The current permissiveness towards infanticide in the case of babies who survive attempted abortions shows, in a heartbreaking way, the sinister face of abortion. Allowing a newborn to die who has survived an attempted abortion is equivalent to double murder, unbecoming of those who claim for themselves the respect for their rights that they deny to others.
The US Senate has rejected the Republican Party’s bill that called for medical care for babies who survive an abortion, as well as the prohibition of late-term abortions.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Bill, known as “Born Alive,” contemplated criminal consequences for those physicians who did not care for a baby surviving an attempted abortion and did not provide the same medical care as they would give to any child born at the same gestational age in a hospital. It also called for banning abortions after 20 weeks, since it is at that point that babies are presumed to be able to feel pain inside their mother’s womb, as we have previously reported from our Observatory.
Proposed on January 16 by Senators John Kennedy, James Lankford, and Jim Banks, Republicans for Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Indiana, respectively, and co-sponsored by 39 other Republican senators, the law needed 60 votes to advance, but it failed by a result of 52 to 47.
Infanticide: Ethical debate and Peter Singer’s position
The debate on the perception of fetal pain and the protection of babies born alive after an abortion is intertwined with the controversial positions of philosopher Peter Singer. Known for his utilitarian approach, he has defended infanticide in cases of severe disability, arguing that the life of a newborn does not have the same value as that of a conscious adult. According to Singer, the ability to experience pleasure and avoid pain is what gives value to life, and in the absence of these capacities, the life of a newborn could be considered less valuable.
The Australian utilitarian philosopher also argues that there is no significant ontological difference between a fetus and a newborn, and that both lack self-awareness and the ability to understand their existence over time. Therefore, from his perspective, infanticide could in certain cases be justified similarly to abortion. This position has generated intense ethical debate and has been criticized by many who defend the intrinsic dignity of all human beings, regardless of their ability to feel pain or pleasure.
Thus, eugenic infanticide is recurrent throughout history: Greece, Egypt, Rome, Carthage and even in China in the 1970s and in Ancient Sparta. Neither Singer nor the current promoters of infanticide are, therefore, original in their eugenic approaches.
The unacceptable reductionism that involves linking human dignity and its inherent rights to the capacity for self-awareness, autonomy or the capacity to experience sensitivity must be denounced and rejected outright from any anthropologically based bioethical reflection. Individuals of the human species, and they are such from conception as is accepted with virtual unanimity today from the scientific world, whether in their immature form as embryos, or unconscious in comatose states or dependent in cases of severe disability, must be considered persons, possessors of dignity – value in themselves – and rights, the first of which is the right to life. Their exclusion from this category has allowed, throughout history, exterminations, genocides, eugenics, and violations of human rights of those who claim the right to grant or withdraw this dignity based on their arbitrary criteria.
To attempt against the life of an immature embryo with few cells is no less serious than to do so against a 38-week-old fetus, a newborn or an incurably ill person. Just as, it is just as serious to attempt against the life of a disabled person as against that of a healthy individual.
The current permissiveness towards infanticide in the case of babies who survive attempted abortions shows, in a heartbreaking way, the sinister face of abortion. Letting a newborn die who has survived an attempted abortion is equivalent to a double murder, unbecoming of those who demand respect for their rights that they deny to others.
Julio Tudela – Cristina Castillo – Bioethics Observatory – Life Sciences Institute – Catholic University of Valencia
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1 Muller, F., O’Rahilly, R. “The amygdaloid complex and the medial and lateral ventricular eminences in staged human embryos.”
J Anat. 2006; 208 (5): 547–564.
2 Anand, K. J. S., Hickey, P. R. “Pain and its effects in the human neonate and fetus.” New England Journal of Medicine. 1987; 317: 1321-29.
3 Tadros, M. A., Lim, R., Hughes, D. I., Brichta, A. M., Callister, R. J. “Electrical maturation of spinal neurons in the human fetus: comparison of ventral and dorsal horn.” J Neurophysiol. 2015; 114 (5): 2661-71.
