Infanticide

“Rather than being ‘actual persons’, newborns were ‘potential persons’. Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life.’”

Abortion Activist and Oxford Professor, Francesca Minerva

If we can dictate that life only begins based on the status of a living, breathing being according to their physical location (i.e in the womb vs. out of the womb), the next step is to say that abortions should be allowed even into infancy.

This is exactly what is now being pushed. Infanticide, or “after-birth abortions” will become a reality if Article 22 becomes part of the VT constitution.

Surprisingly, infanticide is currently legal in parts of the world. In the Netherlands, for example, they have a “sophisticated” process dubbed the Groningen Protocol, where a medical decision is made to legally kill an infant during the first year of their life – to an average of 600 infants murdered each year. Apparently, science now gets to dictate what is morally and ethically acceptable.

[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.

Professors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva
Oxford University Bio-ethicists, Journal of Medical Ethics

In 2019, 49% of women who had an abortion fell below the national poverty line. This socio-economic statistic is also used as a justification to argue infanticide should be legalized.

“Actual people’s well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money, and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of…”
[Professors Giubilini and Minerva]

Article 22 will transform the laws of Vermont into that of the Netherlands. It is imperative that we fight to protect life at every stage of development.