@Mike: I did wonder if the post-natal abortion article had been written as a prank by pro-line people. As far as I can make out, that’s not the case and the authors meant exactly what they said.

Going back to Slim’s point again in #83, you can’t legislate morality, so scumbags will do what scumbags do. But jeez-louise, China can certainly do a better job of legislating better deterrence for the morally weak.

“If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.”

…does sound to me like it is more a questioning of abortion itself. As I read it; if it is permissible to kill a foetus because (insert reason here) and a new born is the same, morally speaking as a foetus, then it should be OK to do the same to the new born.
That sounds to me more a condemnation of preterm abortion than post partum “abortion”.

@CM
“Go ahead and try. There are no crimes committed under “rational secular” anything.”"
Much as I want to agree with you here, unfortunately, due to human nature, there’s secular crimes and religious crimes. I don’t think the officials in the abortion case above cared any more than Eichmann or Arnaud at Beziers (you may recognise this quotation “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”—”Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own.”) about eh consequences of their actions – gods or none, some people are just utterly lacking in morals.

Go ahead and try. There are no crimes committed under “rational secular” anything.

that’s true. It’s often been said that you can’t legislate morality. But you can certainly legislate a deterrent such that people don’t repeatedly run someone over in hopes of killing them so as to avoid paying damages for injuring them in the first place.

Also agree about the red herring. Xinhua is talking about morality, and as far as i’m concerned, that means the CCP wants to talk about it. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the CCP wants to talk about morality (something where they can shift the blame onto the people) as opposed to any of a whole host of things where they can’t. Maybe if people are wringing their hands about morals, they’ll be less fixated on corruption.