Ethicists favor infanticide

[Grames]

The academic journal Journal of Medical Ethics has published an paper entitled "After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?"

Abstract

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

The full text is available here.

What is interesting here is "(1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons". They begin their case by defining terms:

The newborn and the fetus are morally equivalent

The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her. This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.

This "attributing" action refers to having aims. The mistake here is that all life has aims even vegetation and single celled microbes. The criterion for rights to be applicable and to recognize a person is the possession of a rational faculty, not to actually be reasonable.

Their understanding of rights is flawed. They write: "a necessary condition for a subject to have a right to X is that she is harmed by a decision to deprive her of X." Mere harm is not essential, else everyone not yet a millionaire can claim a rights violation. Rights are freedoms to act, not freedoms from harm.

The authors then move on to considering that a fetus and a newborn are both potential persons and whether rights can apply to a potential. Although their classification of a newborns among the potential rather than the actual is fatally flawed the argument against rights for potentials is correct to a point.

A consequence of this position is that the interests of actual people over-ride the interest of merely potential people to become actual ones. This does not mean that the interests of actual people always over-ride any right of future generations, as we should certainly consider the well-being of people who will inhabit the planet in the future. Our focus is on the right to become a particular person, and not on the right to have a good life once someone will have started to be a person. In other words, we are talking about particular individuals who might or might not become particular persons depending on our choice, and not about those who will certainly exist in the future but whose identity does not depend on what we choose now.

They attempt to confine their argument against potentials by restricting it to considering particular individuals, apparently not wishing to sabotage the case for attributing rights to collectives of persons in the future, rights which people in the present are duty bound to honor. The failure here is to recognize that rights apply to individuals and not collectives either in the present or the future. Apparently they wish to avoid undermining the case for enviromentalism, but the logic of their position implies no rights of future collectives can override the rights of present collectives. This delicate sidestepping is itself unethical and even intellectually dishonest as they are plainly aware of the issue.

The paper introduced the possibility of terminating infants after birth by invoking the context of hopelessly disabled infants that could be described as existing in a state of suffering. In the last section of the paper they consider generalizing the applicability of "after-birth abortion" to healthy newborns, so that a mother can avoid the psychological distress and uncertainty of giving the infant up for adoption. Based on the premise that mothers are people and infants are not they conclude infanticide (my term) of healthy newborns "should be considered a permissible option for women who would be damaged by giving up their newborns for adoption."

Small errors in handling abstractions within philosophy can lead to advocating atrocities.

The anti-abortion 'personhood begins at conception' movement will be galvanized by this article and will claim their "slippery slope" argument for banning abortion totally to be validated.

The editor of the Journal defended the article and his decision to publish it on the Journal's blog on the basis that:

... The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris in defence of infanticide, which the authors call after-birth abortion.

He does not find infanticide disturbing but does find disturbing the vitriolic response against the author, his Journal and him.

A source for other links about the controversy is an article at The Blaze

[Steve D'Ippolito]

Their understanding of rights is flawed. They write: "a necessary condition for a subject to have a right to X is that she is harmed by a decision to deprive her of X." Mere harm is not essential, else everyone not yet a millionaire can claim a rights violation. Rights are freedoms to act, not freedoms from harm.

Although I agree with the thrust of your criticism, something is wrong here.

You quote their claim that condition H is a "necessary condition to have a right to X." You then argue against their claim but construing it as if they had said it was a sufficient condition.

They are claiming condition H plus possibly others, but definitely condition H (that's what is meant by necessary); your counterexample proceeds as if they claimed that condition H alone was enough to claim a right.

[Grames]

Correct, good catch. The point remains that "harms" can encompass deprivations of man-made goods and services or natural disasters, and in this paper it encompasses the effort and expense of raising an infant to adulthood. edit: The point being that it is the wrong necessary condition.

I suspect no combination of additional conditions can filter out the gamut of possible harms to a sensible theory of rights.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Grames

[Nicky]

You can't arrive at an objective definition of rights without first determining what the purpose of your philosophical endeavor is.

