By Jing Ping Wong.
Is an unborn foetus a human person? If not, when does it become one? People who are familiar with the abortion debate would agree that even the most avid pro-abortion supporters would concede that the moral right to life exists as soon as the baby is born. But two scholars disagree.
Last week, Alberto Giubilini of Monash University and Francesca Minerva of Melbourne University published a confronting paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled ‘After-birth Abortion: why should the baby live?’
These philosophical-bioethicists have stretched the abortion ideology beyond the pale by positing that the moral status of the foetus should be extended to the newborn.
As philosophers, they argue that neither are ‘actual people’ in a ‘morally relevant sense’ and that infanticide should then be permissible just as abortion is.
I imagine that most would have be astonished at such a concept. You are not alone.
A national, online poll last weekend shows that 70 per cent of the public surveyed disagree that killing a newborn is equivalent to abortion.
Guibilini and Minerva choose to nuance the idea of infanticide—which is the killing of children after they are born, by replacing it with the term ‘after-birth abortion’.
They argue that one-third of infants with Down Syndrome are born without the abnormality detected during pregnancy, and that parents should have the right to terminate the infant in retrospect, after it is born.
But the proposal does not stop there. The choice of infanticide they assert, should extend to healthy newborns too ‘if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden’.
The authors claim that this rests on the best interests of parents and society.
Radical as it sounds, there is an element of compassion in their rationale.
The paper addresses relevant social problems to which they offer the choice of infanticide as a solution.
We acknowledge that we now live in a social state where support for the family is severely diminishing—and parents are feeling its pressure.
The question is whether having the choice to kill a newborn is an appropriate solution.
I do not think what Guibilini and Minerva mean to say is that killing people is acceptable.
What they are saying is that ending the life of a newborn is not immoral, is not murder; to them, such individuals are, in fact, not people—‘in a morally relevant sense’. Life does not exist for them.
That newborns have the potential to grow into adults is morally irrelevant. Of course the traditional Judeo-Christian rationale would disagree.
A human in infancy or as an adult possesses the same intrinsic moral value at all stages of life.
The linchpin of the debate then is over the definition of what is—and is not—a person.
Any attempt to mobilise infanticide in this country will certainly not come without a fight from many sides.
The contention occurs largely due to the plurality of standards that exists in our society, each differently defining what makes up a human person.
Since it is essentially a philosophical question, it must be addressed at the philosophical level.
Guibilini and Minerva have clearly defined what a person is not. But they admit that they are vague when it comes to delineating the point at which a newborn does become an ‘actual person’: “We do not suggest any threshold, as it depends on the neurological development of newborns.”
Neurological development. Here is the key. These philosophers hold the view that awareness is imperative to the definition of life. The ‘standard of life’ is marked by the capacity to form purpose and aims for oneself, and to have knowledge of this.
For a newborn, they argue, life does not exist.
This ‘mentalist’ notion of the human person is not unique to Guibilini and Minerva.
Philosopher Peter Singer, among others, has been one of the key figures who advocate this notion—figures that are referenced in Guibilini and Minerva’s paper.
And it is a concept that enjoys prominence in some environmentalist circles.
Peter Singer is well known for his assertion that a grown chimpanzee, or fish, should be recognised as a ‘person’ on the basis that it possesses sentience and the conscious ability to engage with its environment.
Accordingly, a foetus or a newborn would be non-persons because of their lack of these.
Life, in this view, is related not to an intrinsic value imparted to it, but to a measure of function and sentience, a measure that is relative by nature.
In contrast, the Judeo-Christian concept clearly demarcates life with the notion of Imago Dei: Man created in the Image of God.
There is an absoluteness about it, a permanence. The human being according to this view has a divine imprint within him—at every stage—before and after birth.
This image is the reason why the Judeo-Christian tradition values human life so absolutely and refuses to make man its arbiter.
If this standard is removed, the value of human life falls into the slippery slope of relativist arbitration.
And yes, the standard is theistic. Unapologetically.
The publication of Guilini and Minerva’s paper continues the narrative of the 20th century anthropological struggle that has brimmed over into the 21st century.
Arising from the atrocities of two world wars, genocides and ideological regimes which have blanketed the previous century, humanity has been at pains in its search for the meaning of its existence: Who is man? What is his purpose? What is the way forward for humanity?
In prophetic fashion, the Church, through the Second Vatican Council and its pontiffs of the era, warned of the dangers that would lie ahead in the many ideologies that would overtake the world while man was in this crucial crisis of identity.
Attuned to the spirit of the times, the Church adopted an anthropological thrust and responded: “Christ … by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear”. Christ is indispensable to man’s full realisation of his identity and purpose.
The burdens of humanity cannot be removed by further extending the mode of killing.
The extermination of more individuals—inside or outside the womb—will only serve to obscure humanity’s ability to recognise its own identity.
The immensities of the holocaust and genocides of the past century are a reminder of this.
Again, the Church proclaims: “Man can only know himself by the sincere gift of self”. When the burdens of life are taken up and shared in solidarity; when unwelcomed lives are welcomed as gifts, this is when human identity is truly possessed—and the meaning and joy of life is born.
Jing Ping Wong is a civil engineer and Masters of Theology student at the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne.