Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva have published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics with the title After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? They argue that newborn babies are not persons and therefore do not have a right to life. I suppose this is consistent in a ghastly way. If a baby in the womb is deemed to be unworthy of life, there seems no logical reason to say that newborn babies have a right to life.
Perhaps we will now have an ecclesiastical statement saying that we recognise the reality of legal abortion and see no prospect of repealing the Abortion Act, but that we oppose this new development. That seems to be the approach taken to the progression from civil partnerships to gay marriage.
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The authors distinguish between "actual human and non-human persons". They define a person as "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. This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons."
My dictionary defines a person as an "Individual human being."
Do you recall the TV series The Prisoner: "I am not a number, I am a free man."
I could not finish the article. I was reminded of the Nazi distinction between man and unter menschen.
If you're interested in the more technical aspects of what these folks say and why they're wrong in saying newborns should be killed (something I am sure the readers of this blog are pretty keen on rejecting), you can look at my in-depth discussion of these Italian professors' arguments: http://contemplans.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/killing-pretend-people-in-the-journal-of-medical-ethics/
If the statements coming out of the hierarchy were really, 'We regret civil partnerships, can't politically do anything about them just now, but here's why nevertheless same sex 'marriage' is wrong,' I would be supportive of that position. The real problem to me seems that at least some statements seem to suggest, 'Well, we really quite like civil partnerships -but we still don't like same sex 'marriage'.' There's nothing particularly wrong in recognizing political realities; but there is something wrong in endorsing them morally.
I didn't hear any condemnation by our bishops of the giving of injectable contraceptive implants 13 year olds.
Not only does there seem to be no absolute morality applied, but all the talk about safeguarding of children appears a cosmetic process.
The 'rights' of a mother to abort and the supposed 'rights' of a young person to sexual activity is a convenient position which takes no longterm interest in the physical, psychological or spiritual welfare of the individuals.
It's a fascinating development. The atheist/leftist/progressive axis have come clean at last.(Edward Feser recently pointed out Alex Rosenburg admitting that there is no such thing as atheist 'morality' -anything goes is the logical conclusion of the abandonment of God and traditional natural law)
We know where we stand and the logical conclusion is the death camps which we always knew, but ounded shrill in saying.
We should thank Almighty God for this development. People now know where they stand and can choose God or Moloch.
The game is afoot!
Solemn high mass on the bbc!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xDXQv-IyQA
Everyone active in the pro-life movement knows that infanticide has been going on for decades, and for exactly the reason now openly given: between late pregnancy and the neonatal stage, the child has merely changed address.
The same is true of sex-selective abortion (and infanticide), perfectly legal if a note can be produced saying that having a child of the "wrong" sex would drive the mother round the bend, or would lay her open to physical punishment by her husband or another relative, a claim for which nothing so vulgar as evidence is expected to be produced, any more than anything so vulgar as evidence was expected to be produced by the pioneers of the anti-natal movement when they made, as their successors still make, outlandish claims about the drunkenness and violence of working-class men.
And the same is true of race-selective abortion (and infanticide), perfectly legal if a note can be produced saying that having a child of the "wrong" colour or ethnic, such as caste, background would drive the mother round the bend, or would lay her open to physical punishment by her father or another relative, a claim for which nothing so vulgar as evidence is expected to be produced, any more than anything so vulgar as evidence was expected to be produced by the pioneers of the anti-natal movement when they made, as their successors still make, outlandish claims about the drunkenness and violence of working-class men.
First sex selection has been exposed after all these years. Now infanticide has been, too. With any luck, if that is the right way of putting it, ethnic selection will be next. Better late than never, I suppose. But, in all three cases, very, very, very late indeed.
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