Chinese eat aborted fetuses

[AndromedasWake]

Moved this to News. Also, WHAT THE... :shock:

 

[Marcus]

A fetus is essentially a vegetable until its higher brain function develops.

Ooh, does that mean it counts as one of the five portions of fruit and veg we're meant to eat every day?

Seriously, though, what we do with corpses has nothing to do with the dead person and everything to do with the living people who are processing the cadaver. A corpse is a chunk of meat, nothing you do to it has an inherent moral value as it is not a person you can hurt or the property of someone who can be disadvantaged by anything you do to it. The reason why societies have rites surrounding the disposal of cadavers is one of the major factors for the existence of religion - to allay the fear of death among the living. Since people have a societally based emotional connection to the corpses of people they knew, being unnecessarily disrespectful to these cadavers inflicts emotional harm on those living people, so we should show respect for their sake. However, if what these people think is best for the cadaver is to eat it, there is no inherent harm therein - in fact, I maintain that it is morally incumbent upon us to allow those who choose to dispose of their dead in this manner to continue to do so.

In short, eating dead babies is OK if the parents think it is, but not otherwise.