Professor Says Infanticide Can Be A 'Merciful Action'

Maureen Collins | July 24, 2017
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Infanticide is just alright with Dr. Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago. 

Last week, the professor of Ecology wrote a piece on his personal blog justifying killing newborns. The piece garnered attention from the National Review.

Coyne asks: if it is acceptable to abort a baby with a debilitating medical condition, why is it wrong to kill the same baby once he or she is born? He writes: 

I see no substantive difference that would make the former act moral and the latter immoral. After all, newborn babies aren’t aware of death, aren’t nearly as sentient as an older child or adult, and have no rational faculties to make judgments (and if there’s severe mental disability, would never develop such faculties). It makes little sense to keep alive a suffering child who is doomed to die or suffer life in a vegetative or horribly painful state.

This is not the first time a professor has pitched infanticide as a moral good. Dr. Peter Singer of Princeton is famous for his pro-infanticide stance -- he thinks it should be legal to euthanize an infant up to 18 months old.

Like Singer, Coyne says he agrees that "euthanasia is the merciful action" in cases of severe birth defects. 

You have to admit, there is a certain level of intellectual honesty here. Both Pinker and Coyne admit that abortion and infanticide kill a human being. They simply argue that a human being is not a "person" until they can reason, and that killing a newborn is justified in order to alleviate suffering. 

Unlike many pro-choice proponents, at least these professors call it what it is: killing an infant. 

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