Ethicists Argue for Acceptance of 'After-Birth Abortions'


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how can it still be considered abortion after the baby is born

doesn't abortion basically mean abort the pregnancy?

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Incredibly tricky subject, that said, as far as I am concerned, taking a life (human) of any description is tantamount to murder. Something like this treads on a very thin line and while I can see merits in the argument it's just too close to the bone!

Tricky? What's tricky about it? Life begins when the the sperm hits the egg and you have complete DNA in a self-replicating package attached to the womb.

How is it abortion can be legal yet people can also be charged for causing an aborted fetus, or multiple counts of homicide if a pregnant woman is killed?

This world has lost track of what is right. Ethics are no longer based on anything solid.

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It is a hard distinction to make in a simple way. It is the reason why there are entire university courses that spend the entire semester trying to distinguish between what is ethically correct and what is morally correct.

Many of them start with the question, if given the chance, would it be ethical to go back in time and kill Hitler as a child. One said argues that yes, it would be because it would prevent the Holocaust, saving millions of lives. The other side would argue that it would be unethical because the wars that came from him resulted in advances in technology and medicine that has/will save billions of lives. Ethics are a fun game to play.

In the end we learn there is only pre-defined Ethics, or in more simple terms "because we say so".

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Ethics and morals are different, but they're related to each other; its kind of like saying that fact and truth are different things. Fact and truth are different, but they're related; that something is a fact is either true or not true, and that something is true is either a fact or not a fact. Ethics and morals are two sides of the same coin. And utilitarianism isn't inherent in the definition of ethics; its only one understanding of ethics.

Also the authors talk about what should be allowed legally, and not just the abstracts of the ethics.

I was just using utilitarianism as an example because it was the easiest to explain. While I get what you are saying, it shows why ethics and morals are hard to explain. It is like explaining the different between right/wrong and good/evil. They are related, but they cannot be used interchangably because they are by no means the same thing. That was my original point. Ethically, the point made by this paper is sound. Morally and legally doesn't even play into the point the paper is making.

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Tricky? What's tricky about it? Life begins when the the sperm hits the egg and you have complete DNA in a self-replicating package attached to the womb.

How is it abortion can be legal yet people can also be charged for causing an aborted fetus, or multiple counts of homicide if a pregnant woman is killed?

This world has lost track of what is right. Ethics are no longer based on anything solid.

You do know that both the sperm and the egg are alive cells, right? And both come from self-replicating packages that originally contained complete DNA.

Using your logic, masturbation is a genocide.

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Firstly I'd like to know how on earth they got a job as an ethicist. :|

Secondly I honestly have no idea how on earth they came to this conclusion. It sounds like they tried to think deeply into something, got lazy and came to a conclusion that would 'shock'. For instance an ethical religous viewpoint would straight away shoot this conclusion down (on the basis of pro-life) and even from a humanists ethical viewpoint, again it would be shut down instantly.

I'm a humanist and think this a ****ing awful idea.

Perhaps you should try and understand the arguments behind utilitarianism rather than just dismissing the idea. You don't have to agree with them but at least you wouldn't dismiss them so casually. Suggesting that they came to their conclusions out of laziness is a pretty ignorant thing to say given the fact that you even admit that you don't understand the philosophy behind their arguments.

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So now even babies are not "persons" -- Unbelievable. I think a woman has a right to chose but once the child is out, it's a part of this world and undeniably a living, breathing, Human. If anybody needs aborting, it's these two "scientists" here in the article.

What next, shall we "abort" jews and homesexuals?....oh nevermind, Hitler did that.

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You know what I thought when I first read it? Just my initial impression? The female involved here had an abortion at some point in her life, and is being driven crazy with the guilt, to the point where she's rationalising farther and farther away from reality to try and make it "OK". A lot of people struggle with their decision after the fact, sometimes for the rest of their lives. It struck me as a conclusion by someone kind of desperate and crazy.

Well that would explain a lot. :p

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So now even babies are not "persons" -- Unbelievable. I think a woman has a right to chose but once the child is out, it's a part of this world and undeniably a living, breathing, Human. If anybody needs aborting, it's these two "scientists" here in the article.

What next, shall we "abort" jews and homesexuals?....oh nevermind, Hitler did that.

This is about theoritical ethics and nothing else. Don't attach morality to it. If you truly think the authors should be aborted, it shows your lack of understanding of what is being said. Educate yourself on ethics and its purpose and then judge them and what they do.

In the end we learn there is only pre-defined Ethics, or in more simple terms "because we say so".

If you live by "because we say so" or rather "someone said so", it means you are incapable of figuring out what is right or wrong yourself or just unwilling to. For instance, I never go over the speed limit, including the 4 miles over that is generally safe in the USA without the risk of getting pulled over. Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn't make it right. This is not meant as an insult, but anyone that lives by "someone said so" is by definition ethically immature. Some people can't and others simply choose not to. If they did, they would have to follow the speed limit in order to consider themselves ethical at all(obviously depending on which form of ethics they subscribe to).

