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Infanticide Goes Mainstream and Why Prolife Arguments Need an Update

LifeSiteNews ^ | 2/22/08 | John Jalsevac

Posted on 02/22/2008 4:39:08 PM PST by wagglebee

February 22, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - There was a time, not so long
ago, when pro-lifers, in an effort to galvanize the apathetic, would
recount to them the disturbing opinions of a certain Princeton
professor, Peter Singer, who, amongst other things, has long held that
it is ethical to kill disabled newborn children.

For instance, in a 2006 interview Singer was asked point-blank: "Would
you kill a disabled baby?" His response? "Yes, if that was in the best
interests of the baby and of the family as a whole."

"Many people find this shocking," he continued, "yet they support a
woman's right to have an abortion. One point on which I agree with
opponents of abortion is that, from the point of view of ethics rather
than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the
newborn baby."

At the very least one should commend Singer for his logic,
particularly for his disowning of the modern superstition that at
birth a fetus somehow transmogrifies into a wholly new creature. If
it's ok to kill a fetus, then it's ok to kill a newborn, Singer
argues, there being no qualitative distinction between a fetus and a
newborn, but only an accidental difference of position - within or
without the womb. And any clear-headed logician would affirm that the
conclusion follows neatly upon the premise, assuming the premise is
true.

But never mind that. The point is that, for a while anyway, and in the
not so distant past, Peter Singer was the lone, wild figure standing
on the farthest fringe of the ethics community, shunned by social
conservatives and liberals alike - by the former as the very
mouthpiece of evil, the very embodiment of the Culture of Death, and
by the latter as much "too extreme".

* * *

It is a funny thing, though, about the social left, with its ever
fluid notion of truth and blind faith in the goodness of "progress"
and "change", that an opinion that is one day deemed "too extreme",
very soon becomes "edgy," and then "progressive" and, before you know
it, "acceptable" or "ethical".

And so for pro-life activists it comes as no surprise that Singer's
once-appalling opinions about infanticide have now jumped firmly into
the mainstream, with the publication of a sober, though enthusiastic
10-page defense of newborn euthanasia in the prestigious journal of
bioethics, the Hastings Center Report. With the appearance of this
article, entitled "Ending the Life of a Newborn", infanticide has
become no longer, "extreme", nor "edgy", but sits somewhere on the
cusp of "progressive" and "ethical".

It is true that for the time being this may only be strictly true
within the more educated, elite circles of the left; but history has
proven time and again that ideas that gain momentum in the world's
ivory towers inevitably filter down to the public. In this, the
digital age, the age of communication, this process takes place at a
breathtaking rate.

For the time being it is true that most people will continue to be
appalled at the notion of newborn euthanasia; but, unless the
acceptance of legalized infanticide amongst the leftist elite is
vigorously fought with the proper intellectual and propagandist
weapons, the idea will soon begin to be acceptable to the "man on the
street" as well. Unless fought, the idea of infant euthanasia will
filter down from the journals of bioethics to the newspapers and the
news channels, in the same process of supersaturation and
normalization that saw homosexuality go from being perceived as a
grave crime against nature, society, and oneself, to perfectly normal,
even commendable, in a little over a decade.

* * *

What really struck me, however, as I was reading the Hastings Center
piece (besides, of course, the hard-to-ignore fact that the authors
were defending killing newborn infants, including those who weren't
suffering yet, but probably would suffer in the future) is how ill
prepared we are to respond to the arguments presented by the authors.
It seems to me that the pro-life movement is somewhat behind the times
in its approach to responding to the core principles of the Culture of
Death, especially in its newest incarnations.
While much of the pro-life movement continues to desperately try to
prove to the opposition that the fetus is human, by showing pictures
of the unborn child, or proving that the fetus can feel pain, the
whole pro-death movement has moved on. With the advent of embryonic
research, assisted reproduction technologies, and now infant
euthanasia, the pro-life movement has simply attempted to adopt and
adapt old arguments for a whole new fight, which calls to mind that
old Scripture quote about new wine in old wineskins.

"Human life," we point out time after time, "is a continuity that
begins at conception and continues through to the moment of natural
death, and since it is wrong to kill an adult, it is also wrong to
kill a child, born or unborn."

But this just won't do any more.

The cameras inserted into the womb have proven beyond a doubt that the
uterus is not a twilight zone that suddenly transforms a formless blob
of inhuman tissue into a hearty, healthy baby at the moment of birth.
And hence it is somewhat condescending to our opponents to assume that
the they are just so plain stupid that they can't tell that the fetus
looks, acts, and feels like a human, and is a human, albeit in its
nascent stage of development.

What we seem to have failed to recognize, therefore, at least with the
necessary clarity, is that the humanity or inhumanity of the fetus is
often no longer the issue - at least, not within the elite spheres of
the pro-death movement. The pro-death movement has evolved into a
subtler, more radical, and much more dangerous form, a form that
requires new intellectual weapons to fight.

* * *

This whole issue of sanctioned infant murder, as explicitly espoused
by the Groningen Protocol, is a dramatic case in point. Nowhere in The
Groningen Protocol, and nowhere in Lindmann and Verkerk's extensive
study of the protocol, do the authors demand that physicians determine
whether or not the newborn child is "human". Nor do they attempt to
determine of the child is a "person". Both the humanity and personhood
of the child are taken for granted. Indeed, on several occasions the
authors equate the unborn child with a newborn child, and both of
these with grown adults.

Hence, no matter how watertight our arguments for the humanity of the
fetus or the newborn child are, they would do nothing to counteract
the arguments of Lindemann and Verkerk, which are based, not upon the
child's humanity, but upon the issue of "quality of life".

As Wesley Smith writes, "It wasn't many years ago that almost everyone
accepted that infanticide is intrinsically and inherently wrong. No
more. With personhood theory and the 'quality of life' ethic
increasingly permeating the highest levels of the medical and
bioethical intelligentsia, we are moving toward a medical system in
which babies are put down like dogs and killing is redefined as
compassion."

It is not the intent of this editorial to formulate a response to
these theories mentioned by Smith, but only to highlight them as
significant, and requiring a serious and intelligent response. These
terrifyingly subtle "personhood" and "quality of life" arguments
require the full attention of pro-lifers, and especially a new
generation of serious pro-life intellectuals and apologists.

If we do not study and learn to devastate these theories at their most
fundamental intellectual and spiritual core, then we will be left
helpless and unprepared to respond as the pro-death movement
increasingly uses them to justify embryonic research, destructive
assisted reproduction technologies, infant euthanasia, and,
inevitably, across the board legalized suicide, assisted suicide,
involuntary adult euthanasia and who knows what else in the future.