By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
During a debate held at Princeton University about the moral status of the unborn, famed Australian philosopher Peter Singer declared that “an infant has no moral status because he is not self-aware.”
According to a report by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University and John Finnis, professor emeritus of philosophy in the University of Oxford, debated the subject last weekend. Even though the conference was organized to seek new dialogue on the issue of abortion, there was no discussion about the act of abortion itself.
Singer’s position is that the infant has no moral status because he is not self-aware while Finnis argued that biology and metaphysics determines the status of the fetus – not ethics such as Singer suggests. Finnis also took exception to the use of the word “fetus”, which he called the “f-word.”
“As used in the conference program and website, which are not medical contexts, it is offensive, dehumanizing, prejudicial, manipulative,“ Finnis said about the word. “A website describing ultrasound for expectant mothers doesn’t talk about her fetus but her baby, and so do her doctors unless they’re her abortionists or think she has been or is interested in abortion.”
Finnis believes rights are recognized, not conferred, and rejects Singer’s “moral status” approach, which negates the personhood of unborn children.
Singer defended his support for infanticide, stating that self-awareness confers moral status, and not species membership, C-FAM reports. He said that while abortion is the killing of a human being, it is not immoral because the child does not meet the self-awareness test.
“In his utilitarian view, Singer believes that there can even be a moral duty to kill humans lacking self-awareness, including the disabled,” C-FAM reports, noting that the philosopher has been criticized for not taking his own advice in regard to his mother, who died of advanced Alzeheimers disease in 2000.
While the debate between Singer and Finnis was civil, another event co-organizer, Francis Kissling, former president of the radical pro-abortion group known as Catholics for a Free Choice, shocked the crowd by announcing that “We have to get rid of the idea of evil.”
About establishing the right to abortion, she said: “I don’t care how you accomplish it, whether through a constitution, the UN, state laws or federals laws, or by the Taliban.”
The goal of the conference was to find a new approach to the issue of abortion and to find common ground between the two sides. C-FAM says that while the debate was civil, the latter goal “proved more elusive.”
Other notable speakers included Helen Alvare, Sunny Anand, Christian Brugger, Eleanor Drey, David Garrow, Richard Garnett, William Hurlbut, Dawn Johnsen, Eva Kattay, and Robin West.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
