octopusmagnificens: Por la despenalización del infanticidio selectivo

Por la despenalización del infanticidio selectivo

Los padres no deben sufrir restricciones para matar a sus bebés recién nacidos porque éstos son moralmente irrelevantes. Poner fin a sus vidas no es diferente del aborto, es lo que han argumentado Alberto Giubilini y Francesca Minerva, profesores de filosofía y especialistas en ética médica de la Oxford University, en el artículo "After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?", publicado en el Journal of Medical Ethics.

Los expertos, que ya han sido amenazados por grupos freaks que imagino ligados a la ultraderecha, consideran que los recién nacidos no son verdaderas personas y carecen de derecho moral a la vida: "El estatus moral de un infante es equivalente al de un feto en el sentido de que ambos carecen de las propiedades que justifican la atribución del derecho a una vida como individuo". Más que personas reales, los recién nacidos serían personas potenciales. Se entiende por personas a aquellos individuos que son capaces de encontrar valores básicos en su propia existencia, tales que, si se les privara de ellos, sentirían una gran pérdida.

El manifiesto reclama que los padres han de tener la potestad de deshacerse de sus bebés si, después del parto, descubren que son anormales, y citan que solamente el 64% de los casos de síndrome de Down son diagnosticados en las pruebas prenatales para detectar y destruir estos fetos. Razonan que cuando el Estado presta asistencia, dar continuidad a estos niños es una carga insoportable para las familias y la sociedad en su conjunto. La conclusión de los autores es que el infanticidio (aborto después del parto) debe ser legal en todos los supuestos en los que el aborto lo es, incluidos los casos en los que el recién nacido no es anormal o subnormal, es decir, es perfectamente normal.

Las tesis eugenésicas en favor de la eliminación de los recién nacidos con taras severas no son nada nuevas. Se remontan a las civilizaciones antiguas y, en el siglo XX, han estado vigentes en países de vanguardia como Alemania y los Estados Unidos, y en China ya sabemos que existe una política agresiva de promoción de los individuos sanos. Ni que decir tiene que una cosa es que el Estado practique abortos o eutanasias por la fuerza, lo que a cualquier persona sensata le da escalofríos, y otra que sencillamente se abstenga de intervenir en la planificación familiar de la ciudadanía. ¡Esto sí! Menos Estado y menos leyes. Escrupuloso respeto a la intimidad de las personas, despenalización y desregulación, y que los padres se entiendan con los doctores sin injerencias externas.

Hay que respetar la libertad individual y las decisiones de la gente. No debemos imponer nuestra moral, nuestras costumbres y nuestro estilo de vida a los demás. Si una familia tiene la desgracia de tener un hijo subnormal y desea quedárselo, perfecto, adelante, no seré yo quien intente convencerlos de lo contrario. Hasta me viene a la memoria una familia con la que me crucé en un supermercado hace años: los progenitores, tres hijos adolescentes, uno con síndrome de Down, y los otros dos hijos, un chico y una chica, prodigándose en cuidados con su hermano. Aquello me emocionó. Pero de la misma forma que digo esto, admito que si mi hipotética mujer estuviera embarazada y se revelara que el feto tiene defectos graves, propondría inmediatamente la comisión del aborto (la última palabra sería de ella, claro). Y si la anomalía sólo se manifestara tras el parto, incitaría al abandono de la criatura. Si se me permite la redundancia, no hay nada más natural en la naturaleza que una madre o un padre abandonando a su cría. Es algo instintivo. Detectas lo que es viable y lo que no. El fuerte (el nacido) decide la suerte del débil (el no nacido o recién nacido). Es lo más justo del mundo.

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say - Telegraph

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

“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.”

As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.

The authors therefore concluded 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”.

They also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing.

Once such children were born there was “no choice for the parents but to keep the child”, they wrote.

“To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.

They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.

Both Minerva and Giubilini know Prof Savulescu through Oxford. Minerva was a research associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics until last June, when she moved to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Melbourne University.

Giubilini, a former visiting student at Cambridge University, gave a talk in January at the Oxford Martin School – where Prof Savulescu is also a director – titled 'What is the problem with euthanasia?'

He too has gone on to Melbourne, although to the city’s Monash University. Prof Savulescu worked at both univerisities before moving to Oxford in 2002.

Defending the decision to publish in a British Medical Journal blog, Prof Savulescu, said that arguments in favour of killing newborns were “largely not new”.

What Minerva and Giubilini did was apply these arguments “in consideration of maternal and family interests”.

While accepting that many people would disagree with their arguments, he wrote: “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.”

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he added: “This “debate” has been an example of “witch ethics” - a group of people know who the witch is and seek to burn her. It is one of the most dangerous human tendencies we have. It leads to lynching and genocide. Rather than argue and engage, there is a drive is to silence and, in the extreme, kill, based on their own moral certainty. That is not the sort of society we should live in.”

He said the journal would consider publishing an article positing that, if there was no moral difference between abortion and killing newborns, then abortion too should be illegal.

Dr Trevor Stammers, director of medical ethics at St Mary's University College, said: "If a mother does smother her child with a blanket, we say 'it's doesn't matter, she can get another one,' is that what we want to happen?

"What these young colleagues are spelling out is what we would be the inevitable end point of a road that ethical philosophers in the States and Australia have all been treading for a long time and there is certainly nothing new."

Referring to the term "after-birth abortion", Dr Stammers added: "This is just verbal manipulation that is not philosophy. I might refer to abortion henceforth as antenatal infanticide."

Poleeeeeeeeeeeeee

Espera que me voy a tomar esto para no leerme el tocho.

[IMG]http://27.******************/tumblr_lmujcpPfjf1qdqhl3o1_400.gif[/IMG]

Esparta y los ilotas aprueban este hilo que por cierto es repe.

¿Y el adulticidio para cuando?

En menudo berenjenal te metes

__________________

También estoy a favor de la tortura pero eso lo dejo para otro hilo.

ajam... ustec trabaja en la televisión...

__________________

Hay un error de concepto. Hasta que los fetos no se desarrollen y escriban loas al asesinato en blogs no sabremos si merecen o no ser excluidos de la sociedad por la vía sangrienta para darles su propia medicina.