Infanticide should be legal in the United States.

The United States should allow the use of infanticide in the case of infants with severe medical complications. This policy should be adopted because euthanizing infants in some scenarios can be a valid moral option since certain infants can be born with absolutely terrible life prospects. For example, there are a number of instances where infants can have terminal ailments that cause them to suffer immensely after birth before killing them shortly thereafter. In these situations, infanticide should be an option available to the parents of infants with these conditions. Additionally, there are strong grounds that can justify infanticide in a broader context since infants are not rational and self-conscious agents. Because infants cannot hold a conscious desire to continue living – and have never held a conscious desire to continue living - they can't be given the same rights as persons. Therefore, painlessly killing an infant cannot be wrong in the same way that killing a person is wrong. Of course, there would have to be parameters set around the practice of killing infants. And such technical matters are, indeed, important. But, for now, it is sufficient to recognize that there are certain situations in which intentionally killing infants can be justified. =======================> Why Infanticide Can Be Morally Justified <========================= C1: Infanticide is justified in the case of infants with severe medical problems that will end up killing them painfully. There are situations in which painlessly killing an infant could be an act of compassion. Undoubtedly, claims of this sort are bound to raise a few eyebrows, but they shouldn't. There are, in fact, numerous situations where it would be ethically justifiable to painlessly kill infants. For example, there are genetic conditions that can kill infants slowly and cause them unbearable pain in the process. Certain infants, due to genetic defects, can be born with a heart outside of their body [1], without any skin [2], and some infants can even be born with their intestines outside of their body. [3] Worst of all, some infants can be born with a terrible defect known as anencephaly. These anencephalic infants are born without a forebrain and die within a few hours or days after birth, often from cardiorespiratory arrest. [4] In a situation such as this, painless euthanasia will eliminate the possible suffering of the infant much faster and more compassionately than simply waiting for the newborn to go into cardiorespiratory arrest. Ergo, there are cases where euthanizing an infant can be justified given its terrible life prospects. C2: A human infant is not a person and thus cannot have a serious right to life. Given the limited mental qualities that an infant has, they simply cannot be said to posses the same rights that are granted to fully conscious persons. Likewise, the mere fact that infants are humans - in the biological sense - cannot function as a feature that gives them some sort of elevated moral status. Peter Singer — the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), University of Melbourne — put it this way, "the fact that a being is a human being, in the sense of a member of the species Homo sapiens, is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it; it is, rather, characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings." [5] From this it follows that any infant – disabled or not – cannot have a strong claim to a right to life since infants are not self-conscious beings. In either scenario, infanticide can be reasonably justified. As a result, there are good ethical grounds for legally allowing infanticide under certain parameters since infants lack key mental qualities. C3: An entity's potentials cannot grant that entity rights. An infant's potential to acquire characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness are not a sound basis for granting it a right to life. The potential to gain certain mental qualities – it is sometimes argued – presents a valid basis for giving a fetus and an infant a serious right to life. However, this principle simply cannot be adopted as a rights criterion since masturbation, contraception, and abstinence could all be equally condemned by its own standards. [6] In fact, under this ethical framework, even refusing to be raped could be considered unethical since it denies a potential entity the ability to become a person. These are simply an odious and untenable set of conclusions that could be drawn from the notion that entities can acquire rights through undetermined potentials. Therefore, an infant's potential to become a self-conscious person should be rejected as the foundation for granting it rights. ::Conclusion:: Infanticide may not only be permissible in certain situations, it may actually be morally obligatory. Allowing an infant with a severe defect to die slowly and painfully from its ailments seems perverse given the other options that exist. In summary, infants with terminal ailments that are bound to suffer horribly provide a strong reason as to why infanticide should be allowed under certain parameters. It may seem incomprehensible to some that any person could seriously consider such a proposition. And they may certainly wish to raise objections to the arguments contained in this essay. However, those objections are, in all likelihood, wholly misguided since they often fail to take into account the broad range of concerns that encompass issues of this sort. As was demonstrated earlier, an infant cannot be reasonably counted as a person. Consequently, even if there were no infants with severe medical complications, there is still a strong case that infanticide can be morally justified and thus should be legally permitted. Sources: 1. http://edition.cnn.com... 2. http://www.google.com... 3. http://www.associatedcontent.com... 4. http://en.wikipedia.org... 5. Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1993. p. 182 (http://www.utilitarian.net...) 6. Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1993. p. 181 (http://www.utilitarian.net...)