How Slippery is the Slope?

March 4, 2012 in abortion 3 Comments Tags: abortion, infanticide, Medical ethics

This is for real:

From The Journal of Medical Ethics

Law, ethics, and medicine

Paper

After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?

1. Alberto Giubilini

2. Francesca Minerva

+ Author Affiliations

1. ¹Department of Philosophy, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

2. ²Centre for Human Bioethics, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

3. ³Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

4. ⁴Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

Abstract

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

This, via Patrick Madrid, is, for the time being, a projection:

January 22, 2023

Dear Mom:

Can you believe it is already the year 2023? I’m still writing ’22 on everything! It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting in the first grade and celebrating the change to a new century.

I know we really haven’t chatted since Christmas, Mom, and I’m sorry. Anyway, I have some difficult news to share with you and, to be honest, I really didn’t want to call or talk about this face to face.

But before I get to that, let me report that Ted just got a big promotion, and I should be up for a hefty raise this year if I keep putting in all those crazy hours. You know how I work at it. (Yes, we’re still struggling to pay the bills.)

Little Timmy’s been okay at kindergarten, although he complains about going. But then, he wasn’t happy about the day-care center either. So what can we do?

He’s been a real problem, Mom. He’s a good kid, but quite honestly, he’s an unfair burden on us at this time in our lives.Ted and I have talked this through, and we have finally made a choice. Plenty of other families have made the same choice and are really better off today.

Our pastor is supportive of our choice. He pointed out the family is a system, and the demands of one member shouldn’t be allowed to ruin the whole. The pastor told us to be prayerful and to consider all the factors as to what is right to make our family work. He says that even though he probably wouldn’t do it himself, the choice really is ours. He was kind enough to refer us to a children’s clinic near here, so at least that part is easy.

Don’t get me wrong, Mom. I’m not an uncaring mother. I do feel sorry for the little guy. I think he heard Ted and me talking about this the other night. I turned and saw him standing at the bottom of the stairs in his PJ’s with his little teddy bear that you gave him under his arm, and his eyes were sort of welled up with tears.

Mom, the way he looked at me just about broke my heart, but I honestly believe this is better for Timmy, too. It’s just not fair to force him to live in a family that can’t give him the time and attention he deserves.

And please, Mom, don’t give me the kind of grief that grandma gave you over your abortions. It’s the same thing, you know. There’s really no difference.

We’ve told Timmy he’s just going in for a “vaccination.” Anyway, they say the termination procedure is painless. I guess it’s just as well that you haven’t seen that much of little Timmy lately.

Please give my love to Dad.

Your daughter

A Real Horror Story

October 29, 2009 in abortion 1 Comment Tags: abortion, Neocutis

Although the Nazis did harvest the gold from Holocaust victims’ teeth, I believe the stories of lampshades made from human skin were Allied propaganda (not that such exaggerations were necessary – reality was bad enough).

However the Nazi “waste not, want not” philosophy is being applied to aborted children:

Aborted Fetal Material Used in Anti-Wrinkle Creams

Children of God for Life announced today that Neocutis, a bio-pharmaceutical company focused on dermatology and skin care is using aborted fetal cell lines to produce several of their anti-aging skin creams.

“It is absolutely deplorable that Neocutis would resort to exploiting the remains of a deliberately slaughtered baby for nothing other than pure vanity and financial gain,” stated Executive Director Debi Vinnedge. “There is simply no moral justification for this.”

For years Children of God for Life has been a watchdog on pharmaceutical companies using aborted fetal cell lines in medical products and they have received thousands of inquiries from the public on the use of aborted fetal material in cosmetics.

Until now, this was the first time they have encountered any company bold enough to put the information right on their own website and product literature. A quick investigation into the science behind the products revealed the shameless data.

Neocutis’ key ingredient known as “Processed Skin Proteins” was developed at the University of Luasanne from the skin tissue of a 14-week gestation electively-aborted male baby donated by the University Hospital in Switzerland. Subsequently, a working cell bank was established, containing several billion cultured skin cells to produce the human growth factor needed to restore aging skin. The list of products using the cell line include: Bio-Gel, Journee, Bio-Serum, Prevedem, Bio Restorative Skin Cream and Lumiere. But Vinnedge is calling for a full boycott of all Neocutis products, regardless of their source.

“There is absolutely no reason to use aborted babies for such selfish motives,” Vinnedge said. “It is anti-life, anti-woman and counter-productive as Neocutis is about to find out!”

Guilt and Responsibility

January 22, 2009 in abortion, guilt, Responsibility, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: abortion, guilt, Responsibility, Serbia

In Der Spiegel, Slavenka Draculic, a Croatian, writes of why she cannot visit Belgrade:

Why had I not visited for all of these years?

Was it about “them”? About what “they” did to “us”? Or about what Serbs did to themselves? If I traveled there I would carry two decades of images and emotions with me, like that of the Muslim woman from Srebrenica whose son was murdered by the Serbs. Her words, “I was forced to drink the blood of my own son,” are burned in my memory. So too is the photo of a young man bent forward over a railing with a gaping hole in his chest. How strange, I thought when I saw it, that you could see the railing through the hole.

The young citizens of Serbia were born after the war but cannot visit other countries without a visa, unlike during the time if Yugoslavia.

Today young Serbs are isolated and prohibited from seeing the world, and they are angry about it. At a recent conference, I heard a young Serbian man speak passionately about the fact that his generation was not even born when the wars broke out. They are not responsible for the crimes of their fathers. Because they are young, he implied, they are blameless. I must admit that this presumed innocence does not feel right to me.

The young still bear responsibility:

I wonder how much the new generation in Serbia knows about its own past. Like ours, their generation is responsible for its silence, for not asking about what happened before they were born, for not caring about what their fathers did during those wars, for believing that they have the right to visas just because they are young and their hands are clean. Most of all, they are responsible for failing to ask their parents why they are deprived of visas. The youngest generation of Serbs cannot be held responsible for the past. But all of them are responsible for their present attitude toward the past. That was the lesson that we, their parents’ generation, had to learn the hard way.

Silence is complicity.

We cannot repeat our mistakes and the mistakes of our parents. We all have to confront the past. The new postwar generation has its own responsibility: it must seek the truth. The youth of Serbia suffer because they are not asking questions.

This, I believe, is why I don’t visit Belgrade. I couldn’t bear the silence.

Today January 22 is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.