Infanticide in Germany

A woman in Germany has been found guilty of killing five of her newborn babies because their existence would have endangered their lifestyle and standard of living. The news is here.

So what’s new? Around the world millions of children are killed for the same reasons. It’s just that they are killed before they are born.

What allows such horrors? It’s a philosophy called utilitarianism. This video clip shows a famous atheist (Richard Dawkins) and a famous utilitarian (Peter Singer) discussing infanticide quite calmly.

Utilitarianism is the philosophy that works is good. It’s the daughter of atheism because in the absence of any higher authority, any afterlife, and eternal judgment or ultimate other worldly consequence of one’s actions, the only real standard for behavior is practicality. What works.

It doesn’t take much thought to figure out where utilitarianism leads: not only to abortion on demand, but by extension, infanticide and “assisted suicide” and finally euthanasia.

Given the assumptions of atheistic utilitarianism, why shouldn’t that German woman have killed her newborns? A few short weeks earlier she could’ve terminated them medically in a neat, clean clinic. That she killed them herself presumably saved her the cost of the abortions. She was just doing what worked.

If you think it will not come to assisted suicide and euthanasia, have a look at what’s already happening in the area of ‘do not resuscitate orders.’ With an aging population, improved health care and declining money to pay for it and people to look after them, we boomers had better buckle up and prepare for a bumpy ride.

For my essay on Utilitarianism go here.