title: Clashes of consensus: on the problem of both justifying abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome and rejecting infanticide.
abstract: Although the abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome has become commonplace, infanticide is still widely rejected. Generally, there are three ways of justifying the differentiation between abortion and infanticide: by referring to the differences between the moral status of the fetus versus the infant, by referring to the differences of the moral status of the act of abortion versus the act of infanticide, or by separating the way the permissibility of abortion is justified from the way the impermissibility of infanticide is justified. My argument is that none of these ways justifies the abortion of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome while simultaneously rejecting infanticide. Either the justification for abortion is consistent with infanticide, or it is implausible to justify abortion while rejecting infanticide. I conclude the article by making some preliminary remarks about how one might manage the situation posed by my argument.
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden. henrik.friberg-fernros@pol.gu.se.
authors.forename: Henrik
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3645-8625
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Friberg-Fernros
mesh_terms: D000028:Abortion, Induced / Q000941:ethics*; D033421:Beginning of Human Life; D032921:Consensus; D004314:Down Syndrome / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005328:Fetal Viability; D005333:Fetus; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007237:Infanticide / Q000941:ethics*; D028681:Moral Obligations; D028723:Personhood; D011247:Pregnancy; D026712:Value of Life
keywords: Abortion; Criteria of consciousness; Down syndrome; Good Samaritan argument; Infanticide; Viability