Arguments About "After-Birth Abortion"

An academic paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2012 caused a stir upon its debut because it very clearly argued in favor of the moral permissibility of “after-birth abortion” – killing newborns, in other words – in all cases where abortion is permitted.

Written by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, the paper’s abstract largely captured the thrust of the argument. 

It said that the authors showed that fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, that their status as potential persons is “morally irrelevant” and that, as adoption is not always in the interests of actual people, infanticide should be permitted where abortion is.

As might have been expected, Giubilini and Minerva received abuse and threats following the article’s publication. They issued an open letter in response in which they apologized for any offense caused but insisted that their argument did not make any legal recommendations regarding infanticide. 

Rather, they said that they had merely discussed the moral permissibility of infanticide in the context of an ongoing philosophical debate that was poorly suited to widespread pickup by the “controversy-hungry” media and non-philosophers.

In his own editorial about the furore, the then editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Julian Savulescu, defended the article’s publication.

“The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris in defence of infanticide, which the authors call after-birth abortion”, Savulescu wrote in February 2012.

The academics’ shock at the public outrage revealed the gulf between some elements of the intellectual elite and the people, two groups that, in any age, might as well occupy different moral universes.

The arguments by some of the world’s “most eminent philosophers and bioethicists” began appearing in the 1970s, with Michael Tooley’s 1972 paper Abortion and Infanticide one of the earliest major contributions in this regard. It took the line that abortion and infanticide are not intrinsically wrong if human fetuses and infants fail to satisfy the conditions required to have a “right to life”.

Incidentally, it was around the time these arguments were being made in academic publications that Western countries began legalizing abortion en masse. The United Kingdom passed the Abortion Act in 1967. The United States saw the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that legalized abortion nationwide.

And on it rolled from there, with most liberal democracies introducing modern abortion regimes throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and into the 2000s and 2010s.

Whereas academics in 2012 could argue that their work was an isolated exercise in reasoning and logical argumentation, the public understood more accurately that this strain of academic thought had led to the world they now inhabited. Questions about the moral status of fetuses had already acquired significant practical and legal consequences.

That, of course, does not justify any abuse or threats the academics actually received. But for those becoming aware of these debates, the issue was anything but abstract.

Rapid Erosion of the Right to Life

Fast forward to 2026 and the dehumanization of the unborn child is proceeding apace, largely accepted on the basis of claims that the unborn have no right to life – especially when that right is weighed against the life of the mother.

As is typical of the times, Massachusetts officials framed the recent legislation as “compassionate, medically appropriate care” while “reproductive rights” face “unprecedented attacks” across the US.

It was presumably similar compassion that motivated the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis hospital in Amsterdam to explore a pilot scheme to allow voluntary terminations of pregnancy between the 22nd and 24th weeks of pregnancy on “social grounds”. That is, abortion in the absence of any medical reason relating to the mother’s health or a malformation of the unborn child.

It represents a serious step in the direction of late-term abortion in Europe, which has remained reluctant to follow the US down that path despite the legislative initiatives of some progressive outliers.

One such initiative was the Netherlands’ Groningen Protocol, which permits the killing of newborns under certain circumstances.

What was once unthinkable is becoming routine. It remains unthinkable to a great many people, but academic arguments appear to be winning out in the minds of those with the power to pass or prevent legislation. Abortion is drifting toward naked infanticide.