Anyone still wondering about where the train wreck of progressively-inspired moral relativism is leading Western society can stop wondering. An article written by Drs. Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini published in the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) offers us, according to JME editor Professor Julian Savulescu, a “well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.” The title of the article? “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?”

“Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health,” states the introductory paragraph. “By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue 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.”

In a recent column I mentioned the proclivity of progressive efforts to manipulate language, but this one’s a heart-stopper. “After-birth abortion?” Those less attuned to the rhythms of progressives and their cutting edge terminology might be more inclined toward a couple of different terms – such as “murder” or “infanticide.”

Not Prof. Savulescu. “The authors provocatively argue that there is no moral difference between a fetus and a newborn,” he explains. “Their capacities are relevantly similar. If abortion is permissible, infanticide should be permissible. The authors proceed logically from premises which many people accept to a conclusion that many of those people would reject.”

Many people accept that there is no moral difference between a fetus and a newborn? Really? If that’s the case what’s the “moral difference” between a newborn and a one-year-old – or a five- or ten-year-old? The good doctors explain:

“Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life.’ We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her. This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.”

“Our point here is that, although it is hard to exactly determine when a subject starts or ceases to be a ‘person,’ a necessary condition for a subject to have a right to X is that she is harmed by a decision to deprive her of X. There are many ways in which an individual can be harmed, and not all of them require that she values or is even aware of what she is deprived of. A person might be ‘harmed’ when someone steals from her the winning lottery ticket even if she will never find out that her ticket was the winning one. Or a person might be ‘harmed’ if something were done to her at the stage of fetus which affects for the worse her quality of life as a person (e.g., her mother took drugs during pregnancy), even if she is not aware of it. However, in such cases we are talking about a person who is at least in the condition to value the different situation she would have found herself in if she had not been harmed. And such a condition depends on the level of her mental development, which in turn determines whether or not she is a ‘person.’”

Thus, in the world inhabited by such thinkers, a smart dog is granted the right to live while an “unaware” human can be eliminated because they won’t know they are being killed. They are correct, however, when they assert the current pro-abortion position, that being human no longer guarantees one a right to life. However, up until now, the pro-abortion argument centered around the concept of “viability,” i.e., the ability of a fetus to live on its own outside the womb as the basis for deciding when the oft-called “clump of cells” was determined to become human. Medical advances however, have moved the timeline of viability backward in the pregnancy cycle, which is undoubtedly problematic for the abortion-on-demand crowd. The doctors have eliminated the problem completely: “the level of mental development” is now the ultimate criterion that determines whether or not one is human. What level of mental development?

“[i]t is hard to exactly determine when a subject starts or ceases to be a ‘person…’” Ergo, whatever we decide, whenever we decide it.

The doctors attempt to justify this position with the idea that “[E]uthanasia in infants has been proposed by philosophers for children with severe abnormalities whose lives can be expected to be not worth living and who are experiencing unbearable suffering,” further noting that many such abnormalities remain undetected in the womb, and that, currently, after such children are born, “there is no choice for the parents but to keep the child, which sometimes is exactly what they would not have done if the disease had been diagnosed before birth.” Therefore, “when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

Doubtless there are many who would find this argument persuasive. A hideously deformed child, beset by severe pain, with no hope of living anything other than a short, brutish life, even as that life imposes an unbearable burden on other family members, could persuade reasonable people to conclude that “post-partum euthanasia” is a viable alternative.

Yet witness how easily the doctors slide down their self-constructed slippery slope: “The alleged right of individuals (such as fetuses and newborns) to develop their potentiality, which someone defends, is over-ridden by the interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being because, as we have just argued, merely potential people cannot be harmed by not being brought into existence. Actual people’s well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of. Sometimes this situation can be prevented through an abortion, but in some other cases this is not possible. In these cases, since non-persons have no moral rights to life, there are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions.” (italic mine)

In other words, humanity is determined by convenience. Thus, a healthy child can also be killed if it cuts into one’s food budget, or “me time.”

What about giving up a healthy baby for adoption?

“Indeed, however weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest amounts to zero. On this perspective, the interests of the actual people involved matter, and among these interests, we also need to consider the interests of the mother who might suffer psychological distress from giving her child up for adoption…It is true that grief and sense of loss may accompany both abortion and after-birth abortion as well as adoption, but we cannot assume that for the birthmother the latter is the least traumatic…”

“We are not suggesting that these are definitive reasons against adoption as a valid alternative to after-birth abortion. Much depends on circumstances and psychological reactions. What we are suggesting is that, if interests of actual people should prevail, then after-birth abortion should be considered a permissible option for women who would be damaged by giving up their newborns for adoption.”

If this sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because it is the ultimate extrapolation of a “woman’s right to choose.”

Despite what many might conclude, this is not a column about the pros and cons of abortion. As the practice exists today, one can offer reasonable arguments for its availability, such as rape, or a pregnancy that endangers the life of the mother, and equally persuasive arguments against a practice that allows women to terminate a pregnancy for nothing more than convenience sake.

The purpose of this column is to illuminate how easily moral relativism allows one to move rather seamlessly from that which is reasonable to that which is utterly grotesque. It is this facility that threatens our society more than anything else. We have become a nation where far too many people believe we can set the parameters of good and evil as we go along, and that we must all worship at the altar of non-judgmentalism.

Yet the concept of non-judgmentalism is yet another progressive manipulation of the language: those who refuse to ascribe value to anything are not non-judgmental. They are amoral. Furthermore, a society with substantial numbers of amoral people is easily manipulable. But don’t take my word for it. There are more than a few people still alive with tattooed numbers on their arms who can attest to the depths that easily manipulated, “reasonable” people can sink.

Fanaticism rarely occurs in a vacuum. It proceeds from that which is initially perceived to be reasonable to utter depravity. From abortion to infanticide. From a classless society to the ninety-nine percent versus the one percent. From the so-called one percent to the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau.

One incrementally amoral step after another.