Oxford University ethicists: Parents should be allowed to kill newborns

Photo: Happy and alert Lilly, a few hours after being born. July 4, 2010.

A group of medical ethicists from Oxford now say killing babies is no different from abortion. (Link to U.K. newspaper article here.) That statement is actually very intriguing - if it is no different - then does it mean they would consider abortion wrong? No. "Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are 'morally irrelevant.'" They argue that newborns are not “actual persons” but “potential persons”. They said: “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’."

They continued: “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.” They believe it is “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense.” The ethicists, who published their "findings" in the Journal of Medical Ethics concluded: “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.”

The ethicists' conclusions are probably shocking to many. But I imagine that sadly, they will eventually be accepted and this country - and others - will follow suit. I believe it will then lead to killing a lot more people than just newborns. What about a toddler or a teenager or an adult that becomes severally disabled through an accident? They won't be valuable anymore. What about someone injured in an accident that can no longer use their arms and legs? Their brain might work the same, but wow, it would cost a lot to constantly care for them. What about someone, who is physically just fine, but has a really low IQ? Or someone that has an extreme mental disorder? What about someone that has repeatedly committed horrible crimes and has finally been sent to prison for life? These people aren't necessarily worth any more than a newborn that no one truly knows the potential of.

My point is, when would the acceptable murdering of "morally irrelevant" people stop? And who exactly will be given the power to judge everyone and determine whether they should live or die? There are countless dangers in this. But, as people seem content to give up more and more personal freedoms to the government, and move away from believing in morality, there will be no stopping this kind of thing.

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." - Isaiah 5:20