Instead, for these people, something called rights seems to have just fallen out of the sky, and now they're scrambling to figure out what it is. What are they trying to achieve, by declaring that infanticide is moral? (rhetorical question: infanticide, clearly - it's unclear why, but it would be easy to speculate)

[Grames]

You can't arrive at an objective definition of rights without first determining what the purpose of your philosophical endeavor is.

Instead, for these people, something called rights seems to have just fallen out of the sky, and now they're scrambling to figure out what it is. What are they trying to achieve, by declaring that infanticide is moral? (rhetorical question: infanticide, clearly - it's unclear why, but it would be easy to speculate)

Utopia, a world without harms?

[Leonid]

Fetus is equal to baby only if it able to exist separately from the mother's body.Right is freedom of action in the social context. Fetus doesn't act. It even doesn't breath.

Edited March 2, 2012 by Leonid

[Craig24]

Ok, this is truly deplorable.

On the flip side, some scientists are saying Dolphins deserve same rights as humans.

[Robin Craig]

I want to throw this out there because I'm interested in comments.

If the thinking mind is the origin of rights, then an infant has no more rights than a foetus.

However unlike a foetus, an infant is partially independent: it breathes for itself, eats for itself, interacts with the world, etc. It is still dependent on others for its survival: but unlike a foetus it is not absolutely dependent on any one person, just "some person", and just some (much) of the time.

To honour its nature, then, you don't have a right to actively kill it. More specifically, if you yourself don't want to look after it, you divest yourself of all interests in the matter, and have no right to stop someone else who does want to look after it.

The rights of the newborn, then, are not the same as the rights of an adult. In a sense it has the same right - the right to be "let alone". While being literally let alone would be fatal to it, that right does mean that it has the right to be looked after by someone else (who is willing).

There may however be circumstances (kinds of severe deformity) where the child has no hope of leading anything but a short miserable life: in which case I think the parents may well have the right to put it out of its misery.

[Craig24]

I want to throw this out there because I'm interested in comments.

If the thinking mind is the origin of rights, then an infant has no more rights than a foetus.

No, you are wrong. Man's identity or his nature is the source of his rights:

The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man

(from Galt's speech)

The nature of a man is that he (or she) possesses a rational faculty (trained or untrained, willing or unwilling to think doesn't matter) and is biologically independent (unlike the unborn).

[Nicky]

No, you are wrong. Man's identity or his nature is the source of his rights:

The nature of a man is that he (or she) possesses a rational faculty (trained or untrained, willing or unwilling to think doesn't matter) and is biologically independent (unlike the unborn).

Yeah, that's what he said. Except that he actually explained all those words you are just reciting without understanding them.

[seidlmatic2000]

Now that Kermit Gosnell is in the news, I though he would be relevant to this topic.  We can all probably agree that the instances when he killed live, moving, breathing, crying newborns were murder.  But I think it's still wrong to abort a fetus for at least some months prior to that as well, especially if they can survive outside.  There cannot be reproductive rights without responsibilities.  To make my position as clear as possible, the abortion issue has been my biggest hurdle to accepting objectivism completely, but I accept about 95% of the rest.  I appreciate Rand's admission that there is moral ambiguity after the first 3 months.  I realize I'll get no agreement on being against abortion from conception here, but isn't that the fullest extension of a right to life?

 

"One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months."

[Leonid]

This article is a typical example of dropping context and inability to distinguish between defining and non-defining characteristics of the fetus and newborn child

[Harrison Danneskjold]

"One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months."

Amen, brother!

I think something critical to the whole thing, that's missing here, is that a fetus CANNOT survive outside of its mother.  When someone claims that a fetus has a "right to life", that right necessarily means a right to its mother's body, labor and life.  (which is at least part of why it's invalid; you can't have any right to someone else's anything)

A newborn baby, while it's still essentially a potential-human, CAN survive without its biological mother.  It still needs someone to feed it and care for it, but that doesn't have to be anyone in particular.  (I think that's part of why Rand drew the line at birth, between the mother's right to decide for herself and the mother's responsibility for her own actions)  So the fact that it can survive without her means it deserves to survive, or something along those lines.

