Simplest way to do it is to ask Jerry to come over behind the barn for a little “digging party.” Tell him to bring a shovel.
We’ll say the hole has to be deep enough to fit all the corpses of those he has killed, people who suffered from “severe genetic defect, microcephaly, spina bifida, or so on” before he put them out of their misery.
When the hole is of sufficient size to fit Jerry and his fluffy white poodle (I don’t know he has one; I’m just assuming), we euthanize him using the same method he used to kill all those other people.
It’s for his own good. Anyway, it’s for my good.
Why? The reason is simple. Anybody who is so far gone as to ask with serious intent “Should one be allowed to euthanize severely deformed or doomed newborns?” is evincing signs of some severe mental incapacity. Euthanizing such individuals who “are doomed to a life that cannot by any reasonable light afford happiness” is thus a “merciful action”.
After all, “If you are allowed to abort a fetus”—and you are: hack away!—“then why aren’t you able to euthanize that same fetus just after it’s born?”
The logical point is obvious and indisputable. We ought to be able to euthanize any post-birth “fetus” that does not meet certain utilitarian criteria. Who decides those criteria?
I do.
Any utilitarian desiderata are by definition arbitrary, a fact known to all philosophers. Jerry and the corrupted soul he cites, Peter Singer, decide that “pain”, “suffering”, “quality of life” count in deciding who lives, who dies. Yet the purely materialistic universe which these to-be-euthanized fellows envision cannot and therefore does not decide that “pain” or happiness or even usefulness to some task is good or bad. Indeed, there is no good or bad; there is only prejudice. And when you come to it, pain and happiness are sentimentalist horse hooey. Man up.
Since all is prejudice, there is nothing to judge their utilitarian criteria superior to mine. I say mine is superior, and since I’m bigger, or at least meaner, than them, and most of you, what I say are the criteria for life worthiness will be the criteria.
“It makes little sense to keep alive a suffering child who is doomed to die,” and since we are all doomed to die, another eminent logical point, it makes little sense to keep alive anybody. But I’m a very tolerant man, and I like the company, so some people I’ll keep around for laughs. Until I tire of them.
That’s one criterion, then. My amusement. But don’t worry. I’m easily entertained. Bone up on your knock-knock jokes. (Who’s there? Atch. Atch who? Gesundheit!)
How should we kill those unworthy of life, those who not make the utilitarian cut? Jerry says, “I’ve heard from several doctors that humane euthanasia of adults is in fact practiced in the US: doctors will give patients an overdose of morphine to ease their suffering, knowing it will kill them.”
No, Jerry. Not “doctors”: executioners. Doctors try to save lives, not take them. Inability to use and understand simple English words, incidentally, is on the list. Non-humorous euphemism users will be among the first to be slipped the needle. By my executioners.
That we can now discuss killing the unfit openly is due to “a tide of increasing morality in our world”, says Jerry.
The reason we don’t allow euthanasia of newborns is because humans are seen as special, and I think this comes from religion—in particular, the view that humans, unlike animals, are endowed with a soul…When religion vanishes, as it will, so will much of the opposition to both adult and newborn euthanasia.
I always like to agree with Jerry when he’s right on point of logic, as he is here. We eliminate the metaphysics of religion leaving only the practicalities and arbitrariness of utilitarianism, and then it’s open season on killing anybody that doesn’t make the grade. Humans without religion are not special.
They are mere sacks of self-ambulatory flesh taking up space. Opposition to killing these flesh sacks must vanish if there is no religion to say “This is Right, This is Wrong”, as Jerry rightly says. There is no ultimate right and wrong in a purely utilitarian world, there is only bickering. One will say, “It’s obvious suffering can’t be allowed” and another will say, “It’s obvious suffering must be allowed.” And there is nothing to point to, save might, to say who is right.
But since this view, if held by many, will rapidly depopulate the planet, and since, as I said, I like the company, and my opinion is sovereign, Jerry cannot be allowed to preach his new morality. He’ll have to be euthanized. Bring your shovels.