Conservatives were horrified when the Journal of Medical Ethics published an article advocating "after-birth abortion" for handicapped, or just inconvenient, babies. They are correct that it is a disgusting piece of amoral analysis, but that is its virtue. As much as conservatives hate it, progressives hate it more. Many are convinced that it's a plant by the pro-life crowd. What progressives cannot articulate, but intuitively understand, is that by applying a reductio ad absurdum approach to the notion of abortion, the article forces pro-abortion people to confront the Big Lie that underpins their willingness to terminate a pregnancy, even an advanced one. Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini have advanced a very simple proposition, which is that only "a person" deserves to live: The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual. [snip] Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but....
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