No. A woman who doesn’t want a fetus has the right to keep it from taking over her whole body. A woman who doesn’t want a baby has Safe Haven laws to follow.
May I introduce Dr. Peter Singer~
Brilliant, given the amount of slack jawed morons on our streets (UK as well as US) abortion should be legal up to the age of 18.
“Sorry kid, you’ll only be a drain on the system and I don’t want a tax increase” bang!
I have A Modest Proposal . . .
Can’t believe I was first with that!
I support abortion rights because bodily autonomy is the issue. Infants don’t encroach on anyone’s bodily autonomy (or, if they do, yer doin’ it wrong).
Allow me to introduce Dr. Peter Singer, the famed professor and “bioethicist” from Princeton University. He recognized that there is no essential difference between an infant inside the womb and one that has moved through the birth canal. He concluded that if we take the standard pro-choice arguments seriously, then infanticide is likewise justified.
Is there any particular reason it should be legalized? The OP doesn’t provide one, neither has anyone else. I suspect (he said, understatedly) that’s because there’s absolutely no reason to legalize infanticide. It’s a barbaric and terrible practice.
“Standard pro-choice arguments” have nothing to do with fully developed infants. Third trimester abortions are close to nonexistent.
He’s mistaken. The difference is that one is inside my body, and one is outside my body. That particular difference is pretty fucking essential to me.
Which leads inexorably to the conclusion that either he doesn’t understand what the hell the “standard pro-choice arguments” are, or that someone is reporting him wrong.
Is… is that you Dad?!
Infanticide does happen in a number of very very small cases, or at least, letting the baby die, if not killing it. I read a book long ago that discussed, in detail, the ethics of babies born that were very sick, severely mentally retarded, or severely disabled. I am talking nothing in the head but the brain stem, no chance of anything remotely resembling a normal life, etc.
In cases like these it has happened that a pair of loving parents, educated by the doctors and nurses and by themselves, have elected to remove feeding tubes, and life support from the baby, and let it die.
I am wholeheartedly in favor of leaving this decision in the hands of the parents and not penalizing them for it. (I don’t rightly recall if they ever do get penalized.)
Beyond that, no, infanticide just randomly should not be legal. And you as the OP have given no justification as to why it should be. Is there a specific reason? If you had addressed cases like I did in my post above, I might be more inclined to listen. Not the average childbirth, however.
A frequent “star” and guest in the Skeptical word and I am a good Agnostic/Skeptic but I have absolutly no use for this guy at all, he puts animals in the same moral context as human beings. No way.
Singer is a hypocrite: he believe infanticide is permissible but not animal cruelty. What a son of a bitch.
And the effect on American society is what, exactly?
Or even roughly.
Apparently, a profoundly weakened vocabulary.
He’s pointing out that this distinction says nothing about the essential nature of the unborn. Whether it’s “essential to you” is ultimately unimportant, since the taking of a life is not a mere matter of personal preference.
But that is infanticide only in the sense that the person who is being allowed to die is an infant. There is a huge difference between ceasing or not starting artificial life support and a homicide.