"After-birth abortion"

Before I start this I want to ensure you that I'm not a crazy pro-lifer.

I can't stand the people who hang around outside abortion clinics with pictures of aborted fetuses and try and make women feel guilty, and I wouldn't force my opinions on abortion on anyone. My belief is that if the baby being born is going to harm the mother in any way then abortion is okay, but otherwise I don't support it. However, I would never tell someone else they should agree with me on that because having a baby is a big deal.

A lot of you will have heard about the journal article entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?” If not, check out the news report here.

My first question is this: if you are willing to go as far as giving birth to your baby then why on earth would you want to kill it? And how could you kill it? How could you carry that little thing around for nine months, let it grow inside you, gaining strength from your own body, and then kill it like squashing a spider with a newspaper?

Maybe the biological mother doesn't want it, but what about all those couples who can't have children, who could be some of the best parents? What about gay couples? Lesbian couples? People who are so willing to love these children with the most unconditional love?

The article argued that "the moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.” But a baby, a newborn baby, does have these properties! The main one being that it no longer needs to be attached to its mother to breathe. From that point it is an individual and its life has just begun.

The article also states "academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born." I'm really struggling for words in response to this. Why don't people put their children up for adoption? Is it easier to know that, ten years on, you won't have to wonder where they are? This world is not about you.

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