Abortion is better than killing or abandoning your baby at birth


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Maternal investment has always had its trade-offs. Abortion is only a modern remedy for heartbreaks much older than humanity.





Rob Brooks* for Quillette** (translation by Peggy Sastre)

In all societies, contemporary and historical, for which there is sufficient data on the subject, infants are killed or abandoned when they die. And not in an extremely rare way. According to some estimates, 10 to 15% of newborn babies have been killed throughout history.

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HASith the decision of the American Supreme Court to revoke the right to abortion at the federal level, the debate on the voluntary termination of pregnancy has returned to the heart of the news. Many so-called “pro-lifers” see abortion as the moral equivalent of killing a newborn. Their strategies, and in particular their endless quibbles over when a fetus becomes viable, aim to blur the distinctions between abortion and the killing of a baby. So much so that, on the “pro-choice” side, few are ready to address the links between abortion and infanticide. For my part, I believe on the contrary that a good understanding of this relationship – supported by data from centuries of history and millennia of evolution – allows us to conclude that…


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