Medical ethicists: newborns are not actual people, can be killed ethically

[mtnbkr]

mtnbkr:

This one was pretty easy to find:
OH, here's anohter one:

If you read the entire chapter (Titled "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families"), you'll see she's comparing that with the fate of those same children when being raised by poor families who breed like rabbits, forcing the children to vie for already limited resources.  She isn't advocating infanticide, but simply pointing out the cruelty of having yet more children you can't adequately provide for.  That correlates to what I quoted above where she advocates for birth control and considers abortion and infanticide barbaric.

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.

later in the same chapter, following a chart showing the increase in childhood death as families grow...

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.

Anyway, she does not actually advocate for killing children in that chapter, nor have I seen reliable evidence she does elsewhere.  What she was saying, in a "modest proposal" manner of speaking, is that families bearing large numbers of children beyond their ability to provide for them was as cruel as killing those children outright at birth.

Chris

[MicroBalrog]

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".

As a matter of fact, all morality hinges on some kind of axioms taken up by people irrationally.

"Murder is bad".

[Why is it bad? "Because God does not wish us to murder", "because people have a right to life", any of these are irrationally-chosen assumptions upon which a moral system is based. But something irrational does not make it automatically wrong or stupid. Something can be irrational and quite useful.]

[Perd Hapley]

So is "conception".

So choosing the moment at which a new organism comes into being - that is irrational?

[roo_ster]

Hey, look what a good five minutes' digging turns over:

[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.

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

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.

 

She was a wonderful gal.  But, donr worry, she's only talking abour 15-20 million folks in the USA (1919 population).

[MicroBalrog]

So choosing the moment at which a new organism comes into being - that is irrational?

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.

[Monkeyleg]

He believed it was OK for a parent to choose to terminate the child up until the child had a personality.

I didn't have much of a personality until my late teens.

[zahc]

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?

[red headed stranger]

<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?

They used to be terms used in the nomenclature of mental retardation:

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQBasics.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_retardation#History_of_the_terminology

[Perd Hapley]

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.

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

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.

http://www.embryo.chronolab.com/fertilization.htm

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.

[MicroBalrog]

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 ehics.

[Balog]

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.

[Perd Hapley]

'Can be considered'.

Science isn't ethics.

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.

[agricola]

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.

So thats guns, drugs and abortion then.

[mtnbkr]

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).

No doubt she had some rather repulsive ideas involving eugenics, but that wasn't my point.  My specific point was that this idea she supported infanticide (IE killing children after being born) was not supported by her statements.  Every attributable statement on infanticide I've seen was her commenting on the fate of children born to families unable to care for their children (either their fate was practically infanticide or that infanticide might be more merciful than a slow death from malnutrition or abuse) or discussing the historical record on infanticide.  You also have to remember that when she was writing this poor people lived in levels of squalor we can't imagine (large, extended families living in single room apartments with toilet facilities were the basement.  Not IN the basement, but the basement itself, replete with raw sewage on the dirt floor).

Most of what I've read regarding Sanger and infanticide seems to revolve around her view there is a progression from the infanticide of ancient peoples to modern methods of birth control.  I haven't seen one article or statement from her where she advocates infanticide.  She doesn't even seem particularly fond of abortion.

"that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide"

and

"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"

Chris

[Ron]

"newborns are not actual people, can be killed ethically"

Well duh

If humans are nothing more than bio/chem/machines and morality/ethics are nothing more than social constructs then why not get rid of newborn humans if nobody wants them? Recycle them into dog food or something useful.

This whole concept of liberty or rights is nothing more than another social construct open to change or modification as we continue to evolve and progress.

This whole linking of sex with the medieval concept of family is holding us back from our true potential.

How could the byproduct of chance + time + matter + energy have any real purpose?

Embrace the purposelessness and meaninglessness of your existence and satiate your appetites.

If something or someone gets in the way of you fulfilling your desires or your self actualization dispose of it or them. That is the purpose of government, to help us feed our appetites!   

[longeyes]

This isn't about science, it's about psychopathology cloistered in academia.

[seeker_two]

This isn't about science, it's about psychopathology cloistered in academia.

QFT.....

[BridgeRunner]

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. 

[gunsmith]

Huh.  Pretty sure my parents wanted to kill me only after I developed a personality. 

  me too

[MillCreek]

Huh.  Pretty sure my parents wanted to kill me only after I developed a personality. 

Which generally happens at around 13 for girls and 15 for boys.

[De Selby]

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 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.

[Monkeyleg]

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?

[MicroBalrog]

Is there any point less arbitrary than conception in defining when life begins?

No. Which was my point.

[CNYCacher]

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.

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.

[De Selby]

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.