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Abortion is a moral question. Most people, regardless of how they feel the question should be answered or who should do the answering, will agree with this. There may be some extreme pro-choice activists who maintain that the decision of whether to carry a fetus to term is purely a matter of taste, but I doubt there are many such persons or that, if confronted with the choice themselves, they would make it in the same spirit in which they decide where to spend their vacation. Were abortion not a moral issue, then infanticide would not be one, either, because the difference between a 265-day-old fetus and a newborn infant is a matter of but a few hours. We recoil in horror at the thought of deliberately killing a newborn infant, though we may recognize a few circumstances in which that might become a tragic necessity. We must, therefore, recoil in equal horror at the thought of killing an infant that does not differ from the newborn in any respect other than that it receives oxygen and food via an umbilical cord instead of through its nose and mouth. I know of only one philosopher who defends both abortion and infanticide. I find his arguments not only unconvincing but monstrous; I suspect that almost everyone would react in a similar fashion.

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