ABSTRACT
Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), as well as many pro-choice politicians, hold that abortion ought to be legally permissible through all nine months of pregnancy, but that infanticide should be illegal. Many defenders of abortion hold a parallel ethical position, that abortion is also morally permissible throughout all stages of pregnancy, but that infanticide is ethically wrong. This perspective corrects the pro-life view (to be presented in chapter fi ve) by providing criteria for distinguishing persons from mere humans, and yet also disagrees with an expansion of “reproductive rights” to include infanticide. This chapter presents arguments in favor of this view and offers possible responses both from the perspective of an advocate of infanticide and from the perspective of a defender of prenatal human life.
