The Case Against Peter Singer

Dr. Peter Singer the animal rights activist and infanticide advocate, was on TV again last night (Q&A), once more heralding the virtues and values of “selected infanticide.” He believes in killing babies with disabilities.

There is a great response to Singer by a woman with a disability, Stella Young, over at the ABC website Ramp Up. Wonderful stuff. Do read it. She concludes:

For me, Singer’s views about the hypothetical are not hypothetical at all. While he may see value in the life I’m living now, and may even treat me as an equal, he still believes that on the balance of things, parents and doctors should be given the choice to end lives like mine before they get tricky. For me, and for many other people with disabilities, it’s personal.

Peter Singer is the ideological architect behind the Greens, helping co-author their manifesto, and he’s a one time senate candidate for them too. For me, his pro-infanticide views are reason enough why the Greens must never, ever, ever be allowed to gain power in Australia. For the sake of the disabled, we need to ensure that his evil designs remain nothing more than the intellectual fantasy of the rich-inner-city-chardonnay-swilling-self-righteous-ideologues, and never get even a hearing in any legislature.

But then again, maybe I’ve spoken too harshly. We should remember that a number of European leaders and intellectuals would agree that persons with disabilities are not really “persons,” and that infanticide is both permissible and preferable. So it is most unfortunate for Singer, however, that most of his closest allies on this matter were executed shortly after the Nuremburg trials.