Princeton “bioethics” professor Peter Singer took his “Ethical Choices” class to a neonatal ward to look at all those struggling lives — that is, all those “things” they were struggling to define as alive or not.

Here’s one of the babies they visited:

Born 14 weeks premature, the 2-hour-old infant the class had come upon had a slim chance of surviving, let alone growing up without mental and physical impairments. Because of these defects, Singer argues the infant’s parents should be able to decide whether to shut off her life-support machines and end her life. That claim, based on a belief that a young baby is not self-aware, has generated widespread controversy across the world.

Division of Neonatal Medicine Director Dr. Mark Hiatt had led the class to this tiny red infant. Up close, the class could see her small forehead muscles contracted, eyes squeezed shut. As she breathed, her abdomen sucked in and out ferociously.

“This is one of the smallest babies we’ve ever had,” Hiatt said. At nine inches and 365 grams, she could easily fit in the palm of an adult’s hand. (A baby in the 50th percentile of births would weigh 960 grams.)

Quotes by some in the class were chilling, such as:

? “Is it ethical to keep a baby alive without the chances of it being healthy and able to go to public school, whether a special school or not, or whether it would hurt the baby and everyone involved?”

? “Are [underdeveloped babies] children?”

The class encountered a woman whose first baby was born at 23 weeks, just outside the “viability” range, and she let the baby die without medical resuscitation.

Calise had instructed the doctors to resuscitate the baby if it showed any chance of survival, but its premature birth, and a severe prenatal infection, suggested little use in trying to keep the baby alive. The baby, named Simone, died after support was withdrawn.

“[My husband and I] have seen the miracle babies, and everyday we ask ourselves, did we do the right thing?” Calise said.

The doctor said of the baby the class had observed:

“This is a child. Somebody’s daughter,” Hiatt said. “Hopefully she’ll be with us for many weeks and eventually go home with her mother and father.”