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Ethically, the point made by this paper is sound.
How? It's, at best, sound logically but based on erroneous premises. I wonder if you're not just mixing up logic and ethics and I'd like you to clarify this point if you may.
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I take the classic abortion as an ok method of doing it. Having a baby with downs or other extremely crippling mental disorder is extremely frustraiting for the parents and puts an awful amount of strain of a relationship.

No you can't obviously kill a child once it's born but you can improve the methods of dection.

What annoys me most is parents that know they have a genetic disposition towards having mentally or extremely phsysically handicapped child and go through the process anyway. I know it's almost impossible to stop and I guess every parent has a right to their own views but I think its selfish. There are perfectly acceptable other ways of having children to either minimise the risk or adopt.

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How? It's, at best, sound logically but based on erroneous premises. I wonder if you're not just mixing up logic and ethics and I'd like you to clarify this point if you may.

The only premise it makes is that you have to accept what we currently call legal abortion as ethical. If you consider that ethical, all of the same things that make that ethical apply to an after birth abortion. That is the entire point of the paper. It means that if you don't accept prebirth abortion ethical, after birth abortion is also unethical. I personally think prebirth abortion is also unethical which means that according to this paper, I would also have to accept that after birth abortion is ethical. Otherwise, I am not a person that you could call ethical.

Also, part of ethics is about being able to use logic to explain why a given action is or isn't right or wrong, so yea, it is logically sound. That's the idea behind ethics. Being able to logically explain if an action is the right choice or not instead of simply saying, "because that is what I was told/taught"

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For the record: the American Medical Association has advocated a ban on late term abortion since 1997, calling it "bad medicine" and because of the high viability of the fetus at that stage. A newborn is obviously even more so.

This is nothing more than an attempt to legalize the murder of the inconcenient - something that could morph into very dark places. Do we really want to go where just because a person is inconvenient; handicapped, infirm etc, someone can just decide to have them killed? Where is the dividing line? That's the slippery slope this could bring on.

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The only premise it makes is that you have to accept what we currently call legal abortion as ethical. If you consider that ethical, all of the same things that make that ethical apply to an after birth abortion. That is the entire point of the paper. It means that if you don't accept prebirth abortion ethical, after birth abortion is also unethical. I personally think prebirth abortion is also unethical which means that according to this paper, I would also have to accept that after birth abortion is ethical. Otherwise, I am not a person that you could call ethical.

Also, part of ethics is about being able to use logic to explain why a given action is or isn't right or wrong, so yea, it is logically sound. That's the idea behind ethics. Being able to logically explain if an action is the right choice or not instead of simply saying, "because that is what I was told/taught"

I'd bicker about words more but I don't really feel like it, as I generally agree with the crux of what you're saying. I just wouldn't say their argument is ethically sound in any way since it based on an unethical premise; it's at best logical, but certainly not ethical. Sound logic from unethical premises does not ethical make. Derp. :)

Also, they actually attempt to demonstrate that the fetus has no right to live. They don't just say "if the fetus is not a person", they actually say "the fetus is not a person because of x y and z, and the newborn for the same reasons, hence ...".

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The only premise it makes is that you have to accept what we currently call legal abortion as ethical. If you consider that ethical, all of the same things that make that ethical apply to an after birth abortion. That is the entire point of the paper. It means that if you don't accept prebirth abortion ethical, after birth abortion is also unethical. I personally think prebirth abortion is also unethical which means that according to this paper, I would also have to accept that after birth abortion is ethical. Otherwise, I am not a person that you could call ethical.

I don't agree with your assumptions at all and I don't think you would if you didn't already object to abortion.

There are additional considerations such as the emotional effect that nine months of bonding and a delivery will have on the mother (and to a lesser extent the father) that need to be considered and any discussion of ethics would take these into account. There's a world of difference between aborting a foetus at 12 weeks after a positive downs syndrome test and aborting a baby that's been successfully delivered.

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I don't agree with your assumptions at all and I don't think you would if you didn't already object to abortion.

There are additional considerations such as the emotional effect that nine months of bonding and a delivery will have on the mother (and to a lesser extent the father) that need to be considered and any discussion of ethics would take these into account. There's a world of difference between aborting a foetus at 12 weeks after a positive downs syndrome test and aborting a baby that's been successfully delivered.

They do take the emotional effect into account. Read the paper.

Also, they actually attempt to demonstrate that the fetus has no right to live. They don't just say "if the fetus is not a person", they actually say "the fetus is not a person because of x y and z, and the newborn for the same reasons, hence ...".

That's one of the fun thing about ethics though. They list all the reasons why a fetus isn't a person, which are the reasons(excuses IMO) given today that make it legal to have an abortion, and they all still apply to the newborn. Society has deemed abortions ethical. Whether they are or not isn't up for argument by this paper. It just states that if abortions are ethical, so is killing the newborn. The conclusion says it in a way that makes sense. They aren't even saying their conclusion is correct, they are saying if all of the premises are correct, then the conclusion is correct. The problem is, if you disprove any of the premises, you now are also saying that those premises are no longer ethical reasons to abortion a fetus.

"If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn."

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You do know that both the sperm and the egg are alive cells, right? And both come from self-replicating packages that originally contained complete DNA.

Using your logic, masturbation is a genocide.

That would only be a part of the whole person being talked about at that point.

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