Abstract
Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that 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.
Gee, this won't turn political.No kidding - Godwin's law rears it's head early.....
;/
No kidding - Godwin's law rears it's head early.....HEY! I didn't actually mention any names. [tinfoil] [popcorn]
Der viert Reich hat begonnen!!!
. . . the authors argue that 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.
He said, "my red hat is missing!" See, no mention of politics at all.:facepalm: You obviously don't speak Naziish.
Give them credit for brutal candor. Clarity is best.
And with recycling all the rage . . . Solyent Green, anyone?
Remember how all us pro-life folks have been saying cultural acceptance of abortion will lead to euthanasia and infanticide?
Hawkmoon: what is the difference between a child still in the womb, and one who was delivered 5 seconds ago? As Mike Irwin has pointed out very well here before, birth is an entirely arbitrary line used because it is clear and convenient.
Margret Sangar, founder of planned parenthood said infanticide was as important a choice as abortion in the book "Women And The New Race" - btw this new pure race she had planned for America didn't include people like Obama.
But during all the long years this matter has been discussed, advocated, refuted, the people themselves—poor people especially—were blindly, desperately practicing family limitation, just as they are practicing it today. To them birth control does not mean what it does to us. To them it has meant the most barbaric methods. It has meant the killing of babies—infanticide,—abortions,—in one crude way or another.
My Fight for Birth Control, 1931, page 133.
You frequently claim this of her, but I'm skeptical because I can't find any reputable sources attributing that to her. I did find cites where she said infanticide was used by the poorer classes because they didn't have other means of birth control available to them. Her quote referred to the practice (of infanticide) as barbaric:
Just a few minutes googling tells me she was more interested in the prevention of pregnancy via contraception than abortion or infanticide.
Chris
Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the
immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of
proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find
difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most
merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members
is to kill it.
No matter how much they desire children, no man and woman
have a right to bring into the world those who are to suffer from
mental or physical affliction.
If an infant is not a person at birth, is it a person at three months old?....six months old?....a year old?.....ten years old?.....
Once you start pushing the line, it gets easier to push it farther....
Which is why pro-life people should really send messages of thanks to Giubilini and Minerva for coming up with (admittedly accidentally) one of the greatest pro-life arguments of recent times.
Which is why pro-life people should really send messages of thanks to Giubilini and Minerva for coming up with (admittedly accidentally) one of the greatest pro-life arguments of recent times.
mtnbkr:
This one was pretty easy to find:
OH, here's anohter one:
The immorality of large families lies not only in their injury to the members of those families but in their injury to society...Labor is oppressed because it is too plentiful; wages go up and conditions improve when labor is scarce. Large families make plentiful labor and they also provide the workers for the child-labor factories as well as the armies of unemployed...The large family—especially the family too large to receive adequate care—is the one thing necessary to the perpetuation of these and other evils and is therefore a greater evil than any one of them.
The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members. Moreover, the overcrowded homes of large families reared in poverty further contribute to this condition. Lack of medical attention is still another factor, so that the child who must struggle for health in competition with other members of a closely packed family has still great difficulties to meet after its poor constitution and malnutrition have been accounted for.
As Mike Irwin has pointed out very well here before, birth is an entirely arbitrary line used because it is clear and convenient.
So is "conception".
[We propose to] hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.
Commenting on the 'Negro Project' in a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, December 10, 1939. - Sanger manuscripts, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
First, put into action President Wilson's fourteen points, upon which terms Germany and Austria surrendered to the Allies in 1918.
Second, have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems and appoint a Parliament of Population, the directors representing the various branches of science: this body to direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration, and to direct its distribution over the country according to national needs consistent with taste, fitness and interest of the individuals.
The main objects of the Population Congress would be:
a. To raise the level and increase the general intelligence of population.
b. to increase the population slowly by keeping the birth rate at its present level of fifteen per thousand, decreasing the death rate below its present mark of 11 per thousand.
c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.
d. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
e. To insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feebleminded parents by pensioning all persons with trnsmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization.
f. To give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.
g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.
The first step would thus be to control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.
The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.
Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense -- defending the unborn against their own disabilities....
