Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm not asking about abortion. I'm asking about the arguments made by the scholars writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics as quoted in the abstract.
Do you agree or disagree with the abstract? If you're "pro-choice" and you disagree, please give a coherent reason.
There's no way in hell I'd buy the full article to read after seeing in the second sentence, "By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons," which is such a ricidulous statement that no honest publisher should have accepted it.
Posting it here is nothing more than trolling, and doesn't even deserve a response. I deserve a smack for even responding to you.
This makes no sense. After 22 weeks or thereabouts you don't know whether a child is capable of living outside the womb until the child is actually outside the womb.
What? You just said that 24-25 weeks was the line after which "a fetus is not abort-able". What does "not abort-able" mean if you think it's OK to abort it? It's plain that you've only thought seriously about this topic for maybe five minutes total.
It is very seldom "certain" that a child will die without treatment until he is actually treated. What is certain is that 50% of babies born with my son's condition die without treatment. You're telling me that if the doctors determined that it was certain that a particular baby would die without treatment, the parents would be morally justified in killing him if they didn't want him?
Nevermind. You're all over the map on this. It's clear that you don't have a coherent position, haven't thought any of this through, and are just making up answers as you go.
Thanks for trying though. I have to go get some work done for a change. Cheers.
Ordinarily, I would trim the quoted part to only that part that applies to my comment. This time readers should go back and see the post you answered to see how wrong you got it. gallows posted sensible answers to your comments and you don't even understand what he said.
This is so utterly pathetic, sickening, and morally depraved as to need no further comment from me. It's pure consequentialism in which the ends always justify the means. There is no atrocity that cannot be morally justified by this reasoning, so long as the chosen atrocity is the "lesser of evils".
There are no "pure academic exercises", champ. We are defined as a society by the ideas we are willing to entertain. Deliberate human action always begins as an idea. Ideas have consequences, and the consequences of the ideas just expressed are a nightmare.
Too bad you don't take your own advice. We're waiting for you to stop commenting.
This is the whole point. We have a fundamentally different way of looking at the abstract. I don't see them as truth claims. When I write an article, for an academic journal, I don't aim for truth claims. I'm throwing an idea out there as contribution to an on-going conversation.
Unless a bioethicist is working from a deontological way of looking at the world, which isn't all that popular nowadays, then the claims are the result of an exercise, mostly likely one to tease out the lines of thought (some deontological like the Golden Rule, others teleological). Bioethicists tease out logic and appeals; it's philosophy, but one not unrelated to the material world.
And certainly those working in the realm of ethics do not have any misconception about the nature of their work. They think about thinking, the realm of the ought-to-be ethically possible and impossible, and I'm never going to argue argue against the importance of such a thinking. But they certainly do not make policy. Plato's philosopher-king isn't pulling society's strings from the pages of the Journal of Medical Ethics.
I really don't understand what you are trying to say above. Sounds like academic gibberish calculated to weasel out of all responsibility for one's words and ideas. Anyway, here are some quotes from the article itself.
SHOCK: Ethicists Justify Infanticide in Major Medical Journal
“We claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”
“If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.”
Yes, a post-birth abortion. I've mentioned that before. It was inevitable, because in spite what many may say, there really is a Slippery Slope ...
With Roe we were told, assured, guaranteed only abortions in the 1st Trimester. Well, they told us a bunch of lies. Soon it was the 2nd Trimester, and then the 3rd Trimester, and then partial-birth abortions, and now they're moving onto post-birth abortions.
That will expand from infants under 1 year to under 3 years, and then it will be up to 12 years, because, you know, it's perfectly okay. A mother, you know, she's "in love" and her live-in boyfriend doesn't want children around so the pathetic mother will kill her 12 year old daughter so as to "not lose" the boyfriend.
And people can laugh, but you already have women prostituting their pre-teen daughters, in order to keep her "man" happy (see previous threads on C-D).
I am an atheist, and also a moral absolutist.
Mircea, I just wanted to say "bravo" to everything you have posted in this thread.
The moral relativism of liberalism is highly selective, of course - applied only to the sins they happen to prefer. They become raging moral absolutists when attacking the Capital Sins of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, speciesism (not kidding), et al.
Thanks. Those who say that it can be morally justified to kill innocent persons who are incapable of giving their consent (e.g. babies, Alzheimers' patients, etc.) dwell in a different kind of moral universe. I don't know how to argue with you on the basis of any moral calculus that we have in common. Don't you find that both sad and alarming?
Not really.
If someone is going to die a painful excruciating death, and that is set in stone, I have no problem with euthanasia.
Quote:
I'm curious: why is it "viability" that marks personhood for you? Are adults who are totally dependent on others, like a non-viable fetus, also less than persons?
No, and it's stupid to even bring up that comparison.
A fetus that literally cannot survive if detatched from the womb is techically not a person yet.
Which is different from an adult what can go from source to source to get sustenance.
Thanks for posting this. Just as many of us thought:
'However, the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises . . . The Journal does not specifically support substantive moral views, ideologies, theories, dogmas or moral outlooks, over others. It supports sound rational argument."
The comments that the authors and the journal editor have received just illustrates the hypocrisy of the anti-choice crowd:
"“Right now I think these two devils in human skin need to be delivered for immediate execution under their code of ‘after birth abortions’ they want to commit murder – that is all it is! MURDER!!!”
What a massive stinking truckload of bovine excrement. The editor belongs behind bars so far as I'm concerned.
Anyone who takes "The Journal of Medical Ethics" seriously after this should be written off as an extreme moral miscreant. If you see this publication in the lobby of your OB-GYN, or anyplace else for that matter, get the h*** out as fast as possible.
Try to imagine a scholarly article in this journal in defense of, oh, say the Nazi holocaust, and this miserable excuse for an "ethicist" sniveling ".... the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view blah blah blah ...."
Last edited by WesternPilgrim; 02-29-2012 at 12:16 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We're waiting for you to stop commenting.
