Excuse me sir, could you kill my baby

[DeletedUser30834]

"Excuse me sir, could you kill my baby for me? I would like a better one." Does that sound like only something a crazy person might say?

Well, it could become common place as now science is trying to say that killing newborn and some infant children is no different then abortion from an ethical standpoint. That's right, the slope became slippery and some have appear to have slid right into a big pile of something most people might find offensive. Don't like the dimples on your newborn's face, will he need coke bottle glasses? Kill it and start over. Change your mind about being a parent, now you can use birth control after the kid is born if some bioethicists have anything to say about it.

Read more about it here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...s-no-different-from-abortion-experts-say.html

And if you want the inflames right to life version, you can read more here.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/reli...-babies-justified-morally-equivalent-abortion

Maybe this slope will increase in angle enough that we will start seeing the combination of placentophagy with it and have a custom of killing and eating our own babies (literally).

But on a plus side, this has showed how evil those right to life people really are. It has been reported that the authors of this paper have received threats and harassing correspondence from them.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/w...hats-why-it-will-boost-the-pro-life-movement/

Just think when this become so common place slogans get stuck in the minds of women "have you killed a baby today?" What do you think, is this too much, or is the concept spot on? Does this extension of the ethical consideration concerning abortions make you want to rethink your abortion stance, or is one fine and not the other (fetus abortion verses afterbirth abortions)? What would compel someone to split the mental process like that?

 

[DeletedUser16008]

Infanticide, is the word your looking for. Im not going to get into an abortion row about what is or isnt ok about that but yes I support abortion to 20 weeks although the UK has a 24 week limit.

What can I say ? i also support euthanasia and being a persons Human right to decide on their own life, Infanticide is not acceptable to put it mildly, that life cannot decide for itself and no one has the right to take it away, the only exception would be if severely handicapped mentally and unable to function in this world much at all and no i dont want to get into that either.

Its important to note there are fringe groups in science as in every sector, this is certainly one of them and are surely devoid of any feeling on a humane level and twisting reasoning to suit themselves.

No arguments from me life is life and once in this world you have a right to live it.

 

[DeletedUser30834]

I wouldn't want to use infanticide because it is a combination of infant and homicide. Homicide is the killing of another human and the concept in this argues that the babies are not yet human or not yet human enough to have the same considerations another human would have.

I avoided the term to not taint the waters so to speak. I did that enough already with the way I presented the content (i think).

 

[DeletedUser16008]

I wouldn't want to use infanticide because it is a combination of infant and homicide. Homicide is the killing of another human and the concept in this argues that the babies are not yet human or not yet human enough to have the same considerations another human would have.

I avoided the term to not taint the waters so to speak. I did that enough already with the way I presented the content (i think).

Yeeee well i don't have any qualms about calling it what it is... Infanticide, oops i said it again.. a newborn isnt a rodent, a fish, an alien or anything other than human according to our biological and medical academies of science. This might seem alarming at first but no way would this be accepted anywhere I can think of, its a crackpot theory and statement and wouldn't be surprised to find the writer or group were releasing a book or trying to secure some sort of recognition in the science world ... bizarre as it seems there are people like that out there.

 

[DeletedUser563]

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

it shows how obsessive a person can become of his own ideas. And no anyone especially persons with a disability have a right to life. To not confuse the issue we are not talking about abortion its plain murder. Or else that's how I understand it.

“after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.

And isnt it some double standards" He wants to deny others the right to perform an after -life abortion on him and his colleagues"

Ps I hardly see anyone taking up the side of Dr Death..So think this will be a pretty one sided debate

 

[DeletedUser30834]

It appears it is in practice in The Netherlands.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/297

In one of the articles I read discussing the hate mail and threats the author and journal received, it said this wasn't the first it has seen of this and it is more or less the continuation of a previous work by Peter Singer and Michael Tooley.

I've seen sites where the claim is made that it is in practice in other places but the credibility is questionable of either the claim (gender based infanticide because of the lack of expected female population), or the site itself (a blog or a site that appears to have been constructed by a 3 year old that makes "OMG Ponies" appear more formal then most government websites).

Either way, it took a while before abortion was advocated enough to become as acceptable as birth control. Many people saw it as disgusting, vile, and so on in the early days that only desperate women would entertain it. Now its a common last chance birth control solution for those times when hormones impare the ability to use a condom. It is probably a matter of time before this becomes a common reality.

