Attention Rick Santorum, You've Got Mail

This should play neatly into the hands of nutjob Republican candidate, Rick Santorum.   As a devout, even rabid Catholic, Santorum draws a lot of flack for his extreme social conservatism and the hyperbole in his arguments against everything from same sex marriage to abortion.   Now a couple of British medical academics have given Santorum the fodder that he needs so badly.

In an article published in the British Journal of Medical Ethics, entitled After Birth Abortion; Why Should the Baby Live?, Professors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, argue that parents ought to be able to have their baby put down if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

They argued: “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.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “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’. 

This is a hard one to believe.  It sounds like something straight out of Nazi Germany.   And, for that, it should appeal to the Santorumistas and their candidate.   I wonder how long it will be before we hear from him on this?