Something to think about: Adam Smith on infanticide

When I first read this passage, a few weeks ago, I thought: Hmmm--has a contemporary relevance, doesn't it?

"[T]he murder of new-born infants was a practice allowed of in almost all the states of Greece, even among the polite and civilized Athenians; and whenever the circumstance of the parent rendered it inconvenient to bring up the child, to abandon it to hunger, or to wild beasts, was regarded without blame or censure.... Uninterrupted custom had by this time so thoroughly authorized the practice, that not only the loose maxims of the world tolerated this barbarous prerogative, but even the doctrine of philosophers, who ought to have been more just and accurate, was led away by the established custom, and upon this, as upon many other occasions, instead of censuring, supported the horrible abuse, by far-fetched consideration of public utility. Aristotle talks of it as what magistrates ought upon many occasions to encourage. Plato is of the same opinion, and, with all that love of mankind which seems to animate all his writings, no where marks this practice with disapprobation."

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (rev. ed. 1790; V.2.15; republished, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976), p. 210; quoted in Amartya Sen, Elements of a Theory of Human Rights, 32 Philosophy & Public Affairs 315, 354-55 (2004).

Michael P.