After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?

… A serious philosophical problem arises when the same conditions that would have justified abortion become known after birth

… can also be consistently applied to killing a newborn human

… Euthanasia in infants has been proposed by philosophers for children with severe abnormalities whose lives can be expected to be not worth living

… the Groningen Protocol (2002) allows to actively terminate the life of ‘infants with a hopeless prognosis who experience what parents and medical experts deem to be unbearable suffering’

… when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible

… The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, that is, neither can be considered a ‘person’ in a morally relevant sense

… all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons

… he level of her mental development, which in turn determines whether or not she is a ‘person’

… fetuses and newborns are not persons, they are potential persons

… the interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being

… the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn

            With links

          The Groningen Protocol