Clashes of consensus: on the problem of both justifying abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome and rejecting infanticide

Abstract

Although the abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome has become commonplace, infanticide is still widely rejected. Generally, there are three ways of justifying the differentiation between abortion and infanticide: by referring to the differences between the moral status of the fetus versus the infant, by referring to the differences of the moral status of the act of abortion versus the act of infanticide, or by separating the way the permissibility of abortion is justified from the way the impermissibility of infanticide is justified. My argument is that none of these ways justifies the abortion of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome while simultaneously rejecting infanticide. Either the justification for abortion is consistent with infanticide, or it is implausible to justify abortion while rejecting infanticide. I conclude the article by making some preliminary remarks about how one might manage the situation posed by my argument.

The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act: Need to keep pace with technology

“…However, another way of interpreting abortion in case of Down syndrome would be that of stretching the timeline to after birth with the same set of conditions and thus arguing against abortion: If we are willing to allow abortion on the grounds of a Down syndrome diagnosis, would it not be equivalent to allowing infanticide on those very same grounds? That can be an unnerving proposition to advocates of abortion that is well discussed recently by Henrik Friberg-Fernros (18). This extension of the argument essentially plugs for euthanasia, but that is a separate topic and out of scope of the current paper.…”

The Explanatory Power of the Soul

“…This view is, for instance, commonly considered to exclude fetuses and permanently unconscious individuals from being persons. However, more controversially, critics of the performance account of personhood have claimed that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that infants also should be excluded as being considered as persons and that infanticide therefore is permissible according this view (Kazcor ; Hershenov and Hershenov ; Friberg‐Fernros ). Indeed, many proponents of this view admit that this conclusion certainly follows from this view (McMahan ; Tooley ; Giubilini and Minerva, ).…”