I say 'gobbledygook!'

I know nothing about philosophy in the academic sense.

And, after reading this paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, I have no interest in knowing anything about it.

In After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live? a philosopher and an ethicist argue that killing newborns – before they have neurological self-awareness – is ethical for children with disabilities, because it's assumed they would be an unbearable burden to their families and society. They also argue that infanticide is ethical for a healthy baby with no disabilities, if that baby might compromise the psychological, social or economic wellbeing of parents, siblings and society.

In a nutshell, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argue that if a newborn is disabled, not wanted by his or her mother or too expensive, it's ethical for doctors to kill the baby.

In their article, the academics attribute the right to life only to individuals who can appreciate their existence and have ‘aims’ or dreams for the future, so that depriving the person of that life would be experienced as a loss. If individuals can’t value their life and plan for the future, because their brains are in the newborn state, or because they have a disability, the philosophers categorize them as non-persons who would not be harmed if killed.

“Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life,” is how they so eloquently put it.

The philosopher/ethicist duo say that killing newborns who have severe mental and/or physical disabilities is ethical if the parents would have aborted the child in advance – if only they had the knowledge.

An example given is Treacher Collins syndrome, a rare genetic condition that Giubilini and Minerva describe as causing ‘facial deformity’ and physiological ‘failures,’ including potentially life-threatening respiratory problems.

Hmmmmmm. I thought. I remembered the name Treacher Collins because when my son was a toddler we visited an ear-nose-and-throat specialist at a world-renowned children's hospital who mentioned the syndrome in passing, noting that some of the facial differences were similar to those seen in my son. In fact, when telling us about Treacher Collins, the ENT said that Sylvester Stallone had the condition, and that while people with Treacher Collins had facial differences that required reconstructive surgery, they were intact intellectually and led full lives.

That doesn't seem to line up with the journal article's description of 'physiological failures' and life-threatening respiratory problems.

I did a quick search online and came across this blog by a young woman with Treacher Collins who is a physician in internal medicine, pediatrics and sleep medicine. She is also married and from the looks of the blog, loves her life.

Guibilini and Minerva note that people with Treacher Collins have typical intelligence so they would be aware of how ‘different’ they are and of all of their problems (seeming to imply that this would make death a better option).

They also tell us that 'many parents' would choose to have an abortion if they found out their child had Treacher Collins prenatally (not sure how they produce evidence of this claim, since it is not a standard syndrome tested for).

It seems to me that our philosopher and ethicist were looking for a syndrome that's not part of the regular prenatal testing battery to give an example of a situation in which parents don't have the option of aborting because they don't know of the diagnosis. Unfortunately, they didn't take much time to actually research Treacher Collins or speak to people living with it.

They lament the fact that in 18 registeries in Europe between 2005 and 2009, 'only' 64 per cent of ‘Down-syndrome cases’ (remember, we’re not talking people here), were detected prenatally, and that 1,700 babies with Down syndrome were born to parents who learned of the diagnosis at birth. For some reason, the philosophers don’t make the leap of understanding to consider that perhaps the parents of those 1,700 babies chose not to have prenatal testing because they decided to carry a child to term whether the child had Down syndrome or not.

They end this section with this bizarre statement: “Once these children are born, there is no choice for the parents but to keep the child, which sometimes is exactly what they would not have done if the disease had been diagnosed before birth.”

In this statement I can hear my 13-year-old son whining "It's not fair," and myself responding, "There are lots of things in life that aren't fair. But that's life."

Hello! Who said control over our circumstances is attainable in this life? Coming to grips with our vulnerability is part of the growing-up process which seems to have been lost on these academics. How would these philosophers ‘solve’ the problem of our mortality? Because I am sure there are many people who might not choose to die either.

But back to the article.

Giubilini and Minerva note that euthanasia in infants has been proposed by philosophers for children with severe abnormalities who meet two conditions: their lives are not worth living (they don’t define this – although we can assume from earlier comments that they equate an unworthy life with intellectual OR physical impairment that limits a person’s ability to envision or achieve their aims or dreams). The other condition is that they are experiencing unbearable suffering.

They tell us it is reasonable to predict that living with a severe condition is against the best interest of the newborn. They don’t say on what they base this prediction, but it’s interesting to note that while economists analyze quality-of-life years using models that assume low quality of life for people with chronic illness and disability, large-scale studies of self-reported satisfaction in people with disabilities paint a different picture.

Dr. Chris Feudtner, a pediatrician and director of the department of medical ethics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia went to great pains to describe this in a talk he gave at the Montreal Children's Hospital last year.

But our philosophers were not listening.

The article is full of contradictions -- on the one hand mentioning studies that find people with severe disabilities are happy, on the other, creating an image of the same people suffering unbearably.

Which one is it?

 They argue that the interests of ‘real people’ – who they define as parents, siblings and society at large – come before those of the newborn, who is a non-person, whether disabled or not. In fact, they suggest the term ‘after-birth abortion’ be used, rather than infanticide, because they compare the newborn to a fetus rather than a child.

“Actual people’s wellbeing could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of,” they write.

And: “If a disease has not been detected during the pregnancy, if something went wrong during the delivery, or if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the choice of not being forced to do something they can’t afford.” Since they believe the newborn does not yet exist as a person, they perceive the newborn as expendable.

Can't you hear that voice of my 13-year-old: "Why do I have to? It's not fair!"

Guibilini and Minerva even go so far as to say that a healthy newborn could ethically be killed rather than being placed for adoption because the idea of adoption might be more psychologically distressing to the mother.

The killing of disabled newborns would take place within a few days of the birth, they say, which they believe is enough time for the doctors to detect abnormalities. Further, in the case where a child is healthy, the killing can take place outside of any time threshhold as long as neurological assessments determine the child is not self-aware.

Minerva is quoted in the Daily Mail as saying: "This is not a proposal for law. This is pure academic discussion.”

The picture that runs with the piece shows a young woman (20-something?) who was formerly at Oxford and is now at the University of Melbourne.

Perhaps Minerva would like to consider the psychological 'harm' done to the wellbeing of 'real' families like ours who have to read her drivel? We can only hope that in the next few years she gains some life experience, is humbled and comes to her senses.

The editors of the Journal of Medical Ethics defended publishing the article in the name of intellectual freedom. I'm more interested in intellectual rigour.