THE GUARDIAN: Death threats to philosophers writing on 'after-birth abortion' curb academic discussion, says Journal of Medical Ethics editor
Two academics who wrote a paper suggesting that it should logically be permissible to kill babies at birth who would have fitted the criteria for abortion during pregnancy have been subjected to death threats, according to the journal editor.
Julian Savulescu, editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, published by the British Medical Journal group, said the online intimidation of two philosophers endangered free speech.
The pair – Alberto Giubilini from the University of Milan and Monash University in Melbourne and Francesca Minerva from the University of Melbourne and Oxford University, argued in the journal that, as "potential persons", newborn babies, like foetuses, do not have the same moral status as "actual persons".
What they preferred to call "after-birth abortion" rather than infanticide should be allowed not only for babies with abnormalities, such as Down's syndrome, which had not been detected during the pregnancy, but also newborns whose parents would have been granted an abortion because they felt they could not psychologically or materially cope with a child.
The newborn baby is a non-person, argue the ethicists, because they have no sense of their own existence. At a few days old, they say, newborns are "potential persons" but not actual persons, in the same way that a foetus is a potential person. So the interests of their parents over-ride theirs. » | Sarah Boseley, Health editor | Wednesday, February 29, 2012
