# Should infanticide be legalised?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-infanticide-be-legalised/508545>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 1, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-infanticide-be-legalised/508545 "2009-09-01T21:39:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 51

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\
**Post date:** [September 2, 2009, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-infanticide-be-legalised/508545/51 "2009-09-02T19:20:17Z")

</div>

> [@begbert2](#):
>
> Mostly because of this:It’s pretty natural for people to accept that there are ‘reasonable’ concessions that people should be expected/forced to make to avoid “killing babies”.

I’d like to clarify my earlier statement so it is not misused. Conditions that I can imagine are sufficiently “dire” that a woman’s request for an abortion should be ignored include:

For an individual woman: she’s showing signs of mental illness where she varies from sincerely demanding an abortion to sincerely insisting that she’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt her baby.

For society in general: some sort of _Children of Men_ scenario occurs where birth rates drop to near-zero, putting the human race at risk for extinction.  
I’m sure I could think up some others, but the loss of the fetus under typical conditions doesn’t qualify.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-infanticide-be-legalised/508545)._