Thus, just as Baptists and Catholics have their theological disagreements in the context of a shared Christian faith, so too do bioethicists' differing opinions mostly spring from how to apply moral beliefs that are generally shared. What makes this so worrisome is that the predominant moral assumptions of bioethics differ so dramatically from those of the very populace the movement presumes to serve. But long ago the mainstream bioethics movement reached a consensus that human life is neither sacred nor equal. Indeed, bioethics ideology holds that membership in the human species per se is irrelevant to any individual's moral worth. What matters in predominant bioethics thinking isn't the human community but the moral community, which does not include everyone.
Persons enjoy maximum legal and moral rights, including the right to life.
Other forms of animal life are not persons, such as fish and birds. Thus Singer is one of the world's most famous proponents of legalizing infanticide. Toward this end, he has repeatedly advocated that parents be accorded 28 days to decide whether to keep or kill their newborn offspring. In another time, Peter Singer's advocacy for infanticide would have branded him an intellectual outcast. Indeed, he cannot appear in Germany or Austria without generating angry demonstrations, given those nations' painful memories of the Holocaust, during which more than 250,000 disabled infants and adults perished at the hands of doctors.