(In case you imagine this to be purely academic, cf. here)
UD News has recently highlighted a debate on how the academy has reacted to objections to a bioethics paper that advocated “post-birth abortion.” (Cf. a noteworthy objection, here.) Including, “post-birth abortion” of the healthy but undesirable.
A telling clip from the JME paper:
we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk. Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.
Failing to bring a new person into existence cannot be compared with the wrong caused by procuring the death of an existing person. [–> dehumanising the intended victim, always the first step to excusing mass, politically backed murder] The reason is that, unlike the case of death of an existing person, failing to bring a new person into existence does not prevent anyone from accomplishing any of her future aims. However, this consideration entails a much stronger idea than the one according to which severely handicapped children should be euthanised. If the death of a newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practise an after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too, given that she has not formed any aim yet . . .
This is where we have now reached under the impact of the evolutionary materialist worldview, dressed up in the lab coat of “science.” And yes, that is well merited fair comment in light of the obvious implications of say Prof Provine’s notorious Darwin Day 1998 remarks at U Tenn:
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . . The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will . . .
We also need to note how, forty years ago, Schaeffer and Koop presented a mini series on Whatever Happened to the Human Race, that brings out these implications. (I have commented further on this here.)
Let us therefore listen as these distinguished men speak from beyond the grave to us:
[youtube 8uoFkVroRyY]
Chilling. They have warned, in no uncertain terms, concerning the cascade of breakdown of the value of life: abortion on demand –> infanticide –> euthanasia –> mass killing of the undesirables.
FORTY years ago.
They were widely pooh poohed, derided and dismissed as alarmists.
But now, what they warned about is beginning to happen, in some places seems to already be happening.
That should be a wake-up call.
Are we listening? END