Against infanticide: Introducing Protecting Infants and the Remember Ashkelon blog

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the aftermath of the Kermit Gosnell “House of Horrors” Aussie theologian Michael Bird produced a provocative piece at Patheos.com. Entitled “Infanticide: The coming battle” Bird, a former military man, warned how this encroaching mindset was already in the academy. He notes, after postulating that euthanasia will be the next death culture domino to fall,

Then as regards to, “what’s after that,” I am convinced it will be infanticide. Already we have seen a vast array of philosophical arguments put forward for it by Peter Singer. Last year there was a big hoopla when two Melbourne

academics advocated that new born infants are not persons and infants are not therefore not entitled to the protection that personhood conveys. More recently, the spate of “post-birth abortions” performed in Philadelphia has provoked outrage, though much of the media has deliberately muted their response. Added to that, Planned Parenthood has recently defended infanticide: If you pay money, you are owed a dead baby! I think infanticide is a logically consistent corollary of abortion. If you are going to terminate a child in utero, then let’s be honest, going six inches down the birth canal can hardly change the infant’s legal rights or ontological status. So infanticide is just a logical outworking of abortion. But a cruel, bastardly, and barbaric logic is still cruel, bastardly, and barbaric regardless of how internally consistent it is.

Bird continued by proposing organizing in a way that counters the culture of death mindset. Michael, two of his colleagues from the professional world (Brit Richard Hain, and Bird’s fellow Aussie Denise Cooper-Clarke), a few of my friends from the U.S. pastoral world (Todd Littleton, Alan Cross, Jay Sanders), and myself, began emailing. The resultant affiliation Protecting Infants was formed with the flagship website, Remember Ashkelon. (Ashkelon references this archeological find.)

The importance of a strong stand against infanticide can hardly be overstated. From a Christian perspective the killing of infants is abhorrent. Even from a cultural perspective, infanticide has been considered the practice of uncivilized peoples. I posit that how a society treats its most vulnerable members defines whether or not it is civilized.

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