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Notes -
I respect the infanticide-justifying position because it takes the reasoning of abortionists seriously. A fetus is a clump of cells. Rephrased, it lacks a thinking mind, and therefore it is morally irrelevant. So if a newborn baby lacks a thinking mind, it should also be morally irrelevant, or at least morally inferior to organisms of greater mental complexity like, say, pigs and rats. Why reject this? The difference is that humans have an instinctual disgust mechanism against blendering a cute little baby that they don't for livestock or vermin or 0.7in tall fetuses which can't be seen without advanced technology. Unless we want to talk about the potential of the baby, in which case, yeah, the anti-abortionists agree entirely. Maybe backport that insight by a few months.
Most of the pro-choice crowd, it seems to me, reason backward from the perceived social necessity of not mothering a child at an inopportune time. This is exactly what Heian-era Japanese mothers drowning their newborns in midwinter thought. Abortioners do not apply the reasoning fully, just to the specific area they psychologically require to excuse themselves in. Singer is taking the logic all the way.
To be fair, abortionists are maybe just smart enough to know that it'd be bad play. And at the end of the day, the way to deceive someone is doublethink- just avoid noticing the contradiction. Humans are very good at this. The unusual behavior from a human would be requiring consistency based on the actual cognitive features of the embryo or baby. "I don't see how that helps me win this conflict."
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