Sam Harris

Found this article on after birth abortion.  Wondering what the sam Harris community thinks of this and whether it actually does challenge notions of pro-choice distinctions between abortions and infanticide?

http://mobile.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2012/03/after_birth_abortion_the_pro_choice_case_for_infanticide_.html

People are so naive. After birth abortion happened all the time when the baby was born with holoprosencephaly,  where the embryonic forebrain fails to to divide into the hemispheres. resulting in a single-lobed brain structure and severe skull and facial defects, we’re talking unsurvivable (but still born live!) gross anatomical defects. 

I will remind you here that humans are biological creatures and , oh there is no God, so just anything can and does go wrong with horrific results. Doctors killed these babies and told the mother it was born dead and the other drs.  and nurses involved said nothing. This was considered humane.

So please, this has happened since antiquity and into modern times. Google anencephaly and see what you come up with.

The history of abortion isinconsequential. What concerns me is their definition of personhood as beginning when one is neurologically developed, ie when is one fully developed? Lol and why is that the measure of personhood as that would mean u didn’t become a person until adolescence. 

Secondly why should the murky nature of neurological development ethically undermine pro1choice arguments?

Agrreed and agreed. Neurological development is a naive concept at best; it actually goes on until the mid twenties. The basic fact is the fetus is inconveniently located inside a woman’s body so making laws about it necessarily involves her. The whole thing is completely stupid. . If it were inside a man’s body, an abortion would be a sacred right . A line has to be drawn and the clearest place to draw it is after birth and not before. All other claims to defining before or after “personhood” are stupid. I have to RTFA which I just glanced at but if he’s saying infanticide is somehow acceptable he’s desperately trying to save a flagging career by courting controversy and nothing more.

This is what I don’t understand about pro lifters, specifically christian prolifers. The actual arguement is not based an inherent value of life. If one examins the OT carefully there are a number of cases of capital punishment for violation of particular OT rules. For example breaking the sabbath day. The actual arguement using the bible would be concerning the killing of the innocent, that is one that has not violated any command in the bible. This is why some religious people may support capital punishment for particular acts. A newborn has not had a chance yet to violate any command, thus innocent and worth preserving a life.