 

[DeletedUser16008]

It appears it is in practice in The Netherlands.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/297

Whoa there horse, that article is from 2005-09-25

Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands when patients have explicitly asked to be killed. This excludes people “with no free will,” such as children, the severely mentally ed and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident. In the Netherlands – the first nation to legalise euthanasia – as well as in neighbouring Belgium, which adopted a law similar to that of the Dutch, advocates of “mercy killings” are pushing for a “right to euthanasia” for people who cannot explicitly ask for it.

The guideline accepted by the hospital in Groningen last year states that euthanasia is allowed when the child’s medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it is best.

Under Dutch law doctors performing euthanasia have to report every case to the ministry of Justice. In all, 22 cases of euthanasia on newborns have been reported to the Justice Ministry since the euthanasia bill was voted in 1997.

Doctors will be more inclined to report euthanasia of “babies that are so ill that their suffering is unbearable and hopeless and that do not die of their own accord”


This is not the same thing as your OP. This article is about euthanasia on very very ill newborns that have no chance of a life and are suffering.... If your going to bring a topic up from 2012 and then try to tag something from 2005 to it, make sure its about the same thing and intention.... this clearly isnt ....

What your looking like now is someone who is trying to blurr the lines between infanticide and late abortion and in my opinion mercy euthanasia... there is a huge difference and im not going to get drawn into arguing about what is obviously a play with words and ethics, don't go there sumdum... do not try to bring these two things into the same topic because its not even close to the same thing

 

[DeletedUser30834]

I think you are missing the point in the article about the Groningen Protocol and the reason why it was instituted. They thought that by changing how the infanticide was reported, more doctors would report when they are doing it. It said 22 cases were reported and they believe there was many more unreported because doctors feared prosecution. The Groningen Protocol was developed in order for doctors to escape prosecution.

This page steps into it a little better.
http://cbhd.org/content/groningen-protocol-making-infanticide-legal-does-not-make-it-moral

According to it, being mute or deaf or something that might need long term medical care was just cause for infanticide or mercy killing (if you prefer it to be) . You might know something more then I do, as I've only been reading about this for a couple of weeks, but from what I can find, they do appear to be very similar. Most of the full papers are out of my access as I don't have subscriptions to the medical journals and have to rely on reporting from other sources. I will admit, the latest paper describes killing infants that have nothing wrong with them, which no matter how I look at it is different then say a mute baby or a a mentally ed baby or one with a disease that will require constant medical care or something which seems to be the case in the Netherlands..

 

[DeletedUser16008]

This page steps into it a little better.
http://cbhd.org/content/groningen-protocol-making-infanticide-legal-does-not-make-it-moral

According to it, being mute or deaf or something that might need long term medical care was just cause for infanticide or mercy killing (if you prefer it to be) . You might know something more then I do, as I've only been reading about this for a couple of weeks, but from what I can find, they do appear to be very similar. Most of the full papers are out of my access as I don't have subscriptions to the medical journals and have to rely on reporting from other sources. I will admit, the latest paper describes killing infants that have nothing wrong with them, which no matter how I look at it is different then say a mute baby or a a mentally ed baby or one with a disease that will require constant medical care or something which seems to be the case in the Netherlands..

it was changed because the law forbade it and opened them to prosecution yes for a wholly different reason, medical. That does not mean these things were done even remotely for the same reason as your OP article

I see nothing in that last article that gives any detail at all. You can be kept alive now with disabilities etc that were not previously possible. without details i cannot comment further nor will I accept your examples in your OP connected to it at this present time.

 

[DeletedUser30834]

Fair enough. I'm not too attached to it and frankly would feel a lot better if it wasn't the same.

If I find more about it that has details, I will post whether it supports my assertion or not. I found there is a lexis nexis article on the Groningen Protocol pertaining to the legality and practice in the United States and I should have access to it at work. I just need to clear using company resources for private use with the CFO before I can post anything here on it. I'm not sure what our license allows.

 

[DeletedUser563]

Although I am in no way saying don't hate these guys. in the comments I found the counter argument:

03/06/2012 05:07 PM
I'll admit I do not have time to read the 2000-odd comments here, but the amount of people's outrage and abuse directed at the authors I've seen truly shocks me. I can't believe how few people seem to have the ability to critically evaluate something they've read, rather than offer a knee-jerk, outrageous rection to something they clearly have not understood properly.

