“What we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn baby) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.” These words, published in the prestigious “Journal of Medical Ethics” by ethicists Dr Francesca Minerva and Dr Alberto Giubilini, sparked outrage around the world.

After-birth abortion is, of course, a nonsensical euphemism; the term ‘abortion’ means to ‘terminate a pregnancy’, it cannot, by definition, apply post-pregnancy. The authors are talking about infanticide: the killing of infants; in essence, putting human babies down. People were shocked and perplexed that ethicists were advocating this and that a leading medical ethics journal was taking this idea seriously.

The outrage the followed has forced the authors to back-pedal; they have since argued that there conclusion was only theoretical, it was only published for Ethicists to read and they were not engaging in political lobbying. This response is odd. The whole point of Ethics is to answer the question of how we ought to do things. If the author’s conclusion is correct then doctors should perform after-birth abortions; they should kill newborn babies on any ground that currently abortions can be performed on, which, in practice, is almost any ground at all. It is precisely this implication that is widely and correctly condemned as outrageous.

Less widely commented on is the argument the authors gave for this conclusion. Minerva and Giubilini note that “abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the foetus’ health.” Taking this acceptance as given they then advance three key claims. First [1], they argue that an infant, like a foetus, is only a potential person and is not an actual person. Second [2], that potential personhood confers no right to life upon a biological organism. Third [3], that the interests of actual people to not be encumbered with the care or financial burden of raising a child (or even adopting) can be significant enough to justify killing potential persons. These claims are all extremely familiar; in fact, [1], [2] and [3] are simply claims that are already widely accepted in the literature justifying legal abortion, arguments which lead to the legalisation of abortion in the west some forty years ago.

Take [2]; if merely being a potential person confers a right to life on an organism then foetuses have a right to life because they are at least potential persons. Defenders of abortion deny that feticide is killing an actual person; hence they accept [2].

Similarly [3] is accepted, at least implicitly, in New Zealand. Current practice allows people to destroy potential persons for a wide variety of reasons, including the burdens of care associated with child rearing and economic grounds. If one accepts this current practice then potential persons can be destroyed for the sake of relieving all manner of unpleasant economic and social burdens. There is minimal outrage over this; those who express it are generally dismissed as extremist nutters, so [2] and [3] appear to be conventionally accepted as mainstream liberal thinking.

In the same way, whilst it may not be widely known, [1] has been implicitly accepted in pro-abortion literature for the last 40 years. The reason is this: a foetus is clearly and unequivocally a human being. Whilst people sometimes claim that a foetus is merely a clump of cells, this is, at best, only accurate at the earlier embryonic stage of development. By the foetal stage of 6-8 weeks after conception (which is, incidentally, when most pregnancies are confirmed and most abortions occur) one clearly is talking about a living, biological, physiological human animal. To justify abortion defenders of abortion had to argue that whilst a foetus is a human being this fact is insufficient to give it a right to life.

Two reasons lead to this conclusion. Firstly, a widely held position known as secularism contends that religious reasons must be bracketed from discussions of public policy. Hence, one cannot approach the question of abortion presupposing the standard Christian view that human beings have been made in God’s image and as such have been given a special dignity not given to other animals. One can afford human beings such a dignity only if one identifies a non-theological or natural property that human beings possess and which other animals lack that plausibly grounds such a status.

Secondly, once religious beliefs are bracketed then it is very difficult to find any such property. The fact that an animal is of a particular species is, of itself, no more relevant than the fact that someone is of a particular race. The only properties that seem remotely relevant are that mature humans typically possess higher psychological functions that other animals lack such as: sentience, self-consciousness, rationality, ability to use language, autonomy and so on. These functions are relevant because an animal with these properties can be aware of its future existence and value it, judge it valuable, and desire its preservation. In the literature, these psychological properties are referred to as ‘personhood’. Even if there is no God to confer value or dignity on human beings, persons can still have lives that are valuable to themselves.

To defend abortion rights, a distinction was drawn between being a human being and a person. Whilst foetuses are actual human beings they are not actually persons as the psychology of a foetus is extremely primitive. Foetuses do not appear to be conscious at all until around 28 weeks, and even then the consciousness is primitive. Most mature non-human animals are far more developed psychologically than a human foetus, and even though the foetus has some minimal consciousness, it certainly is not yet self-aware or rational or so on. Hence, foetuses are only potential persons, and according to [2], have no right to life.

There are several problems with this argument. First, it implies that only those who value their life and desire its preservation have a right to life. This is subject to some obvious counter examples. Consider the [Read more →]

Tags:   Abortion · Alberto Giubilini · Contra Mundum · Ethics · Francesca Minerva · Infanticide · Investigate Magazine · Joel Feinberg4 Comments