Abstract
The question of the moral status of infanticide in the case of healthy human infants is very important, both theoretically and practically. Its theoretical importance lies in the fact that intuitions differ very greatly on this question, so that the ability to set out an answer that is solidly grounded in fundamental moral principles is a crucial task for any comprehensive account of the morality of killing. Its practical significance, on the other hand, lies in its connection with the very important, and closely related, ethical question of whether it is morally permissible to kill infants with severe birth defects. Two very different grounds have been offered for holding that infanticide is morally wrong, at least in the case of healthy human infants. The first claims that healthy human infants have a right to life, so that killing them is wrong because of their
intrinsic moral status
. The second claims that killing healthy human infants is wrong because of the
negative consequences
of doing so. The second of these types of objections would need to be the subject of a separate entry. Consequently, the discussion here is confined to the claim that killing human infants is intrinsically wrong because all human infants have a right to life.