Beauty, the Person, and Disability: Understanding (and Defending) the Intrinsic Beauty and Value of the Person with Disabilities

Abstract

In February 2012, the British Journal of Medical Ethics published a paper that garnered notoriety for its central premise. In “After birth abortion: why should the baby live?” authors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argue that infanticide as well as abortion should be legal in cases of babies born with disabilities.1 They focus on two disabilities—Treacher Collins syndrome and Down syndrome—as instances where infanticide should be permitted. Let me state at the outset that I absolutely reject their claim that unborn and newborn human beings lack the moral status of personhood, as well as their abhorrent conclusion that it is acceptable to kill them.2 In this paper, however, I would like to focus on a more subtle aspect of their