Voin Milevski
17 December 2012
Abstract
The text written by Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini “After-birth-abortion: why should the baby live?” has, since its first publication this year, caused enormous interest and, in many cases, disapproval of the public. This is entirely understandable as the authors present several controversial claims. Firstly, they start from the fact that serious fetal abnormalities, as well as the risk for the woman’s physical and psychological health often lead to entirely valid causes for abortion. However, what if these circumstances (i.e. the ones that justify abortion) appear only after the baby is born? Can the arguments that are used to justify the killing of a fetus also be consistently applied in the case of killing a newborn? The authors claim that the reasons sufficient for the justification of abortion can also be sufficient to justify “after-birth abortion” – especially in light of the fact that the difference between the moral status of a fetus and a newborn is nonexistent. The goal of the lecture by Voin Milevski is to show that the text by Minerva and Giubilini contains a very interesting and original argumentation. Namely, when the arguments presented by these authors are entirely developed, they show that the praxis we apply is entirely inconsistent. Rather, our intuitions lead us to accept several practices (eg. abortion and euthanasia of highly sick children) – without accepting abortion after birth, although we can’t find any relevant moral reasons for this. Thus, it will be shown that abortion after birth is a consistent option, although it doesn’t have to be accepted.
Biography
Voin Milevski was born in 1982 in Belgrade. He works as a research assistant on the project “Dynamic Systems in Nature and Society: Philosophical and Empirical Aspects”, financed by the Ministry of Sciences of the Republic of Serbia (2011-2014). His areas of interest include bioethics, applied ethics, normative ethics and meta-ethics. He is an associate of the Center for the Study of Bioethics. He publishes articles dealing mainly with meta-ethics and applied ethics.
