Should infanticide for Zika babies be legal?

[Elixir]

Outside this window I see it as the equivalent of killing an animal.

'cept you cain't eat 'em!

 

[Axulus]

I'm probably in the minority here, but I don't see anything morally wrong about infanticide performed before the baby has gained some form of self-awareness that separates it from other animals I have no problem with killing painlessly (laboratory mice, livestock, zoo animals). Just draw the line conservatively, way before there's any possibility that the infant has a conception of itself or a cognitive preference to go on living. If a baby born with Zika is euthanized at two weeks of age, and the parents decide to wait until the epidemic has been resolved before having another child, nobody with an interest in their future well-being is worse off. So, I take Tom Sawyer's bait while disagreeing with fast on the blanket pronouncement that killing babies must be wrong. Peter Singer has gone into this topic at length, and gets a lot of hate for it, but I think he's right that nothing magical happens to a baby when it goes from one side of the birth canal to the other.

Why does having a conception of itself matter? Why not allow killings in those cases as well? While the kid is in a dreamless sleep, it will not have any conception of anything at that point, so even that part seems irrelevant.

 

[RavenSky]

That or renouncing parental rights and responsibilities if it is not allowed?

I vote yes...

And then we have the polar opposite with Marco Rubio:

Sen. Marco Rubio said Saturday that he doesn’t believe a pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus should have the right to an abortion — even if she had reason to believe the child would be born with severe microcephaly.

http://www.politico.com/states/flor...-for-zika-infected-women-104555#ixzz4IJ28bofA

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Yes, we need more children to suffer needlessly. Great job, conservatives. You're so heroic.

 

[PyramidHead]

I'm probably in the minority here, but I don't see anything morally wrong about infanticide performed before the baby has gained some form of self-awareness that separates it from other animals I have no problem with killing painlessly (laboratory mice, livestock, zoo animals). Just draw the line conservatively, way before there's any possibility that the infant has a conception of itself or a cognitive preference to go on living. If a baby born with Zika is euthanized at two weeks of age, and the parents decide to wait until the epidemic has been resolved before having another child, nobody with an interest in their future well-being is worse off. So, I take Tom Sawyer's bait while disagreeing with fast on the blanket pronouncement that killing babies must be wrong. Peter Singer has gone into this topic at length, and gets a lot of hate for it, but I think he's right that nothing magical happens to a baby when it goes from one side of the birth canal to the other.

Why does having a conception of itself matter? Why not allow killings in those cases as well? While the kid is in a dreamless sleep, it will not have any conception of anything at that point, so even that part seems irrelevant.

Just as it is reasonable to think you would prefer not to be robbed, despite you not currently voicing that preference until someone asks you about it, there is good reason to think that a sleeping child would prefer not to be killed even though they are not in a position to confirm or deny it. Sleeping persons still have these 'dispositional' preferences. Newborns don't.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

The fact is many conservatives don't give a shit about other people suffering.

 

[Jarhyn]

Why does having a conception of itself matter? Why not allow killings in those cases as well? While the kid is in a dreamless sleep, it will not have any conception of anything at that point, so even that part seems irrelevant.

Just as it is reasonable to think you would prefer not to be robbed, despite you not currently voicing that preference until someone asks you about it, there is good reason to think that a sleeping child would prefer not to be killed even though they are not in a position to confirm or deny it. Sleeping persons still have these 'dispositional' preferences. Newborns don't.

You make a lot of assumptions here. Personally I DO want to be robbed, raped, beaten, burned, dismembered, flayed, sacrificed by cultists, dissolved slowly in acid, tortured, castrated, enslaved and a great many other things. I just don't want to suffer the physical consequences of any of these things or have them disrupt the current course of my life, nor do I want to burden society with the mechanisms that would be required for me to have these experiences without disrupting my life personally. I want their experience and their memory, without being deprived of my physical ability to act in the world and without depriving society of its adaptiveness and functions to myself and others. I think that given the opportunity and time to do so, nearly everyone would try such novelties as exploring the extremes of human experience.

The issue with killing kids isn't trivial, to be sure, but it is the effect on society that allows it, and the people who do it, it is the ends consequent to the means that makes the means bad.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

What the actual fuck?

 

[PyramidHead]

Just as it is reasonable to think you would prefer not to be robbed, despite you not currently voicing that preference until someone asks you about it, there is good reason to think that a sleeping child would prefer not to be killed even though they are not in a position to confirm or deny it. Sleeping persons still have these 'dispositional' preferences. Newborns don't.

You make a lot of assumptions here. Personally I DO want to be robbed, raped, beaten, burned, dismembered, flayed, sacrificed by cultists, dissolved slowly in acid, tortured, castrated, enslaved and a great many other things. I just don't want to suffer the physical consequences of any of these things or have them disrupt the current course of my life, nor do I want to burden society with the mechanisms that would be required for me to have these experiences without disrupting my life personally. I want their experience and their memory, without being deprived of my physical ability to act in the world and without depriving society of its adaptiveness and functions to myself and others. I think that given the opportunity and time to do so, nearly everyone would try such novelties as exploring the extremes of human experience.

nobody cares

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I care. It really bothers me that nobody's dissolving Jarhyn in acid right now.