I have just written about two academics who have offered a spirited defence of killing newborn babies. Now the editor of the journal they were published in comes to their defence, and the defence of infanticide. And worse yet, he says those who are opposed to this are guilty of “hate speech”. I kid you not.
But perhaps we should not be surprised about all this. The editor, Julian Savulescu, is in fact infamous for his rather perverted ethical stances. Indeed, I have written about him before: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2008/11/18/those-unethical-ethicists/
He now defends baby killing and denounces those who dare to express their concerns about this diabolical activity. And he is a leading, influential ethicist! Here is how one news outlet covered this development:
“The editor of an ethics journal that recently published an article advocating infanticide (what the authors call ‘post-birth abortion’), has responded to widespread criticism by pointing out that promoting the killing of newborns is nothing new: in fact, in the Netherlands infant euthanasia is already legal and practiced.
“Editor Julian Savulescu also criticizes what he calls the ‘hate speech’ directed at the authors of the article, arguing that the public’s response to the piece shows that ‘proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.’
“In the journal article Alberto Giubilin, a philosopher from the University of Milan, and Francesca Minerva, an ethicist from the University of Melbourne, made the case that ‘after-birth abortion’ should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is perfectly healthy. They base their argument on the premise that the unborn baby and the newborn do not have the moral status of actual persons and are consequently ‘morally irrelevant.’
“In response to the backlash, Savulescu wrote that the arguments in the article ‘are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris.’
“He also observes that the paper ‘draws attention to the fact that infanticide is practised in the Netherlands’.”
Wow – where does one begin here? We know that social engineering is always preceded by verbal engineering. Euphemisms are used to cover up grisly realities. So now the moral crime of infanticide is simply to be known as ‘post-birth abortion’. Incredible.
Big Brother, the dictator of totalitarian Oceania, in George Orwell’s novel 1984, would be proud as punch to have such a person working in his PR department. Savulescu and his ilk have perfected the art of doublethink and Newspeak.
Indeed, according to Savulescu, fanatics are those who think infanticide is morally wrong. Yet evidently those eggheads who justify killing already-born babies are somehow not fanatics! Talk about moral inversion and perversion. Two and a half millennia ago the prophet Isaiah said this: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
He must have had in mind these so-called ethicists which we are plagued with today. And the good editor informs us that we are simply “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”. Oh, so a liberal society has as its highest values the killing of new born babies, even perfectly healthy ones? And to oppose that is “hate speech,” “fanaticism,” and a threat to “academic discussion and freedom”.
I cannot recall hearing such morally perverted “reasoning” for quite some time. And these guys are ethicists? They are teaching us what the good and moral life is meant to be? In their warped scheme of things, killing babies is very good, while opposing such atrocities is very bad.
I am really just flabbergasted – almost speechless. These are the cream of the crop of our ethicists, teaching others how to think ethically? These are the ones calling the shots about what is right and wrong in our universities, journals and public arenas?
No wonder we are in such dire straits. With experts like these allowed to get away with these abominations, we really do not stand a chance. Talk about Dr Evil and Dr Death. Talk about rogue ethicists who are polluting the very moral fibre of our society. Talk about dancing with the devil.
I can just imagine the Nazi eugenicists and mass murderers responding in the same way. As people discovered the gas chambers, death camps and other elements of the final solution, and raised their voice in protest, these guys would have chirped: “Hey you are fanatics – stop all the hate speech already.”
They would have loved the line by our editor: “proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics”. Why do I get the feeling that if Hitler and the Nazis were advertising for more academics, doctors and scientists to get on board with their program, ethicists like these would have perfectly fitted the bill?
We thought all these academic defenders of the Holocaust had died out with the Nuremberg trials. But they seem to be alive and well today, teaching in our universities, writing in our journals, and dominating our public discussions. The Final Solution did not end in 1945 obviously – it has just morphed into new forms.
And Western universities today seem filled with these folks. I for one will stand against this to my dying day. These baby killers can call this ‘hate speech’ all they like. Tough beans: they will be getting plenty more of it from me. Just as the normal, ethical human being was the one incensed and enraged by what the Nazis were doing, so too today.
The ethical person is one who would be utterly gobsmacked and outraged by what these ethicists are saying. Those who show no concern about all this, and offer no vocal opposition, are the ones, like these ethicists, who are the really morally deficient folks here.
Tragically there was mainly silence from the German citizens living during the Nazi reign. I sure hope there will not be this deadly silence again today, when similar pro-death ideologies are being allowed full sway in the public arena. Those who cannot or will not get incensed by this are moral zombies who have long ago lost both head and heart.
Someone who knew full well about all this, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, once put it this way: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Or as we read in Dante’s Inferno: “The hottest level in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in a moral crisis.”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/journal-editor-defends-pro-infanticide-piece-killing-newborns-is-already-le?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=67f1dd4545-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines_02_28_2012&utm_medium=email
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