Origin of Life

Lesson 6

Appendix to the Origin of Life Study

Some Ethics Issues related to Infanticide

What is meant by infanticide?

Infanticide means infant killing. As distinguished from abortion, in ordinary usage, it means to intentionally take the life of a tiny human being after birth. Abortion means to take a life before birth.

Does infanticide occur today?

The number of infants killed each year has remained relatively constant since 1990, ranging from a high of 304 in 1991 to 249 in 1995, according to a review of FBI data for the past six years.

Is infanticide common in hospitals?

Yes. A professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Ethics Committee, stated boldly, "It is common in the United States to withhold routine surgery and medical care from infants with Down syndrome for the explicit purpose of hastening death."

Why do scientists recommend infanticide?

Another Nobel laureate, James Watson, added, "If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice ... the doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering." Some of his colleagues disagreed; they preferred thirty days after birth.

Do these scientists consider the newly born human?

Geneticist Joshua Lederberg is explicit: “The newborn infant must undergo further development to achieve the full measure of humanity.”

What is implied by using consciousness as a test of humanity?

He declares: "An organism possesses a serious right to life only if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experience and other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity."

Further, it means that someone who is unconscious is not human. If a killer would knock out his victim before killing him, then presumably it would not be murder.

Is there a logical connection between abortion and infanticide?

The famous situation ethicist Joseph Fletcher saw the inseparable connection when he concluded that abortion is "fetal euthanasia" and infanticide is "postnatal abortion."

Common sense dictates that if the baby is a human person the moment after birth, then it is also a human person the moment before birth.

Passing through a birth canal does not make one a human person any more than does moving across the street. A change in address is not a change in human status.

Professor Krason noted, "If we are prepared to say that a life should not come into this world malformed or abnormal, then tomorrow we should be prepared to say that a life already in this world which becomes malformed or abnormal should not be permitted to live."

Do abortion rights advocates really admit to a connection between abortion and infanticide.

Yes, some do. To replace an essential definition of personhood with a functional one, logically leads to infanticide, many abortion-rights defenders admit either explicitly or implicitly.

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood: "The most merciful thing a large family can do for one of its infant members is to kill it."

Esther Langston, Ph.D. professor of social work, University of Nevada, Las Vegas: "What we are saying is that abortion becomes one of the choices, and the person has the right to choose whatever it is that is best that they need as necessary and best for them in the situation for which they find themselves, be it abortion, to keep, to adopt, to sell, to leave in a dumpster, to put on your porch, whatever; it's the person's right to choose."

Is the withholding or withdrawal of artificial treatment of infants ever justified?

Yes. The purpose of medicine is to help not harm. If the treatment does not help the patient (the infant) but merely perpetuates death, withdrawal (stopping treatment which has begun) or withholding (never beginning treatment) is justified.

If infants are fully human, the decision to withhold artificial treatment must be made in accordance with the same guidelines we employ for adults.

Is infanticide justified when the infant will have a poor quality of life?

Some people argue that if an infant has a mental or physical deformity he or she will have a poor quality of life. Thus infanticide is justified.

By claiming that the newborn does not have a right to life because of a mental or physical deformity, the defender of this argument implies that adults with the same handicap do not have a right to life.

What about killing babies born prematurely

On April 4, 1981, in Dallas, Texas, a baby was born alive and well a month and a half before its scheduled birth. The mother threw it from the seventh floor of her room in the downtown Sheraton-Dallas Hotel.

The moving comments of columnist and political commentator George F. Will on the subject of infanticide of downs syndrome babies are worth noting:

"When a commentator has a direct personal interest in an issue, it behooves him to say so. Some of my best friends are Down syndrome citizens. (Citizens is what Down syndrome children are if they avoid being homicide victims in hospitals.) Jonathan Will, 10, fourth-grader and Orioles fan (and the best wiffle-ball hitter in southern Maryland), has Down syndrome. He does not "suffer from" (as newspapers are wont to say) Down syndrome. He suffers from nothing, except anxiety about the Orioles lousy start.

He is doing nicely, thank you. But he is bound to have quite enough problems dealing with society--receiving rights, let alone empathy. He can do without people like Infant Doe's parents, and courts like Indiana's asserting by their actions the principle that people like him are less than fully human. On the evidence, Down syndrome citizens have little to learn about being human from the people responsible for the death of Infant Doe.