Why Should The Baby Live Article Analysis

In 2013, James Wilson, a senior lecturer in the philosophy department at UCL, published an article entitled “why should the baby live?” in the journal of medical ethics. This article was written concerning Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argumentation that the moral status of a new born baby is identical to that of a fetus which gave a view that abortion is as acceptable as infanticide, the action of killing newly-born babies. Moreover, it was written to deliver a message to the society especially the families about how harrowing is the infanticide. It can clearly be inferred that the writer is against the so-called after birth abortion. However, he represented most of the possible points of view of the pro-infanticide and the anti-infanticide
Furthermore, he followed the Toulmin scheme to represent his enthymeme and supported it with sufficient ground. In addition, he highlighted the warrant and provided typical backing after which he covered most of the possible rebuttals of the pro-infanticide and ended up with some qualifiers a strategy that made his arguments clear and well-supported. However, he provided weak counter arguments which affects his credibility. Overall, he used definitional argument in addition to ethical evaluation argument which was suitable to the presented topic. Well aware of the topic the writer was, he represented some fallacious logos Ideas that can be read between the lines. For example, he stated that the philosophers he mentioned in the article made an analogy between a baby and a dog and mentioned that both are not self-conscious to appreciate their lives which is a false analogy because human babies are much more aware of the surroundings than animals (Coren, 2009). He also mentioned that used the story of the dog to support their arguments. Consequently it can be inferred that he’s indirectly accusing them of approaching slippery slope fallacy. The author himself used a false dilemma fallacy when he mentioned that in ancient times, struggling communities had to either struggle because of their overpopulation and necessity or to kill their children to survive which is not
He used a simple but effective terminology to address people’s emotions towards their babies by mentioning different stories in paragraphs three and four that grab the audiences’ attention and emotions. In addition, he used these words in a well-developed syntax that made the audiences both aware of the topic and emotionally attracted to it. He adapted an engaging tone towards the audience which effectively made his claims a heart-to-heart claims. Moreover, it can be clearly inferred from his word choices, tone and syntax that the target audiences are the families that have babies. Although the word choices were appropriate regarding the audiences, it was not when it comes to the journal it was published in because it is a scientific, medical journal and the article itself is addressing pure philosophical arguments. Although he used the pathos appeal efficaciously, he used some fallacies like appealing to pity and red herring fallacies. In other words, he mentioned two stories mixed with emotional exaggeration to prove his arguments. Moreover, he mentioned that taking babies for adoption is painful to the mothers to conclude that babies are valuable to their mothers and should not be killed. Consequently, he used a red herring fallacy by deviating from the main topic to a side topic to prove his