Anti-abortion fanatics are threatening free speech, warns academic

[Judi Lynn]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Tx4obama (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Guardian

Anti-abortion fanatics are threatening free speech, warns academic
Death threats to philosophers writing on 'after-birth abortion' curb academic discussion, says Journal of Medical Ethics editor
Sarah Boseley, Health editor
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 February 2012 14.05 EST

Two academics who wrote a paper suggesting that it should logically be permissible to kill babies at birth who would have fitted the criteria for abortion during pregnancy have been subjected to death threats, according to the journal editor.

Julian Savulescu, editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, published by the British Medical Journal group, said the online intimidation of two philosophers endangered free speech.

The pair – Alberto Giubilini from the University of Milan and Monash University in Melbourne and Francesca Minerva from the University of Melbourne and Oxford University, argued in the journal that, as "potential persons", newborn babies, like foetuses, do not have the same moral status as "actual persons".

What they preferred to call "after-birth abortion" rather than infanticide should be allowed not only for babies with abnormalities, such as Down's syndrome, which had not been detected during the pregnancy, but also newborns whose parents would have been granted an abortion because they felt they could not psychologically or materially cope with a child.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/29/abortion-ethics-threat-free-speech?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fmedia%2Frss+%28Media%29

[joeglow3]

1. Clearly these posters are wrong, but those 2 are fucking nuts, IMHO.

[EC]

2. Threats shouldn't happen

although I can see why people would threaten them. Either way, what these guys propose is murder. Infanticide or afterbirth abortion, what they are talking about is against the law, it's called murder.

[truthisfreedom]

3. Secular Humanists use Ethics, Reason, and Justice to define their humanity.

Not pseudoscience, supernaturalism, superstition, or dogma. It's funny how religious people can always justify violence when ideas they hate are being discussed.

[yellerpup]

4. That's an idea from the way-way back machine.

An idea few talked about, but it happened.

[usrname]

5. Murder or not...

Such behavior (post-birth "abortion&quot has been around since time immemorial. Not only have humans over the course of humanity committed such acts, other species do it as well, primarily when food resources are scarce. It may not be a very moral or ethical behavior, but does fit within the realm of normal animal behavior.

We humans, have the ability to help each other out, far more so than other animals can. It should be possible to help the newly born child of a family (or just the woman) who cannot support the child. We don't always provide that help, but we easily can.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

9. That's right.

The practice of infanticide was ubiquitous in classical antiquity, at least among city-dwellers. In fact, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians actually practiced it as religious sacrifice. Don't quote me on it, but I think it was some time in the early Christian era that this practice was challenging, with early churches actually rescuing rejected children from the elements.

Of course, slavery was just as ubiquitous in that time and place, so we can hardly take our modern morals from their example. Likewise, it's common among large mammals for a male to kill all of a female's offspring in order to induce ovulation. We could hardly take the same for an example, either.

[cstanleytech]

6. Are they actually discussing the merits of killing infants "after" they are born?

Tell me I read it wrong.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. Yes. And it will be minority women who will be pressured to do it.

This is just sick, sick, sick.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

7. It's not the first time the idea has been espoused.

I remember doing research for a paper on abortion many years ago and reading a philosopher who expounded something quite similar. He wrote that since a baby can't think or feel like an adult, it cannot logically be afforded the rights of personhood. He did say that birth was a convenient natural cutoff for allowing the administration of euthanasia, although he did claim that if we made the cutoff the beginning of the ability to suffer, we would have to make it about three months. What these guys are saying isn't too far off from that. It is a little too similar for comfort to the eugenic thinking of the turn of the last century, as far as I'm concerned.

Of course, the point about academic freedom is all too true. While I find these ideas morally troublesome, I don't find them nearly so morally abhorrent as the tenets of Fascism, and I would never espouse or tolerate the censorship of, or worse, violence against, those who espouse them. It is of the utmost importance that ideas, even morally wrong ones, be expressed freely.

[LeftishBrit]

10. Free speech in academia is vital.

And it's disgusting to attack or threaten writers personally.

Nonetheless I'm angry with these two. Not because I think they mean all this seriously, or support infanticide for a moment. They're doubtless seeking to provoke arguments, make people think, and more cynically, get publicity and citations for themselves. Not unknown in academia.

However, they will inevitably provide fodder for those fanatical 'pro-lifers' who think that all pro-choice people are baby-killers.

Deep sigh.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

11. so true

[wigginsray]

12. hypocrisy

Of course, it's perfectly OK to have death threats against the Governor of Wisconsin - slap on the wrist.

[McCamy Taylor]

13. 100% pro-choice but this is infanticide, not abortion the authors

wrote about. And I am 100% against infanticide.

To lump these folks with Pro-Choice does a disservice to the Women's Movement. Once a baby is born, if the parents do not want it, the state takes it. Period.

Back in the old days, if parents would not consenr for treatment of disabled children (such as Down's babies) the state of Texas would refuse to setp in and the baby would die of something totaly treatable. I recall when an infant in this situation starved to death because doctors would not fix its esophagus because the parents of the Downs baby wanted it dead.

This is even sicker than withholding medical care. They are talking about murder. If a man decides that he does not want the baby after all and slams its head against the wall is that a post-partum abortion?

[Tx4obama]

15. Locking. Not LBN

More appropriate for GD or Good Reads.
Thank you.