With the future citizen safeguarded from hereditary taints, with five million mental and moral degenerates segregated, with ten million women and ten million children receiving adequate care, we could then turn our attention to the basic needs for international peace....
In the meantime we should organize and join an International League of Low Birth Rate Nations to secure and maintain World Peace.
So choosing the moment at which a new organism comes into being - that is irrational?
He believed it was OK for a parent to choose to terminate the child up until the child had a personality.
idiots, morons
<spock eyebrow>
Fascinating. Does anyone know the contemporary sense of these words? To me they are nearly synonymous, but then, 'gay' used to mean happy and 'dumb' used to mean 'mute'. Anyone know the sense in which she was using these terms?
You define the moment two cells meet as "the moment a new organism comes into being". I define it as a certain stage in late pregnancy when the foetus becomes a baby (no, I do not off-hand remember when that stage is), and pro-choice advocates define it as "birth". The definition is not a natural thing, someone needs to define it.
The first week of human development begins with fertilization of the egg by sperm forming the zygote, followed by early cell division forming the blastocyst.
The first two weeks of the human development are called the preembryonic period. This period begins with the fertilization. Fertilization is the beginning of the pregnancy and can be considered as the beginning of a new life.
Disagree with science much? Sorry, it's not me defining anything. The facts are what they are.
http://php.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php?title=Week_1
http://www.embryo.chronolab.com/fertilization.htm
'Can be considered'.
Science isn't ethics.
Sanger started Planned Parenthood as a way to stop black people from reproducing as much as possible. She was a master race eugenicist.
Like the fact that much gun control started as Jim Crow laws, it's not a popular fact but it is easily provable.
Hey, look what a good five minutes' digging turns over:
Also, I'd suggest reading some bits of her books on Gutenberg. She may be "against" infanticide, but she sure does write about it a whole lot and in a sympathetic manner.
She even self-Godwins at times.
CHeck out her article "A Plan for Peace" in her magazine:
http://library.lifedynamics.com/Birth%20Control%20Review/1932-04%20April.pdf
She was a wonderful gal. But, donr worry, she's only talking abour 15-20 million folks in the USA (1919 population).
"that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide"
"While there are cases where even the law recognizes abortion as justifiable when recommended by a physician," she writes, "I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization"
This isn't about science, it's about psychopathology cloistered in academia.
He believed it was OK for a parent to choose to terminate the child up until the child had a personality.
Huh. Pretty sure my parents wanted to kill me only after I developed a personality. :lol:
Huh. Pretty sure my parents wanted to kill me only after I developed a personality. :lol:
Didn't say it was. Saying that a new organism comes into being at conception is not an opinion or an ethical claim. It is what the study of embryology has taught us. That is why conception is a clear line in a way that birth or any other point in gestation is not. It's the difference between choosing a stage in its development in which the new individual may be killed, versus simply not letting it be killed at any point.
Edit: Obviously, there are cases where society approves the killing of human beings, in defense of another human's life. It is important to note that killing in defense of others is always subject to oversight. You can kill another adult, but the authorities will have to determine whether you were within your rights (i.e, self defense). Luckily, the propriety of an abortion (whether it was necessary to save the life of the mother) can be determined ahead of time. We don't need to leave a child's life or death up to the judgment of one person.
All sciences use arbitrary definitions to assist in study - they are not less arbitrary because a scientist came up with them.
Is there any point less arbitrary than conception in defining when life begins?
All you did there was repeat the definition - "how do we define what's a new organism?". "why, it's new at conception.". What does conception mean? "why, that's when you have a new organism".
All sciences use arbitrary definitions to assist in study - they are not less arbitrary because a scientist came up with them.
Cny, think about this for a second - why is there no debate possible! That would be because you defined "new organism" the way you did. You're mistaking a tautology for a proof.
Conception is the point at which half of the dna from the father bonds with half the dna from the mother. There is no debate possible about whether or not this is the point at which a new organism is created. If you want to debate about the morality of killing this organism based on where it is in its journey to eventually becoming an adult person of value, then go right ahead, but to attempt to prop up your debate by disagreeing that a new organism is created at conception just exposes your ignorance.
What is man?