Abortion on Demand Has Turned Into Infanticide on Demand

Abortion on Demand Has Turned Into Infanticide on Demand

[link to www.lifenews.com]

In Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell signs a bill requiring that abortion-minded women be given the opportunity to see an ultrasound of their unborn children — which causes many of them to change their mind. In Oklahoma, women considering abortion must now listen to the beating heart of their babies in utero — which likewise leads many to continue their pregnancies. In the U.S. Congress, a bill banning sex-selective abortions moves forward.

Despite these baby steps forward, abortion-on-demand remains the law of the land in the U.S. and other Western countries. And now comes an article, entitled “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” which flatly argues in favor of infanticide.

Lest you doubt that anyone would openly espouse the killing of babies after birth, let me quote from the article itself. “Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life,” the authors assert. Killing a newborn “should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”

How do they pretend to reason their way to such inhumanity?

“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her. This means that many nonhuman animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons.”

Since newborns lack the “level of mental development” necessary to be considered a “person”, the authors assert, they are merely “potential people.” “The alleged right of individuals (such as fetuses and newborns) to develop their potentiality, which someone defends, is over-ridden by the interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being … merely potential people cannot be harmed by not being brought into existence.”