Killing Children Justified in Ethics Paper

After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?

"Nonetheless, to bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care. On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion. Therefore, we argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.

As always with "ethics", it is about some self-anointed elite deciding who wins and who loses - others of course, never himself. And the justification for abortion, in the USA at least, is whenever you want to kill your progeny, just do it. There is no caveat requiring the progeny to be defective in any manner. The only decision is whether to kill "her" or not kill "her".

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.

Failing to bring a new person into existence cannot be compared with the wrong caused by procuring the death of an existing person. The reason is that, unlike the case of death of an existing person, failing to bring a new person into existence does not prevent anyone from accomplishing any of her future aims. However, this consideration entails a much stronger idea than the one according to which severely handicapped children should be euthanised. If the death of a newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practise an after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too, given that she has not formed any aim yet.

These rationalizations are useful in determining who lives and who dies in the UK apparently. They are not required in the US, because abortion is government supported by taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood abbatoirs.

There are two reasons which, taken together, justify this claim:

The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, that is, neither can be considered a ‘person’ in a morally relevant sense.

It is not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense.

We are going to justify these two points in the following two sections.

[ all emphasis added]

It is "ethically" possible to view these "ethicists" as moral hazards to society, given the proper view of humanity and moral value of human life. Thus the eradication of moral hazards is justifiable, "ethically", and that has been pointed out to these moral-free people in the form of what they term as "death threats", but which viewed under their own "ethical" justificationist processes might be viewed as "after-birth abortion due to burden on society". I see no reason for them to complain.