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aborigines to the sophisticated urban communities of ancient |
Greece or mandarin China. In some of these societies infanticide |
was not merely permitted but. in certain circumstances, |
deemed morally obligatory. Not to kill a deformed or sickly |
infant was often regarded as wrong, and infanticide was prob- |
172 |
Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus |
ably the first, and in several societies the only, form of population |
control. |
We might think that we are just more 'civilised' than these |
'primitive' peoples. But it is not easy to feel confident that we |
are more civilised than the best Greek and Roman moralists. It |
was not just the Spartans who exposed their infants on hillsides: |
both Plato and Aristotle recommended the killing of deformed |
infants. Romans like Seneca, whose compassionate moral sense |
strikes the modem reader (or me, anyway) as superior to that |
of the early and mediaeval Christian writers, also thought infanticide |
the natural and humane solution to the problem posed |
by sick and deformed babies. The change in Western attitudes |
to infanticide since Roman times is, like the doctrine of the |
sanctity of human life of which it is a part, a product of Christianity. |
Perhaps it is now possible to think about these issues |
without assuming the Christian moral framework that has, for |
so long, prevented any fundamental reassessment. |
None of this is meant to suggest that someone who goes |
around randomly killing babies is morally on a par with a |
woman who has an abortion. We should certainly put very |
strict conditions on permissible infanticide; but these restrictions |
might owe more to the effects of infanticide on others than to |
the intrinsic wrongness of killing an infant. Obviously, in most |
cases, to kill an infant is to inflict a terrible loss on those who |
love and cherish the child. My comparison of abortion and |
infanticide was prompted by the objection that the position I |
have taken on abortion also justifies infanticide. I have admitted |
this charge - without regarding the admission as fatal to my |
position - to the extent that the intrinsic wrongness of killing |
the late fetus and the intrinsic wrongness of killing the newborn |
infant are not markedly different. In cases of abortion, however, |
we assume that the people most affected - the parents-to-be, |
or at least the mother-to-be - want to have the abortion. Thus |
infanticide can only be equated with abortion when those closest |
to the child do not want it to live. As an infant can be adopted |
173 |
Practical Ethics |
by others in a way that a pre-viable fetus cannot be, such cases |
will be rare. (Some of them are discussed in the following chapter.) |
Killing an infant whose parents do not want it dead is, of |
course, an utterly different matter. |
174 |
7 |
TAKING LIFE: HUMANS |
I N dealing with an objection to the view of abortion presented |
in Chapter 6, we have already looked beyond abortion to |
infanticide. In so doing we will have confirmed the suspicion |
of supporters of the sanctity of human life that once abortion |
is accepted, euthanasia lurks around the next comer - and for |
them, euthanasia is an unequivocal evil. It has, they point out, |
been rejected by doctors since the fifth century B.C., when physicians |
first took the Oath of Hippocrates and swore 'to give no |
deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel'. |
Moreover, they argue, the Nazi extermination programme |
is a recent and terrible example of what can happen once we |
give the state the power to kill innocent human beings. |
I do not deny that if one accepts abortion on the grounds |
provided in Chapter 6, the case for killing other human beings, |
in certain circumstances, is strong. As I shall try to show in this |
chapter, however, this is not something to be regarded with |
horror, and the use of the Nazi analogy is utterly misleading. |
On the contrary, once we abandon those doctrines about the |
sanctity of human life that - as we saw in Chapter 4 - collapse |
as soon as they are questioned, it is the refusal to accept killing |
that, in some cases, is horrific. |
'Euthanasia' means, according to the dictionary, 'a gentle and |
easy death', but it is now used to refer to the killing of those |
who are incurably ill and in great pain or distress, for the sake |
of those killed, and in order to spare them further suffering or |
distress. This is the main topic of this chapter. I shall also consider, |
however, some cases in which, though killing is not con- |
175 |
Pradical Ethics |
trary to the wishes of the human who is killed, it is also not |
carried out specifically for the sake of that being. As we shall |
see, some cases involving newborn infants fall into this category. |
Such cases may not be 'euthanasia' within the strict meaning |
of the term, but they can usefully be included within the same |
general discussion, as long as we are clear about the relevant |
differences. |
Within the usual definition of euthanasia there are three different |
types, each of which raises distinctive ethical issues. It |
will help our discussion if we begin by setting out this threefold |
distinction and then assess the justifiability of each type. |
TYPES OF EUTHANASIA |
Voluntary Euthanasia |
Most of the groups currently campaigning for changes in the |
law to allow euthanasia are campaigning for voluntary euthanasia |
- that is, euthanasia carried out at the request of the person |
killed. |
Sometimes voluntary euthanasia is scarcely distinguishable |
from assisted suicide. In Jean's Way, Derek Humphry has told |
how his wife Jean, when dying of cancer, asked him to provide |
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