This fact is self-evident, and only “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society” could object, avers Journal of Medical Ethics editor, Herr Doktor Professeur Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Double threat! How could such a personage possibly be in error? Like, there are no Ethics as correct as Practical Ethics ... far more reality-based than, say, Moral Ethics or Human Ethics or Parental Ethics. Ethics are highly adjectival, utterly modifiable, mutable and relative. As a charming young gay man just told me at the Trader Joe's checkout, "There is no right or wrong, just different." I find that comforting. I wonder what he looks like naked.
“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.” They can't be talking about white babies, surely? They should write more carefully ... someone could get the wrong idea.
“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’." Ah, good to know. Note to self: not all humans are persons. Good. Lets me off the hook re the duct tape, coroner's saw and heavy-duty garbage bags in my trunk. "Human" bodies hold a lot of moisture.
“We take ‘person’ to mean 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.” One may have supposed that to love something is to increase its value, but no, we have just been informed, that would be a mistaken belief. Personhood is reflexive, real only when it is self-attributed. Again, good to know ... only forebrain activity need be considered when evaluating humanity.
Therefore, it is “not possible to damage a newborn [human non-person] by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”. Furthermore, I add, we can harvest her organs, enjoy intercourse with her, feed her to dogs ... the list is limited only by your imagination and capacity to suppress the gag response. She is incapable of being damaged. As the crows observed of Dumbo, so we are given to understand that you can't hurt her, she's made out of rubber. Therefore, “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”. Disabled, dismembered ... splitting hairs.
As for the really undesirable, like Down's Syndrome "babies" -- you know, Mongolian idiots -- “To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole...” Well, might be. Unbearable, like having your '82 Chateau Haut Brion Pessac-Lognan served at 15°C. Hey, stupid: seventeen degrees, bitch ... se-ven-teen. We can't be wasting precious resources on crippled babies. There are abortions to pay for.
And "it is reasonable to predict that living with a very severe condition is against the best interest of the newborn..." Clearly, clearly: not living at all is clearly clearly better than living with a severe condition. That's how I feel a lot of the time too ... I just don't see the purpose of life. I'd be better off dead too. Who will free me from this body of death. After-birth abortionists? Practical ethicists? Damn these intrusive laws. There is entirely too little killing going on nowadays.
The retards are next.
I should submit this to Kos or The Huffington Post. One of my better essays, non?
J
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