Click here for our free newsletter. As a thinker, Peter Singer is consistent, clear, and as subtle as a tank rolling over a wheelchair. The world's best-known advocate of infanticide thinks that parents should be allowed 28 days after the birth of a severely disabled baby to decide whether to kill it. As a utilitarian, he thinks actions are moral if they increase pleasure and happiness and reduce pain and suffering. And he thinks there will often be more pleasure and less pain all around if parents decide to dispatch a handicapped baby and try to have a healthy one in its place.
Humans are just one animal among many.
And he apparently thinks newborns should not have the rights granted by the U.S. Constitution. Because animals are self-aware, but newborn babies are not. Most ethicists, arriving at the conclusion that a pig is more valuable than a human baby, would probably re-examine their premises and think about framing a somewhat less repellent argument. But Singer is serenely confident in his coldly abstract line of reasoning. Odd theory can also take you to Princeton University, where Singer has been installed as the first full-time professor of bioethics at the University Center for Human Values.