>Equality of consideration has nothing to do with reason, colour, gender, or
>species. The disabled fetus and the normal infant are in the same boat. You
>correctly characterise a person but it is not necessary to be a person to have
>moral standing. Suffering is the criterion. Why do you continue to
>misrepresent
>Singer? Not that you are alone. THis misrepresentation is common in
>anti-Singer
>quarters.
> Neither Justin nor I agree with SInger's position that parents or doctors
>sould be allowed to kill some disabled infants but what we have been insisting
>upon is that opponents at least be fair to Singer. We have not been
>successful.
>
> THe standard of humanity you are criticising has to do only with
>personhood. But this has nothing to do with placing any particular moral worth
>on reason, autonomy etc. either. Singer's criteria are conceptual, not moral
>requirements, for having a right to life. He is not saying that the normal
>infant is more valuable than the disabled infant. He is saying that neither
>has a right to life. Why? Because
>neither is capable of envisioning a future that it would lack if killed or can
>desire such a future etc. Now this may be stupid or whatever, but it has
>nothing to do with placing more value on the normal than disabled infant- even
>though it does have ethical implications. These ethical implications are just
>as negative for normal as for the disabled since both lose any appeal to a
>right to life to protect them against being killed.
I've *already* made a point of noting that neither "normal" nor disabled newborns have a "right to life," according to Singer, because neither is a "person," in my previous posts. What makes a difference is parents' wishes: whether they *want* a baby to live or die. Singer says that since a severe disability is a threat to both the infant's and parents' happiness, parents are justified in having the disabled baby euthanized. Singer, as a utilitarian *bioethicist*, is arguing for the "quality of life" ethic, i.e., making "quality of life" judgments to determine who is to live and who is to die. The distinction that matters in the "quality of life" ethic is not merely between persons and non-persons. What matters is if someone's life -- a disabled infant, an elderly woman with Alzheimer's disease, etc. -- is *worth* living and hence *worth* medical treatment. The distinctions that matter in such medico-ethical decisions are different qualities of life *among* non-persons. Since Singer thinks that the traditional medical ethics which tells us (at least in theory) all human beings have a "right to life" has already broken down with "the widespread acceptance of abortion and passive euthanasia [= allowing a human being to die by denying him/her life-prolonging medical treatment]" (_Practical Ethics_ 217), as well as advance in medical technologies, Singer asserts that we should *explicitly* make life-or-death decisions based upon "quality of life" judgments, since, he says, that's what many people -- especially doctors -- have *already* been quietly doing anyway.
It is you who are misrepresenting Singer by *ignoring* his work as a bioethical advocate for explicit "quality of life" judgments. Singer's argument for selective infanticide and euthanasia for those whose "quality of life" is not worth medical treatment is clear in _Practical Ethics_, but if you don't understand it, read _Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics_ (NY: St. Martin's Griffin, 1994) which is entirely devoted to making a case for the "quality of life" ethic. The book is actually a gripping read, full of sensational stories of "non-persons" -- disabled, in coma, brain-dead, etc. -- who Singer thinks are better off if they are denied life-prolonging medical interventions. In some particular cases, in fact, I agree with Singer (e.g. the case of pregnant women who became brain-dead but whose bodies were kept alive nonetheless so that fetuses can grow in their brain-dead bodies). I simply think he draws a wrong ethical and philosophical conclusion based upon *extreme cases*. Yes, sometimes, "quality of life" judgments _are_ inescapable, but it doesn't mean that we should build a *universal* principle out of what we may have to do in *exceptional and exceptionally difficult* cases.
Yoshie