INFANTICIDE

An article in the Telegraph a few days ago had a headline that grabbed attention:

Killing Babies No Different From Abortion, Experts Say.

The Telegraph article describes a piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) that argues that because babies are "morally irrelevant," they may be killed without moral consequence, just like a fetus.  The two authors call such a procedure "after birth abortion."  They don't like the term "infanticide."

Of course, if you accept abortion to begin with, the logic here is remorseless and dead on (so to speak).

What makes consciousness, or moral awareness, so inherently valuable that it should be the dividing line between tissue and humanity?  No answers, unfortunately.  I suppose we are just left to the good graces of the Special Masters who will decide who is morally relevant and who is disposable.  Perhaps they can supply us with some HHS guidelines on the subject.  Based on the article, Downs Syndrome children of any age are fair game for slaughter.

I hope the Special Masters keep me in the morally relevant group.  My guess is they probably would not like me very much, and so would find a way to classify me as morally irrelevant.

Here is an especially chilling section of the article, the full text of which you can read here:


In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child. 


Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk. 


Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth  abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.