Non-Ethicality of After Birth Abortion.mp4
Channel: The Philosophical Angle
Date: 2012-04-08

The Non-Ethicality of After Birth Abortion (Abridged Opening Remarks)

This week's topic is regarding a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics first published on February 23, 2012 the title of which is 

"After Birth Abortion: Why Should The Baby Live." 

This article was discussed first on the Glenn Beck TV and radio programs.  To summarize the article it says the following:

The article goes on to state: "There are two reasons which taken together justify this claim: 1) The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, that is, neither can be considered a person in a morally relevant sense.  2) It is not permissible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense."

Since the authors have used the words "ethically moral" in the essay, the philosophical angle needs to define these terms in order to understand whether the conclusions reached are justifiable. 
First, a moral is any behavior that is good; and secondly ethics is the appropriate dispensation of respect.  An example would be when you are respectful to your parents you're behaving ethically.  The essence of respect is the consideration of the other.  That is, the more one considers the other important, the more one respects the other. 

For example, you'll respect your parents because they brought you up.  You respect your music collection because it provides enjoyment.  The nature of and reason for respect is to to allow us, as humans, to be able to cooperate.  When we respect someone and consider them important, this effectuates the ability to cooperate, and we cooperate to be able to produce goods and services which bring us up, away from misery. And anything that takes us up, away from misery is the essence of that which is good. 
We mentioned that morals are good behavior; and therefore, moral behavior are actions that take us away from misery.

That said, we may now analyze the essay. 

The authors state, "the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person who it is at the stage of new born."

If we apply our definition of ethics we now know that the authors have no respect and thus do not consider potentiality important.  However, The Philosophical Angle suspects that this is not the case.  In reality, we suspect that the authors do consider "potentiality" important. 

For example, we suspect that when the authors submitted this paper to the JME that before, during  and after submission process prior to acceptance of publication - that is, during the phase where the paper has the potential to become published - that they were very respectful of the JME journal and its editors. Therefore, they considered potentiality important to them as they wanted to cooperate with the journal to get their paper published.

And since potentiality has importance with respect to their paper, human life, we dare say, would have at least as much importance as a paper for the JME.  The Philosophical Angle suspects that the authors have erred in their conclusion because this importance is due commensurate respect. 
Further, the authors state that the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person even at the stage of a newborn.  However as a human develops from a cell to a fully developed baby, The Philosophical Angle states that the human being's potentiality grows accordingly, and as such, the respect that is due to its developing correspondingly grows. 

So this conclusion of the paper is false.  Also, the same reasoning follows, accordingly, when they state:

"Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion could be.  Such circumstances include cases with a newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life but the well-being of the family is at risk."

The Philosophical Angle emphatically states that as the baby develops so does its potentiality and therefore, the respect that is due to it also develops.  Moreover, they concluded that "the alleged right of individuals (such as fetuses and newborns) to develop their potentiality is overridden by the interests of actual people to pursue their own well-being."

However, the parents initiated a contract with the newborn being of their own free will when they freely established its life and as the new human being grows, the contract with the human becomes commensurately stronger and in place along with the rights of the new human being as all rights exist within agreements, contracts, and covenants. 

Thus, The Philosophical Angle concludes that what is stated in this paper is utter nonsense.