 

"Based on the premise that mothers are people and infants are not they conclude infanticide (my term) of healthy newborns 'should be considered a permissible option for women who would be damaged by giving up their newborns for adoption.'"  WOW.

A woman who wouldn't have any problems with killing her own newborn child, but would be somehow damaged by giving it up for adoption, is a woman who isn't human and doesn't deserve her "reproductive rights".

Forced sterilization should be a prerequisite for such.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Harrison Danneskjold

[Harrison Danneskjold]

It really should be very simple.  If the removal of a fetus from the womb would kill it then that's unfortunate, but permissible.  If you remove someone's fetus and it's still alive and healthy, and killing it actually becomes another, separate task, that's senseless and abominable.

If a fetus survives mutilated and deformed then it should be allowed to commit suicide later in life, if that's what it really wants.  But to judge whether someone else's potential life is really worth their living it is NOT YOUR DECISION.

 

So what we're saying here is that the value of someone else's life is open to a majority vote and, if you think they're miserable enough, feel free to cure them of the Oxygen habit.

That's not a dangerous idea, at all. 

Edited April 28, 2013 by Harrison Danneskjold

[softwareNerd]

Amen, brother!

This Rand quote is sometimes brought up to show that she might have been willing to "draw the line" before birth. However, read in the context of the few paragraphs where it occurs I don't think that would be a fair representation. In the paragraph before, Rand says that people who are anti-abortion have no excuse for their error. She labels them as evil, saying that they are motivated by "pure ill will toward mankind". Only then does the above quote appear. I would paraphrase her point: abortion should be allowed up to birth and people who argue against this are evil; however, those who argue about the second and third trimesters may not have evil motives. In context, doesn't that seem to be a proper interpretation?

 

I think Rand could understand people being turned off by the killing a fetus as it starts to look like a baby, and could understand that people might argue about the second and third trimester on that basis. So, while she disagreed, she would not claim that such people had evil motivations. She reserved that condemnation for those who wanted to protect "an embryo" or "a piece of protoplasm".

 

Edited April 29, 2013 by softwareNerd

[DonAthos]

 

This Rand quote is sometimes brought up to show that she might have been willing to "draw the line" before birth. However, read in the context of the few paragraphs where it occurs I don't think that would be a fair representation. In the paragraph before, Rand says that people who are anti-abortion have no excuse for their error. She labels them as evil, saying that they are motivated by "pure ill will toward mankind". Only then does the above quote appear. I would paraphrase her point: abortion should be allowed up to birth and people who argue against this are evil; however, those who argue about the second and third trimesters may not have evil motives. In context, doesn't that seem to be a proper interpretation?

 

I put the Rand quote in Google to try to examine the context for myself, but all that I was able to find in my (admittedly not very deep) search was the paragraph provided by the Lexicon here:

 

Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.

 

Elsewhere, Rand certainly made the claim that a human being only has rights upon being born, but looking at this quote within this paragraph -- though without the benefit of the preceding passages -- it appears to me that when she says "one may argue," she is referring to the claim that a fetus has rights at some point in the process. (That is, somewhere beyond the first three months, which is "the essential issue.")

I don't know whether this means that Rand would personally have been willing to "draw the line" elsewhere, or that she was anything other than fully convinced that a human only has rights at birth, but it says to me that she thought the point at least debatable. On what grounds? I'm unsure. But then, when she claims elsewhere that "A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born," I don't know that I'm fully satisfied (or understanding) of her reasoning on that score, either.

I do know that if the claim is that, at eight months and three weeks (or whatever), a person could kill the child inside of them with legal impunity... but to bring that child out of the womb and then immediately kill it, we must regard that as first degree murder... well, such a claim seems questionable at least to me. I think we're discussing the same entity in both cases, and the same action.

