; if it is defective it is OK to get rid of it.
Minerva and Giubilini give lots of reasons for abortion: "the fetus is affected by a severe abnormality that will make the quality of its life extremely poor; the pregnancy puts at risk a woman's health, or even her life; the fetus is the result of sexual abuse; the woman is incapable (for various reasons) of taking care of a child at that particular moment in her life; there are extreme economic difficulties or social conditions which are hardly compatible with having children, and so on. …"
Do reasons for abortion justify killing the newborn, the professors ask? They decry the large numbers of Down syndrome children born in Europe. Obviously, they write, if the parents knew they could have aborted these children.
Here's why: "The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, that is, neither can be considered a 'person' in a morally relevant sense" and "It is not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense."
Aside from leaky logic, the thrust of the argument centers on a definition of person that comes startlingly close to the conditions of people now in hospice care around the world. If individuals cease to "be" persons in "the morally relevant sense" must they be kept alive? What is their status? What are their rights?
The defining thought in these discussions -- at either end of the life spectrum -- reduces to the usefulness of the human being involved. Whether eight months or eight years or eighty years, the concept of an "inconvenient" individual melds with the inconvenience of palliative care for the terminally ill.
There's no doubt about it. The life you save may be your own.
[Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. She will speak Sept. 24, 2016, at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. and in October 2016 at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Conn. Her books include Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future, Women Deacons? Essays with Answers and In the Image of Christ: Essays on Being Catholic and Female.]
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