“Post-Birth Abortion”. . . Seriously

Let’s talk about a shocker from the British Medical Journal. In a recent BMJ edition, Oxford University’s Francesca Minerva, a medical ethicist, and Alberto Giubilini, a bioethicist from the U. of Milan, argue in favor of “post-birth abortion.” Specifically, they advocate a right to kill newborn babies if they are disabled, unwanted, or if they would be too expensive for the family. Yes, you read that right.

Here is their argument:

1. Like an unborn child, a newborn has yet “to develop hopes, goals and dreams.” Thus, while the newborn is human, it is not yet “a person – someone with a moral right to life.”

2. In the case of disabled children. . . while the child may be happy, it will not reach the full potential of a normal child: “To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole. . . On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion.” In other words, if you aren’t perfect, your don’t have a right to live.

3. Parents, siblings and society have goals that could be affected by the arrival of the child, and those goals should take precedence over the child’s rights. Therefore, “post-birth abortion” is justified if the mother “no longer has the time, money or energy to care for” the child.

Wow, chilling.

The abortion movement has always hidden behind the idea that fetuses aren’t “alive.” Ergo, aborting a fetus is not like killing a child and abortion is no big deal. This argument has worked to the extent we have been unable to define when life begins. That’s why many people are indifferent to early-term abortions, but oppose late-term abortions because the more the fetus looks like a human the more likely it is to be alive. That’s also why partial-birth abortion was such a disaster for feminists because no one could help but grasp that this was a child being killed.

But now Minerva and Giubilini lay bare the real thinking behind the pro-abortion position. They don’t care if the child is alive or not. All that matters to them is the economic progress of the mother.

Moreover, the mental gymnastics Minerva goes through are stunning. First, she redefines life to have value only if a person has “hopes, goals and dreams.” But that’s not really her test because babies have hopes, goals and dreams, as does my dog. What she’s really saying is life only has value when people have “hopes, goals and dreams” which she considers worthwhile. That is a justification for mass murder of undesirables.

And while she limits this to newborns to make her theory seems less dangerous to readers, the fact is her logic does not account for an age limit. Indeed, what difference does it make using her test if someone is 6 weeks, 6 years, or 6 decades old? If they don’t have the right “dreams”/goals to be considered human, then logically there is no reason they couldn’t be exterminated using her same justification. The sick, the infirm, those on welfare or without useful skills, or even old people who are beyond trying to achieve their goals could all be exterminated using her logic.

She also really twists herself to dismiss adoption as an alternative. Indeed, if the mother doesn’t want the child, why not just give it up for adoption? Well, Minerva says we can’t do that because adoption could cause undue psychological distress to the mother. Think about that. There is no psychological distress with killing your child, but there would be psychological distress in letting someone else have it. How sick is that?!

What she’s really worried about is that unless the doctor exterminates the child, the mother might want to keep it, and that would expose the atrocity of her theory once the mothers realized that these newborn things actually turn into people that matter.

Not surprisingly, our Hitlerian genius Minerva was shocked at the negative reaction, which included death threats. Boo hoo. She claims that her argument has been “taken out of its academic and theoretical context” and that she’s not advocating this policy. But the fact is, she is advocating this by issuing a paper in which she claims this is an ethically/ philosophically correct position. Whether she likes the backlash or not, she has tried to justify infanticide and she even provided the euphemism: “post-birth abortion” (as if you could abort something that has already happened).

Remember this the next time some abortion advocate tells you they only support abortion because “it’s not alive.”