Contact: Jeff Sagnip, 202-225-3765; chrissmith.house.gov

OPINION, March 8, 2012 /Standard Newswire/ -- The following is submitted by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith:

Late last month, two bioethicists -- Dr. Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva -- published an outrageous "paper" in the Journal of Medical Ethics justifying the deliberate, premeditated murder of newborn babies during the first days and weeks after birth.

Giubilini and Minerva wrote "when circumstances occur after birth that would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible."

If a newly born child poses an economic burden on a family, or is disabled, or is unwanted, that child can be murdered in cold blood because the baby lacks intrinsic value, and according to Giubilini and Minerva, is not a person.

Giubilini and Minerva wrote, "actual people's well-being could be threatened by a newborn even if healthy child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of."

As any parents -- especially moms -- will tell you, children in general and newborns in particular require enormous energy, money and boatloads of love. If any of these are lacking or pose what Giubilini and Minerva called a "threat," does that justify a death sentence?

Are the lives of newborn babies so cheap? Are babies so expendable?

The murder of newly born children is further justified by Giubilini and Minerva because newborn infants, like their slightly younger sisters and brothers in the womb, "cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing."

In other words, no dreams, no plans for the future, no "aims" that can be discerned, recognized or understood by adults, no life.

This preposterous, arbitrary and evil prerequisite for the attainment of legal personhood is not only bizarre -- it is inhumane in the extreme. Stripped of its pseudo-intellectual underpinnings, Giubilini and Minerva rationale for murdering newborns in the nursery is indistinguishable from any other child predator wielding a knife or gun.

Giubilini and Minerva say the devaluation of newborn babies is inextricably linked to the devaluation of unborn children, and is indeed the logical extension of the abortion culture, and wrote that they, "propose to call the practice afterbirth abortion rather than infanticide to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed -- the newborn baby -- is comparable with that of a fetus... Whether she will exist is exactly what our choice is about."

These anti-child, pro-murder rationalizations remind me of other, equally disturbing rants from highly credentialed individuals. Princeton's Peter Singer suggested a couple of years ago that, "There are various things you could say that are sufficient to give some moral status [to a child] after a few months, maybe six months or something like that, and you get perhaps to full moral status, really, only after two years." 

Dr. James Watson, Nobel laureate for unraveling the mystery of DNA, wrote in Prism Magazine, "If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have."

In like manner, Dr. Francis Crick, who received the Nobel Prize with Watson, said that, "...no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live."

The dehumanization of newborns isn't new but it's getting worse.

Giubilini and Minerva's article must be a wakeup call. The lives of young children -- an unprotected class -- are under assault. Hard questions need to be asked and answered, and defenders of life must be mobilized. We have a duty to protect the weakest and most vulnerable from violence.

As lawmakers, we must strive for consistency.

Why do so many who claim to be proponents of human rights systematically dehumanize and exclude the weakest and most vulnerable human beings from legal protection?

Why the modern-day surge in prejudice and ugly bias against unborn children and newborns? Why the policy of exclusion, rather than inclusion?

Why is lethal violence against children -- abortion and premeditated killing of newborn infants -- marketed and sold as benign, progressive, enlightened and compassionate?

Why have so many "good people" turned a blind eye and looked askance as mothers are wounded by abortion and babies in the womb are pulverized by suction machines twenty to thirty times more powerful than household vacuum cleaners, or dismembered with surgical knives or poisoned with chemicals? Looking back, how could anyone in this House, or Senate or both President's Obama and Clinton, justify the hideous procedure called partial birth abortion?

Since 1973, over 54,000,000 babies have had abortion forced on them. Some of those children have been exterminated in the second and third trimester -- pain capable babies -- who suffered excruciating pain as the abortionist committed his violence.

Why are some surprised that the new emerging class of victims -- newborns -- are being slaughtered in Holland and elsewhere, while a perverse proposal to murder any newborn child -- sick or healthy -- is advanced in an otherwise serious and respected ethics journal?

Children -- born and unborn -- are precious.

Children -- sick, disabled or healthy -- possess fundamental human rights that no sane or compassionate society can abridge.

The premeditated murder of newborn babies is being justified as morally equivalent to abortion.

Congress, the courts, the president and society at large have a sacred duty to protect all children from violence, murder and exploitation. We don't have a moment to lose.