A modest proposal.

In 1729, Johnathan Swift wrote a satirical essay suggesting that the problems of the Irish poor could be solved if they sold their children as food to the wealthy. The satire's power derives in large part from the straight-faced detail with which it argues for the eating of children as a way to alleviate suffering. It also works to an extent because it is a reductio ad absurdum. It is clear to even the coldest-hearted reader that eating infants is ridiculous, but it showed the hypocrisy of genuine but patronising solutions often proposed by the wealthy for the poor. Just because something can be argued logically doesn't mean it isn't abhorrent.

All of which I mention because of the stories in last week's press about so-called 'after birth abortion'. On seeing the story first in the Daily Mail I assumed that the story was probably exaggerated to the point that it was untrue. On the knee-jerk basis that the UK media are evil, I pitied the poor researcher (for some reason only one (the female one - draw your own conclusions) of two authors has been targeted) and the inevitable deluge of hate she would receive.

The deluge of hate has certainly been unleashed, and it hardly needs saying that hate of this sort is disgusting, disturbing, and no doubt terrifying for the recipients.

The catch is, though, that the Mail's report of the content of the academic article is not, in essence, wrong, although the Mail was no doubt delighted to give the hornet's nest a good kick. The article, entitled 'After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?' does argue that there is no moral difference between a foetus and a newborn baby. The abstract of the article speaks for itself:

"Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled."

Following the storm that arose, the Journal of Medical Ethics, which published the article, strongly defended it's decision to publish, pointing out that it is not even a 'novel' argument. The novel aspect is the proposal that it is just as ethically acceptable to kill a healthy newborn as a severely disabled one, because the the newborn is only a potential person, and not a person. This 'novel' aspect of the paper is by far its very weakest point. While it could be argued that it is a compassionate act to end the lives of people with extreme and terminal illnesses - as is widely viewed as tolerable at the end of life for adults - the article makes the case that killing a newborn could be viewed in some cases as preferable to adoption, because a dead infant might be less psychologically damaging to the mother than an adopted one.

'However weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people [ie non self-aware newborns and foetuses] to become actual ones [ie self aware humans], because this latter interest amounts to zero.' (Comments in parentheses are mine.)

"However weak the alleged interest of actual people can be". Let's analyse that phrase. Elementary maths tells us that anything times zero is zero. So something ridiculously small that can be considered a benefit to self-aware person (eg, 'I'm hungry', or even 'I'm inconvenienced', or 'I'm bored') is argument enough to kill a 'potential person'. O, as the saying goes, MG.

Dr Minerva, the author who has received the lion's share of the hate, has defended the article by saying that 'This is not a political paper - this is not a proposal for law, .... This is pure academic, theoretical discussion.' Personally, I don't find that a remotely satisfactory defence. Academics spend much of their time arguing that that they don't live in ivory towers, and I don't believe for an instant they do. The point of ethical discussions is, ultimately, to shape the development of global opinion far outside the academic world. The article, although intended for an academic audience, and not intended to - directly - shape policy, of course has the objective of persuading people that, were infanticide legal, it would be both morally acceptable and indeed have benefits for parents and society.

All of which brings us back to Swift. If we were to accept that a newborn baby is not a person, and is therefore disposable at the convenience of it's parents or society (because 'adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people', and because it's interests will always be summed to zero when put against 'actual' humans), then we also must accept that morally a baby is no different from food. According to the authors' own logic, there could be no moral objection to eating babies, at least so long as it is a self-aware human doing the eating.

So what is my ultimate objection? On one level, simply that infanticide is 'just obviously wrong'. A very weak response. But why go further than that? It was good enough for Swift to make a point that has stood the test of 300 years' reading. 'Just obviously wrong', though, speaks to our shared cultural, ethical and moral make up. Millions of years of history and evolution have brought us to that conclusion: that a world that does not care for its infants, even it's poor, disabled and those who face a life of suffering, is not a world worth living in; that the 'milk of human kindness' is what makes life tolerable, even though it is often illogical, foolish and inconsistent.