[Messianic Trees]

I wonder why the Mail are featuring this so prominently?

Doctors 'should have the right to kill unwanted or disabled babies at birth as they are not a real person' claims Oxford academic
Philosopher and medical ethicist Francesca Minerva argues that killing a newborn is little different to aborting it in the womb
Even a healthy baby could have its life snuffed out if the mother decides she can't afford to look after it, Dr Minerva suggested

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1nqka1uim" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[new puritan]

The Telegraph article makes things a bit clearer, even if it does feature a similarly misleading headline.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... s-say.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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.

So this seems more like an anti-abortion argument - the authors seem to be suggesting that abortion and infanticide amount to much the same thing and if we allow one, there's no reason why we shouldn't allow the other. Looking at the comments after both articles, hardly anyone has bothered to read beyond the headline before they started frothing.

[ezinra]

It now has a new headline:

'Babies are not real people': Female Oxford academic claims doctors 'should have the right to KILL unwanted or disabled infants'

I haven't seen Rick Santorum described as "male politician" or Satoshi Kanazawa as "male academic". Anyway, this paper was written by two people: one female (from a university in Melbourne) and the other male.

Compare and contrast:

Mail: "The ethicists are also in favour of the infanticide of a healthy baby when the woman's circumstances have changed and she no longer has the time, money or energy to care for it."

Female Oxford academic: "I wish I could explain to people it is not a policy - and I'm not suggesting that and I'm not encouraging that."

The paper, by ethical philosophers, is making a philosophical point about the ethics of abortion — in particular, the arbitrary way in which, once the foetus reaches 24 weeks, the legal positions of the mother and the foetus are completely reversed. The philosophers are asking a philosophical question: if the mother has incomplete information about the baby at 24 weeks, why should she lose her right to terminate?

But because the paper was published in a journal of medical ethics, the tabloids have assumed that it must therefore be 'science' and consequently 'so-called fact' and soon 'policy'.

[storygirl]

It now has a new headline:

'Babies are not real people': Female Oxford academic claims doctors 'should have the right to KILL unwanted or disabled infants'

I haven't seen Rick Santorum described as "male politician" or Satoshi Kanazawa as "male academic". Anyway, this paper was written by two people: one female (from a university in Melbourne) and the other male.

Compare and contrast:

Mail: "The ethicists are also in favour of the infanticide of a healthy baby when the woman's circumstances have changed and she no longer has the time, money or energy to care for it."

Female Oxford academic: "I wish I could explain to people it is not a policy - and I'm not suggesting that and I'm not encouraging that."

The paper, by ethical philosophers, is making a philosophical point about the ethics of abortion — in particular, the arbitrary way in which, once the foetus reaches 24 weeks, the legal positions of the mother and the foetus are completely reversed. The philosophers are asking a philosophical question: if the mother has incomplete information about the baby at 24 weeks, why should she lose her right to terminate?

But because the paper was published in a journal of medical ethics, the tabloids have assumed that it must therefore be 'science' and consequently 'so-called fact' and soon 'policy'.

It is an excellent point they are making, and one which shows philosophy is not about the study of dead Greeks. However as it is about the grey areas of morality it has clearly gone right over the heads of the Mailites.

[Messianic Trees]

Interesting to compare the Guardian's account: Anti-abortion fanatics are threatening free speech, warns academic

[Althea]

From Liberal Conspiracy;
Daily Mail splash on abortions slammed

Oopsie.