No Matter How Small

By: American Decency Staff

By Chris Johnson Abortion advocates have finally admitted that a fetus in the womb is every bit as human as a newborn infant. That seems like good news, right?  It's not. A pair of "medical ethicists" linked to Oxford University published an article in a peer reviewed journal which stated that, because abortion is legal, killing your baby should be too. Here is Alberto Giubilini's and Francesca Minerva's argument: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life.'â€Â And, because babies don't fit Giublini's and Minerva's definition of 'person,' they may be killed if the parents feel the "social, psychological,  [or] economic" costs are too high. For example, the Daily Telegraph states that the authors argue  "that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth." They say that, “to bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.â€Â I can't leave that last line alone – when welfare is used as a reason to necessitate killing kids, that is a culture in decline. Back to the main point. In their article, Giublini and Minerva explain that, "they prefer to use the phrase 'after-birth abortion' rather than 'infanticide' to 'emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus.'â€Â This shows the importance of vocabulary in the abortion argument. You know what sounds worse than both "after-birth abortion" and "infanticide?" Slaughtering the weakest members of society so you can live a more comfortable life. Yet that is exactly the definition of both of the more sterile terms. Of course abortion isn't any different from infanticide. Did anyone really ever believe that the act of being removed from the womb was the dividing line between non-life and life? Conception is the only rational starting point for life. The only argument for any other point in the cycle being the beginning of life is convenience. So what does it take for these "academics" to admit you are a 'person,' and not a mere human being? They say “we take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.â€Â So, basically, the child has to want to live. Somehow, Giublini and Minerva have determined that babies are indifferent in regards to this question. I don't know how they arrived at that conclusion. Anyone who has ever seen a hungry or frightened infant I think would be logical enough to deduce that the baby's cries means it wants to avoid death. An infant may not be developed enough to have a "fight or flight" response or go get a snack, but they certainly react in a negative way to danger. So the authors fail even by their own definition. More so, however, they fail by God's definition. God created us "in His own image." He "formed us in our mother's wombs." From God's perspective, all human beings are persons, whether someone finds them inconvenient or not. This idea of "after-birth abortion" is a great example of the necessity of  recognizing the "laws of nature and nature's God," as the founders put it. If man can decide what constitutes personhood, he can change that definition any time he wants to whatever he wants. And why should Alberto and Minerva's definition be given any more credence than Adolf's definition? What makes self-awareness the benchmark of personhood any more than skin color or heritage when there is no eternal moral standard? Dr. Seuss said it best in Horton Hears a Who: "A person's a person, no matter how small." Unfortunately, babies in the womb can't collectively raise their voices to let their killers know who they are. That is left to us. ========================================================== To support our efforts please click here or mail your gift to American Decency Association (ADA), PO Box 202, Fremont, MI 49412. American Decency Association is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. To Unsubscribe send an email to: info@americandecency.org and include word “unsubscribeâ€Â in subject line.

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