From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon May 13 2002 - 21:57:12 MDT
Here's another vote for infanticide. Human infants
are really not yet persons. Just because they feel
and make primitive associations - very quickly, too -
and can be lots of fun to cuddle doesn't qualify. The
limits on infanticide have to do with our need to draw
the line somewhere. Clearly a human embryo is not a
human being any more than a human fingernail is. Just
a potential human being. But so is every epithelial
cell in my mouth - or it soon will be. Babies sure
look like persons, and the religious nonsense confuses
everything...
In a normal society, the sizeable investment made in
bringing a feotus to term would itself tend to
eliminate most infanticide, especially as we get
better and better at weeding out the unfortunate
defectives early on. In the late '70's, I was offered
$20,000 once by a businessman whose wife was
unfertile, for ANY healthy baby. With genetic therapy
and other medical wonders on the horizon, unless the
Luddite Christians kill them off, even major defects
may well be fixable.
Rather than forceing someone to keep an infant alive,
regardless of the quality of that life, I would rather
see an normal market in parenting rights, which is
forbidden by law now (but still exists, for sure). I
say "parently rights," not "selling children." Once a
person does qualify as a person, you can't buy or sell
it, because you can't own it. You can, however, sell
your rights and interests in that person.
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