While political liberals are busy advancing the fiction of a
conservative “war on contraception,” their counterparts in academia
are promoting a lie at the opposite end of the reproductive
continuum. The anti-life crowd is giving new life to arguments for
infanticide.
In a much-discussed recent article in the Journal of
Medical Ethics, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva take
the “pro-choice” argument to its logical and loathsome end. They
argue that “when circumstances occur after birth such that
they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth
abortion should be permissible.”
They propose to call the practice “after-birth abortion”
rather than “infanticide” to stress their belief that the moral
status of a newborn baby is no different from that of an unborn
baby.
While other anti-life extremists limit their support for
infanticide to those deemed genetically “unfit,” Giubilini and
Minerva argue that the practice might be acceptable even in “cases
where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least)
acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at
risk.”
Risks to the well-being of the family include the
“unbearable burden that a child can create for the psychological
health of the woman or for her already existing children,
regardless of the condition of the fetus.”
While the authors allow that both the unborn child and the
newborn are “human beings,” they insist that neither has a right to
life because they are “potential persons” not “persons.” “Merely
being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right
to life,” they assert.
Predictably, the article has generated a lot of criticism.
A Conservative congressman denounced it on the House floor, and
both the authors and the journal have received demands for
apologies and death threats.
Pro-life advocates shouldn’t be upset. Many
abortion-rights supporters claim that something magical happens at
the moment a baby passes through the birth canal. But the authors
start from a premise that pro-lifers have long maintained: that
there is no difference between the moral status of an unborn
child and that of a newborn child.
The article leaves many questions unanswered. For one, if
infanticide were legalized, would the law stipulate how
infants could be killed? If infants are no different than unborn
babies, can they also be aborted “after birth” in the same gruesome
way, torn limb from limb without anesthesia? If not, why
not?
Also, if newborns may be killed, why not
two-year-olds, who also can have a substantial effect
on the “well-being of a family.” What about teenagers? What if
grandpa becomes an unbearable burden? Can a family euthanize him
and call it a 240th trimester abortion?
According to the authors, a rights-bearing person is “an
individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some
(at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence
represents a loss to her.” The authors claim that babies develop
this self-awareness sometime “in the first days or few weeks after
birth.”
But research and experience demonstrate that human beings
have desires, needs and personalities that emerge well before they
are born. Many mothers can attest to the reaction of their child in
the womb to music, voices and other stimuli.
Yet, according to the authors, “the fetus and the newborn
are potential persons” whose interest “amounts to zero.”
Arguments for infanticide are not new. In fact, the logic
behind them has been embraced at the highest levels of
government. As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama
twice opposed legislation to define as “persons” babies who survive
late-term abortions.
Obama said in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor that
he could not accept that babies wholly emerged from their mother’s
wombs are “persons,” and thus deserving of equal protection under
the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
In 2009, Texas
considered legislation that would have defined infanticide as a
separate and lesser crime than homicide, with a maximum sentence of
just two years in prison.
Parents who kill their newborns are sometimes given
lighter sentences than those who murder older children.
In Canada last year, a judge
cited Canada’s acceptance of abortion in giving a woman who
strangled and killed her newborn a three-year suspended
sentence.
While some advocate infanticide for the burdensome, others
propose that their parents receive financial compensation. Earlier
this month, parents of a child with Down syndrome in Oregon
received compensation in a “wrongful birth” lawsuit.
The couple had undergone prenatal testing, which came back
negative for genetic abnormalities. When their child was discovered
to have Down syndrome after birth, the couple sued their health
provider, arguing that they would have aborted had they known that
their child would be born with the genetic condition.
The jury voted in favor of the couple, who received $3
million to cover the estimated extra life-time costs of caring for
their child. This case is not an outlier. At least 28 states
recognize “wrongful birth” lawsuits.
In our entitlement society, citizens are claiming a right
to more than just other people’s money. Increasingly, parents feel
entitled to perfect children, and thus to discard, or receive
compensation for, those they deem to be a burden. In such a
society, the threshold for the right to life will continue to
rise.
