Ethics Professor Says It’s “Quite Reasonable” to Kill Disabled Babies via Obamacare

Has anyone else noticed that most professors of ethics aren’t exactly…ummm….ethical? At least the ones who get quoted, anyway.

A professor at the highly esteemed Princeton University doesn’t want his Obamacare premiums to increase because of caring for severely disabled babies. Dr. Pete Singer, who teaches ethics (but perhaps needs a little refresher on what the word “ethics” means) argued during a radio interview on Sunday that America should be more accepting of “intentionally ending the lives of severely disabled infants.”

First, a definition:

Ethics:  that branch of philosophy dealingwith values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightnessand wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness ofthe motives and ends of such actions.

In the famous words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Singer, a longtime mouthpiece for eugenicists everywhere, has previously drawn fire for his belief that the right to life is directly related to a person’s intelligence and  ability to feel pleasure and pain, is back in the spotlight.  In 1993, wrote a treatise called “Practical Ethics: Taking Life: Humans.”

Singer argued for the morality of “non-voluntary euthanasia” for human beings not capable of understanding the choice between life and death, including “severely disabled infants, and people who through accident, illness, or old age have permanently lost the capacity to understand the issue involved.”

For Singer, the wrongness of killing a human being is not based on the fact that the individual is alive and human. Instead, Singer argued it is “characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference.” (source)

He clearly hasn’t changed his mind. During the interview he argued that it was “quite reasonable” to ration healthcare for disabled infants:

I think if you had a health-care system in which governments were trying to say, “Look, there are some things that don’t provide enough benefits given the costs of those treatments. And if we didn’t do them we would be able to do a lot more good for other people who have better prospects,” then yes.

I think it would be reasonable for governments to say, “This treatment is not going to be provided on the national health service if it’s a country with a national health service. Or in the United States on Medicare or Medicade.”

And I think it will be reasonable for insurance companies also to say, “You know, we won’t insure you for this or we won’t insure you for this unless you are prepared to pay an extra premium, or perhaps they have a fund with lower premiums for people who don’t want to insure against that.”

Because I think most people, when they think about that, would say that’s quite reasonable. You know, I don’t want my health insurance premiums to be higher so that infants who can experience zero quality of life can have expensive treatments. (source)

Is anyone else chilled by the fact that people like Singer are the ones teaching the next generations about ethical behavior?