NEW HAVEN, Conn.—Peter Singer doesn't mince words.

The high-profile bioethicist, whose views have triggered an uproar in academia and beyond, took to task politicians who defend partial-birth abortion but not infanticide.

“I think this issue exactly captures this problem of drawing lines,” Singer told the Register in early December. “I think there's a problem in defending all forms of abortion and totally rejecting infanticide.”

He noted that pro-lifers are understandably baffled at a society which claims to view life as sacred on the one hand but would tolerate abortion on the other. The solution, as Singer sees it, is to break away from the “remnant” of Judeo-Christian morality.

Those are the kinds of views that triggered a firestorm of protests earlier this year when Princeton University hired the native Australian to a prestigious chair in bioethics.

Protesters and handicapped-rights activists by the hundreds descended on Princeton's campus in New Jersey, condemning the school's hiring of Singer. Their signs read, “My Life Is Worth Living” and “Singer's Quality of Life Test: You Fail, You Die!”

On Dec. 2, the man known as “Professor Death” brought his views on infanticide to another Ivy League school when he addressed students and guests at Yale Law School.

He told the audience that news reports about his defense of infanticide for disabled children have led to cries that he discriminates against the handicapped.

In reality, Singer told the audience of about 300 students and guests at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, “I support that statement even if you remove the word ‘disabled.’”

Singer conceded, however, that in practice infanticide would be more common for disabled babies than for healthy babies.

“Most infants are fortunately cared for and wanted,” he said. “There are some cases in which it is not so, like infants with severe disabilities. Many believe there is no good future for that child.”

Singer's speech, titled “On Valuing Human Life,” was sponsored by the David and Goldie Blanksteen Lectureship in Jewish Ethics.

Singer claimed that the hostile public reaction to his beliefs is strange since his views are already so widely accepted.

He noted that today parents who give birth to severely disabled babies already choose to cut off life support, which he said is no different than infanticide.

“This is something that happens in every neonatal intensive care unit,” Singer contended. “We paper over the cracks so we can tell ourselves, ‘Let nature take its course.’”

From Anger to Zeal

The Yale audience applauded the speech and most seemed to agree with his views, even giggling when Singer poked fun at the traditional view that life is sacred. After the lecture, Singer told a group of students, “The purpose of my talk was to deflate the myth in the sanctity of human life.”

Marianna McKim, a librarian and self-proclaimed fan of Singer's work, thought the lecture proved that attempts to maintain the sanctity of human life as an absolute were futile.

“In policy and actual practice we don't behave consistently — even groups that claim to be in favor of the sanctity of human life,” she said.

Others in the audience weren't so agreeable. Undergraduate student Shamed Dogan was shocked by Singer's comments.

“I think it's odd that he was invited by a Jewish organization,” Dogan observed. He said Singer's idea that the worth of human life is based on utility rather than being an end in itself has historically led to dangerous conclusions.

“If there is a minority group and if they're not loved by society, their lives are not valuable,” said Dogan, who is black.

Devaluation of human life is a core concern of Pope John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life). In No. 14 he wrote, “The contemporary scene, moreover, is becoming even more alarming by reason of the proposals, advanced here and there, to justify even infanticide, following the same arguments used to justify the right to abortion. In this way, we revert to a state of barbarism which one hoped had been left behind forever.”

Another member of the Yale audience who found Singer's speech disturbing was Justin Zaremby. “How much credibility does Singer have?” he asked. Based on the crowd's reaction, Zaremby, who is Jewish, replied somberly, “A lot, apparently.”