I'll also note, in this cursory examination of the quotes on "abortion" compiled by the Lexicon, that Rand routinely refers to an "embryo" when discussing the "piece of protoplasm" that has no rights. Now, Wikipedia has "embryo" like this:

 

An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division until birth, hatching, or germination. In humans, it is called an embryo until about eight weeks after fertilization (i.e. ten weeks after the last menstrual period or LMP), and from then it is instead called a fetus.

 

Unless these terms were regarded differently when Rand was making these claims, I wonder if she chose "embryo" with any particular purpose, rather than "fetus" to solidify the stronger claim on how rights are only achieved with birth? Perhaps she regarded the essential issue as dealing with the first three months of pregnancy, and found later stages of pregnancy to be, at least, arguable?

[softwareNerd]

Perhaps she regarded the essential issue as dealing with the first three months of pregnancy, and found later stages of pregnancy to be, at least, arguable?

It is possible, of course. However, I think the best conclusion is that she was personally for drawing the line at birth -- even though she never made any argument that specifically addressed that. Otherwise, I think she'd have said so.

On the case of this doctor, I partially blame the anti-abortion Christians for this type of thing. Their campaigns have driven most doctors from the field, and left it to the shady operators. I actually have not read many details of this case, so I do not know if this doctor is guilty of a crime. However, assuming that he is, the anti-abortionists need to acknowledge their own partial role in scaring decent doctors from the field and for making it difficult for them to practice.

[aleph_1]

Fetus is equal to baby only if it able to exist separately from the mother's body.Right is freedom of action in the social context. Fetus doesn't act. It even doesn't breath.

So, kicking is not acting? Your assertion is contradicted by reality.

[DonAthos]

It is possible, of course. However, I think the best conclusion is that she was personally for drawing the line at birth -- even though she never made any argument that specifically addressed that. Otherwise, I think she'd have said so.

 

I absolutely agree that she was for drawing the line at birth. I only believe that she regarded the "essential issue" of abortion to concern the first three months or so of pregnancy, when we're discussing an actual embryo, a "piece of protoplasm," and that her arguments pro-abortion are directed towards that subject. I think that helps to explain why she routinely spoke in such terms -- because they are apt, and descriptive. (I do not believe that anyone looking at a fetus at eight months would find "piece of protoplasm" to have anything to do with the reality of the situation, and typically I regard Rand as being rather committed to describing things with justice and precision.)

While she may have concluded that the line should be drawn at birth, I think she felt that the stages of pregnancy between the embryonic and full birth were at least open to debate, on the strength of the quote which has led us down this particular rabbit hole. And indeed, I don't expect to find many Objectivists arguing for the rights of an embryo, but with regards to the later stages of pregnancy...? Well, here we are discussing it, so I guess that Rand was right in that observation, too.

Something that occurred to me recently, and I found it potentially meaningful (though perhaps you will not): imagine that we withdrew an embryo from a woman's womb at five weeks, or whatever, and were able to sustain it such that it could "live" independently from the mother, and continue to gestate. Would you or I or anyone here argue that this embryo had rights? That it was a human being? That the mother could not then terminate it at her discretion? I don't think so.

Now imagine that we withdrew a fetus from that same woman's womb at eight months. Would we now have a human being, possessed of rights? Does the mother now retain her right to terminate the child (for who would argue that it is anything other than a child at this point)?

I suspect that "the line" we're actually looking for is not birth, but is the point at which there is an entity within the mother's womb that, were it outside of the mother's womb, it would now be accorded rights such that the mother could not choose to destroy it.

[Harrison Danneskjold]

I suspect that "the line" we're actually looking for is not birth, but is the point at which there is an entity within the mother's womb that, were it outside of the mother's womb, it would now be accorded rights such that the mother could not choose to destroy it.

Exactly.

Abortion is ultimately the choice of the mother in question, because it's a matter of her own body and her own future.  At the point when an infant is no longer part of you and doesn't necessarily involve your future, you lose the right to do anything of the kind with it.  (otherwise furious mothers could have their children aborted at sixteen years old. . . )

And that's probably why Ayn Rand drew the line (made the distinction, whatever) at birth; not necessarily conventional birth at nine months, but birth as a physical separation which also entails a separation of such authority.