deeper truths and wisdoms than can help guide us through other, less easy, moral dilemmas?

'Common sense' and the received moral compass changes all the time. In my grandmother's youth, most people thought capital punishment was ethically justified. They thought smothering 'damaged' babies in sluice rooms was a kindness to all concerned. They thought oppressing homosexuals was for the greater good. They thought the kindest way to help children born to women who were unmarried or unstable was to take them away and lie to them about the circumstances of their birth.

These things have changed for a number of reasons, none of them being that we have just evolved into kinder wiser people. One of the change factors is ethical debate: holding 'common sense' up to scrutiny, asking challenging questions, posing provocative hypothetical scenarios. That is NOT the same as a policy proposal! This thread is the equivalent of someone asking rhetorically, "why should a child have greater legal rights than a dog?" and others running around screaming, "They're trying to muzzle my baby and force him to eat Pedigree Chum!"

Philosopher: If a tree falls in a forest and there's no-one around to hear, does it make a sound?

Frother: How dare you suggest cutting down my tree?

Trills - love it!

And Devora! Thank you for the sanity and humour

all im saying replace disabled with black or with Jewish and looked where that Ethical debate ended up .

o mnhq come in if this thread replaced the words you delete in seconds .So much for supporting the sn community basically you dont give a toss unless it is something you cna get publicity out of

The people who are actually debating the ethics/morality/philosophy haven't said anything about disabled babies.

If you find something offensive or think it breaks the rules then report it, don't just moan on the thread - MNHQ don't actually read every word that you write.

Do you honestly think MNHQ would allow a theoretical 'ethics' debate on killing, say, black or jewish people?
I seriously doubt it.

They state that like an unborn child, a newborn has yet to develop hopes, goals and dreams and so, while clearly human, is not a person ? someone with a moral right to life

As an adult with hopes, goals and dreams (don't know what the so on refers to...) and the moral right to life and therefore best placed to decide, we advocate using that moral superiority over a great many people, not just unborn life or new born humans.

I would argue that Darwin's theories are now leading certain people and indeed governments to believe in not just the survival of the fittest but survival at all costs. "My survival depends upon your destruction"

My ability to produce healthy inheritors of my property depends upon protecting my assets, ie I can not afford the drain of caring for a child or caring for the disabled and it reaches a whole new level when you say the state can not afford the drain of caring for the disabled, the sick, the elderly. We find ourselves compelled to comply and hand them over for fear of being labelled "takers and parasites"

It's just a warm up for far right and it won't stop at babies, we have millions of elderly "drains" on our decreasing resources and millions of poor people, many disabled people who those on the right feel need punishing into forced labour, many of whom are considered not contributing to society locked in a cycle of of no hope.....no goals.......no dreams.......

Devora - great post!

Well actually KalSkirata this debate IS about the ethics of killing black babies and jewish babies.

Because the arguments being explored apply to ALL babies universally. It is a general debate and exploration of where the line is after which abortion becomes morally unacceptable and why.

The focus on disability is being artificially created here on mumsnet and is not actually what the article was about.

The JME editors have received death threats and other deeply unpleasant correspondence for publishing the piece...

Gosh. I was a Jewish baby once. I have two children - one born with a birth abnormality and the other born to birth parents who many would argue should be compulsorily sterilised. I'm still capable of distinguishing analogy from proposal.

KalSkirata, your post makes as much sense as if I went on an abortion thread where someone was saying, "You wouldn't terminate a baby with club foot, so why for cleft palate?" and started screaming, "This thread wants to murder my club-footed baby!". Honestly, if you can show me one post on this thread where somebody has said they think children with disabilities should be murdered then I will pay £30 to the charity of your choice.