After-birth abortion (nonfiction)
is “after-birth abortion” a real thing
Grok:
No. “After-birth abortion” is not a real medical procedure, legal practice, or accepted clinical term. It is a provocative philosophical label from a single 2013 academic paper, not something that exists in medicine or law.
jme.bmj.com
In 2013, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva published “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” in the Journal of Medical Ethics. They argued that if abortion is morally permissible because a fetus lacks full personhood (in their view), then the same logic could extend to newborns who, they claimed, also lack certain capacities that define persons. They proposed the term “after-birth abortion” instead of “infanticide” to emphasize continuity with abortion arguments. The paper was purely theoretical; it described no actual practice and was not advocating for policy changes.
en.wikipedia.org
It drew widespread criticism from philosophers, bioethicists, and others across the political spectrum for equating newborns with fetuses and for the rhetorical choice of terminology. Multiple responses rejected the premises and conclusions. The authors themselves later clarified that the piece was a philosophical exercise exploring the implications of certain personhood criteria, not a call for real-world killings of infants.
