
This terrible case of a girl giving birth and stabbing her baby to death raises a very important point. Some, like Princeton’s Peter Singer, believe that a newborn is not a person and so infanticide should not be a crime. A regular commenter here at Secondhand Smoke recently stated that there is a moral distinction to be made between a neo-nate, a baby in the first 24 hours, and later aged babies, and that a newborn is more akin to a fetus than a baby.
So, here is where the rubber meets the road: With regard to a case such as this—let’s not prejudge this particular allegation since people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, there may be mental illness issues, etc.—should the intentional killing of a newborn baby who is not wanted be a crime?
I say a newborn infant is a human being with full moral status, and that infanticide is murder most foul—regardless of the physical condition of the child. But some say infanticide isn’t murder because the baby isn’t a person or it might not be wrong depending on the physical state of the child. What say you? Please comment here and take the poll below.
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…