Because we cannot relate as easily to humans at the earliest stages of their lives. I think that’s why people will consider “feeling pain” or “being able to survive outside the womb” as cut-off points.
I think you are right about this sentiment. It’s interesting, though, because when the tragedy of miscarriage occurs, we console the grieving parents on the loss of their child, not on the loss of their mass of cells. A foetus is intended to become a human and we anticipate that the purpose of a pregnancy from the moment of conception is to create another human being. Unfortunate but natural events may take place biologically that prevent that from occurring, but unfortunate natural events also prevent children and adults from living the expected life span. In neither instance is the foetus or the fully-formed human any less human for losing his or her life to a natural cause.
I can empathise with dogs very well, but that doesn’t make them human. But this sort of subjective empathy is probably also the reason why some people want to confer human rights on non-human animals that aren’t remotely like humans.
What a tremendous irony - we’ll grant human rights to apes but not to pre-natal humans. Isn’t that a form of age discrimination?
The infamous Peter Singer is at least honest when he agrees that life begins at conception, and that it’s dishonest to argue otherwise - and takes it to its logical conclusion, that infanticide should be legal and is morally equivalent to abortion.
That is the logical conclusion, and the difference between a legal abortion and a shocking and abhorrent crime in the United States is only a matter of time, though the end result - the murder of a defenseless innocent child - is identical.
Catholics see infanticide and abortion to be morally equivalent, as well. The difference is Peter Singer’s preference utilitarianism doesn’t allow for preferences to be held by non-persons (not the same as a “human”, but “a being that is capable of wishing to continue to experience mental states and express that preference unambiguously”), the preference of any person is moral and overrides anything that lacks preferences.
I see you’re well-read. Do you know if Singer would extend personhood to those humans who are disabled - mentally or physically - to the extent of being unable to communicate their will unambiguously?
To boil that down, Peter Singer sees them as morally equivalent, but neither as wrong. At least he’s an intellectually-consistent abortionist.
Indeed he is. I wonder how he’d feel if I took a brood of unhatched, fertilized chicken eggs and crushed them underfoot - would that be immoral or perfectly acceptable.
As regards the above poster, Peter Singer does consider some forms of animal life to be “persons” by the aforementioned definition, and is most well-known outside of academic philosophy circles as the guy who wrote Animal Liberation (the bible of PETA).
Yep. And every time I think of PETA I see two things:
- The Onion article: PETA Commandos kill 59, save rabbit
- A billboard posted within sight of my old parish right around Easter, showing a pig and with the words “He died for your sins”. I think I went to KFC for brunch out of sheer spite.
Khalid, you’ve read Singer enough that you may know the answer; Singer’s policy argument in
Animal Liberation is that animals should not be made to suffer needlessly or be used in the sense of “slavery”, as mere means to the purposes of another. Does that conclusion derive from his imputing of personhood to animals, or does he impute personhood to animals to provide a philosophical basis for his argument? Within Catholicism there’s merit to the perspective that animals should be treated humanely and that vegetarianism and veganism are both allowed to be conducted out of sense of respect for Creation, but without the need to recognize a sense of personhood to animals.
It’s not just Peter Singer now. There was an article advocating “after-birth abortion” in the Journal of Medical Ethics recently, and the authors also readily agreed that the foetus is clearly and undeniably human.
Positively ghoulish. I would trust no doctor who laid claim to such a terrible argument. As expected, they call upon the Groningen Protocol which allows the murder of severely disabled children in Dutch hospitals.
Citations:
jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full
dailycaller.com/2012/03/06/after-birth-abortion-advocates-non-apology-apology/
It’s simply astonishing and reminds one of Nazi eugenics programs. The focus of the medical profession ought to be the prevention of disease and amelioration of its effects to improve quality of life. It should not be to destroy those with defects - what a terrible and forsaken poverty this is. To even attempt to assess a dividing line between those truly sentient and those too handicapped to be considered human would be disgraceful and nightmarish. For an adult with cerebral palsy, is an IQ of 78 acceptable but an IQ of 70 means execution? What if he can carry on conversations but hasn’t the full use of both hands? What should be done in the treatment of a fully-sentient, normal human adult who loses the ability to communicate during a stroke - put her down like a wounded horse rather than provide compassionate care for the remainder of her life?
Monsters, these two doctors are. I hope they are disbarred from their profession and run out of town. I certainly don’t expect them to have patients to care for in the near future.
