by Mike Gray
—probably not. Why should he alienate an important, affluent, and influential segment of his political base?
In 2008, CMI‘s Lita Cosner reviewed then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s views on the matter:
What does Barack Hussein Obama, who is now set to become the Democrat nomination for Presidential Candidate of the United States, have in common with so called ‘bioethicists’ such as Peter Singer and Joseph Fletcher? They all advocate that parents have a ‘right’ to kill their baby, not just before birth, but even immediately after the child is born.
Cosner describes Singer this way:
Peter Singer (1946–) is probably the most well-known bioethicist who, though he is too humane to eat a hamburger and advocates giving rights to great apes, has no qualms about infanticide. To him, an unborn child only acquires ‘moral significance’ at around 20 weeks’ gestation, when the baby is able to feel pain. But ‘[e]ven when the fetus does develop a capacity to feel pain—probably in the last third of the pregnancy—it still does not have the self-awareness of a chimpanzee, or even a dog’, and so he gives greater ‘moral significance’ to the chimpanzee and dog than to the unborn child.
If you think Singer is “out there” and unrepresentative, think again:
Singer’s bizarre views on human life may belong on the lunatic fringe, but they are fairly mainstream in what passes for ‘bioethics’. Singer’s views stem from a philosophy known as utilitarianism, in which the stated goal is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain for the most people possible. So the ‘right’ decision in any given situation is that which results in the most pleasure and the least pain for the greatest amount of people. The use of utilitarian ethics was popularized by Joseph Fletcher (1905–1991), an apostate Episcopalian minister who became an atheist. He is best known for creating ‘situation ethics’, and was hailed ‘the patriarch of bioethics’ by bioethicist and former Roman Catholic priest Albert R. Jonsen (1931–).
Takeaway quotes:
[In a debate with Joseph Fletcher, Christian apologist John Warwick] Montgomery scored a powerful point with the audience when he showed that situation ethicists shouldn’t be trusted under their own belief system, because they could happily deceive you if the situation were right.
. . . . Obama may not openly or even consciously support the utilitarian ethic that Singer and most other bioethicists embrace, but his position on infanticide, devaluing certain human life as unworthy of life, has its roots in evolutionary utilitarian thought and defining personhood separately from humanity. But it should be no surprise—Obama is an ardent evolutionist, saying, ‘Evolution is more grounded in my experience than angels’.
However, at least the atheistic bioethicists like Singer and Fletcher are being consistent—one may call their worldview evil and abominable, but not illogical. But Obama claims to be a Christian while embracing positions that are inherently antithetical to any Christian ethic. As inexcusable as it is to claim to be too humane to eat meat while advocating baby butchery, it is worse to be pro-infanticide while claiming to worship the God in whose image the babies are made.
Cosner’s full article is here.