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Following up on the surrogacy story shared by @MollieTheMare last week, I present to you yet another man-made horror beyond our comprehension:
https://www.lifenews.com/2026/09/14/netherlands-euthanizes-disabled-2-year-old-child/
Another link if you think a pro-life website isn't a trustworthy source: https://nltimes.nl/2026/09/09/first-ever-case-euthanasia-young-child-2-handled-well-dutch-committee
"The doctor and the parents decided to actively end the child’s life after concluding that the supposed suffering could not be relieved, according to the Assessment Committee for Late-Term Abortion and Termination of Life in Newborns and Children Ages 1 to 12."
My first thought while reading this article, apart from general horror at what was done, was "The WHAT committee?" My second thought was to Philip K. Dick's now officially prophetic short story, The Pre-Persons. That's right, if you didn't know, the father of cyberpunk and author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (i.e. Blade Runner) and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (i.e. Total Recall) was anti-abortion (emphasis mine):
Infanticide is nothing new in human history. And while Christian societies haven't been free from killing infants en masse via exposure, abortion, and other means, they have been (as far as I can tell) effectively the only societies in human history to even attempt to abolish the practices. Philip K. Dick, for example, was Episcopalian (though he shifted towards a more Gnostic view of Christianity towards the end of his life).
I guess I'm mostly curious to see everyone's reactions to this story, but also to my assertion that opposition to these things is almost exclusively a Christian thing. I'd be curious to see some secular humanist or other arguments against them, though I strongly suspect that they will be smuggling in some very Christian assumptions without realizing it. After all, to quote Leon Trotsky: "We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life."
I don't think I quite fully appreciated what a house of horrors the Xu Bo case @georgioz posted there too was before, either.
I think the best version I can come up with is based on the following sketch. Humans form into self-integrated societies that have net-positive moral utility. Rights dependent on subjective or arbitrary thresholds have historically had enormous potential for abuse. For a functioning, high-performance society, we must have it be generally the case that people believe rights, including life, will generally be upheld. To form a stable equilibrium, we must therefore grant all humans basic rights and define the category of humans broadly so that "unpersoning" cannot become cover for abuse.
Humans do not agree what is "net-positive moral utility". For instance I think about it from of Christian virtue ethics, not in form of utility.
Right is a legal fiction, basically a strongly worded law. From where I stand, right was always the other side of duty. As soon as people renege on said duty, rights stops existing. We see it again and again. Right to privacy of correspondence is in article 12 of Universal Human Rights. It basically stopped existing after decades old creeping process of governments spying on said correspondence, people do not feel duty to resist it so the right stops existing, and not enough people care.
Even skipping what "high-performance society" even means as it by itself is value and thus morality laden statement, rights as was said are social constructs. If enough people think that sacrificing hearts to the blood good or that tears of newborn children are perfectly fine price to pay for greater good, then such thing will be enshrined as a law. Maybe even a right - people have right to live their free lives enabled by tears of newborn children. What is life of a child in face of all the other things that are valued in society, children will be sacrificed to the Moloch of these rights. All of the aforementioned things be it surrogacy or euthanasia are also argued in terms of rights: right to family life, right to bodily autonomy or whatnot. In the end the rights have to be evaluated by somebody if they clash, they can be amended or suspended as during COVID. Nothing will happen if right is stepped upon or changed: no smiting, nothing will physically shatter.
In the end we live in a society that we live in, we have laws based on values and ethical system accepted through culture in the society, which are in turn informed by theology of decision makers and general population in their day to day activity. This world is the result of that.
Yes, I find it quite plausible that a deontological defense, particularly one grounded explicitly in Christian moral premises, could be more robust than the secular-humanist sketch I provided here.
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