These ethicists obviously are in no way advocating infanticide or its legalisation (though if you read through these comments you would think they had started a campaign for it). They have done what the job of an ethicist in our society should be and created an article that is thought-provoking and sparks debate, although I will admit in a shocking manner.

They have clearly extrapolated our current laws and widely-held views regarding abortion, and applied that to newborns. Now, the conclusion they draw is not necessarily intended to be a moral compass to which we should align our society, merely they have taken our views on a related matter, applied them to a new area and come to a logical conclusion.

Obviously in any society infanticide would be considered morally wrong, that is shown by people's obvious disgust. The point of this article is not the conclusion it draws, but the logic that leads to that conclusion and the axioms that it is based on.

The point is that this is not an article intended to disgust or to advocate something that most would consider morally wrong. Rather people should see the debate this article is trying to highlight, and perhaps reflect on how this informs their own views in the debate. This is how an intelligent society should reason, reflect and debate on these tough issues rather than shout down those trying to inspire it.

(Edited by author 3 days ago)

To which I would just counter with . That if its just intended for debate its really not that clever. As most people mores would be against such an step. And you will not get any group to change their minds. But yeah that was probably the intention of their article as medical ethicist.

 

[DeletedUser]

You would be shocked of how many people are incapable of thinking rationally.....

 

[DeletedUser]

This is defiantly an instance where the slippery slope proves true. This is a medical ethics journal not just some debate column. It was just a matter of time before logical conclusions based on faults pretenses arrived at this destination. “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.” So saying the fetus had no moral grounds to the right to life, is the moral launching grounds to make the same conclusions about babies, what a surprise .

Still it is argued that slippery slope is a fallacy...

The next argument will be well if babies have no right to life that means anyone who is not an adult has no legal right to life. Its really scary how debauched the world is getting. These so called medical experts amount to nothing more than shock jocks; however there are plenty of morally debased people that follow and support these shock jocks and before you know it society is desenced enough that it becomes the norm.

 

[DeletedUser]

Ethicists are essentially social philosophers. They pose thoughts, sometimes ill-informed, on various contentious issues, arguing from the sidelines and often from extremes. These particular ethicists argued, in my opinion, from an ill-informed base, in that they assume the existing abortion limitations are arbitrary. In many countries and regions, that is true, but not so in most. Their assumption is incorrect. From a medical standpoint, abortion cut-offs are based on sound biological evidence. As such, with an invalid premise, they came to an invalid conclusion.

Oh, and Willy, a slippery slope IS a fallacy. Do not confuse correct or incorrect, right or wrong, with valid or invalid. Fallacy = false logic.

 

[DeletedUser30834]

Sigh

A slippery slope is not a fallacy when it is the reality. The argument that Y will happen if X happens can be a fallacy if it is not demonstrated that X will be or has already been the result of Y.

The basis behind a slippery slope fallacy is that a small step in one direction will lead to abstract results that are not supported by the step in and of itself. This is a valid logical fallacy. Saying that something it a slippery slope come true removes the fallacy. A fallacy is usually an improper argumentation in reasoninghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasoning resulting in a misconception or presumption. When you remove the misconception or presumption because it is demonstrated as true, it is only a statement of fact.

Using the term slippery slope is not always shorthand for a slippery slope fallacy nor is it always intended to be used in connection with a fallacy. Certainly, nothing in the definition or explanation of a slippery slope fallacy limits the term "slippery slope" to only that of a slippery sole fallacy.

 

[DeletedUser16008]

 

[DeletedUser]

Yes Sumdumass, a slippery slope is a fallacy if there is no demonstrated causal connection, which unfortunately is just about every application of a slippery slope within a debate, at least in these forums. In my haste to rebut Willy, and his efforts to defend/justify his previous slippery slope fallacy presentations, I stand corrected.

 

[DeletedUser]

Yes Sumdumass, a slippery slope is a fallacy if there is no demonstrated causal connection, which unfortunately is just about every application of a slippery slope within a debate, at least in these forums. In my haste to rebut Willy, and his efforts to defend/justify his previous slippery slope fallacy presentations, I stand corrected.

And god forbid you should actually have to supply logic to why or why not the point is actually a fallacy, every one should just believe it because you say so....

 

[DeletedUser]

Care to get back on topic, or would you like me to humiliate you further?

 

[DeletedUser]

Care to get back on topic, or would you like me to humiliate you further?

So you continue your pattern of ignoring the point and insulting the opposition.
This topic is pretty much concluded as currently no one is really for terminating infants unless they live in India and the baby is born a girl.