The Two Questions That Will Determine Whether Our Culture Accepts Infanticide

Few people understand the culture of death in American law and medicine like Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. He has a blog post over at First Things identifying the two questions society has to answer, which will determine how accepted and engrained infanticide becomes.

Here is his conclusion:

How is it that infanticide has become justifiable when it was unthinkable in the years following World War II (German doctors were hanged at Nuremberg for killing disabled babies)?

The answer involves an increasing clash between contesting first principles vying for societal dominance.

Is human life sacred,

or does our moral worth depend on relevant personhood characteristics?

 

Is society’s ultimate purpose to protect all innocent human life

or to eliminate suffering—a category which both includes eliminating the sufferer, and, as with an unwanted fetus or newborn, the perceived cause of suffering?

The answers we ultimately give to these questions will determine whether infanticide is finally established as unexceptional.

You can read the whole thing here.