From Utilitarianism to Infanticide: When Moral Calculation Replaces the Sanctity of Human Life
The deliberate killing of newborn infants is generally regarded as one of the gravest violations of human morality. Yet a number of influential modern philosophers have argued that infanticide can be morally permissible under particular circumstances. Their arguments are not confined to obscure intellectual movements or historical curiosities. They have appeared in respected academic publications and have been defended through elaborate theories of personhood, interests, suffering and moral value.
Robert Malone's October 2026 article, Legalizing Infanticide, revisits this disturbing philosophical territory while discussing proposed changes to abortion law in Virginia. Whatever position one adopts concerning the specific legislation, the deeper philosophical issue deserves independent examination. How can moral theories intended to promote human welfare arrive at the conclusion that deliberately ending the life of a newborn child may be ethically acceptable?
The answer lies partly in a fundamental distinction between consequentialist and deontological moral theories. Consequentialism evaluates actions principally according to their outcomes, while utilitarianism, its most familiar form, generally seeks to maximise overall welfare or minimise suffering. Deontological ethics, by contrast, recognises duties, rights and moral prohibitions that cannot simply be overridden whenever doing so appears to produce a better aggregate result. The prohibition against deliberately killing an innocent person is a central example. The philosophical danger arises when human beings cease to possess inviolable moral standing and instead become subjects whose continued existence must be justified by a calculation of benefits and burdens.
Peter Singer, one of the most prominent contemporary utilitarian philosophers, has challenged the assumption that biological membership of the human species is sufficient to establish the full moral status ordinarily attributed to persons. Singer distinguishes between human organisms and persons possessing characteristics such as rationality, self-awareness and an awareness of their continued existence over time. On this account, newborn infants do not necessarily possess the same claim to continued life as mature, self-conscious individuals. Singer has defended the permissibility of ending some newborn lives under specified circumstances, particularly in discussions of severe disability, suffering and the interests of families.
Singer's position is not simply that disabled people have no value, nor that parents should be free to kill children whenever doing so is convenient. His arguments arise from a wider philosophical framework concerning interests, preferences, suffering and the moral significance of self-awareness. Nevertheless, the framework raises a profound difficulty. If the right to life depends upon possessing particular psychological capacities, then individuals who lack those capacities may receive weaker protection precisely when they are most vulnerable. The moral standing of a human being becomes dependent upon a philosophical test of personhood rather than an unconditional recognition of human dignity.
Michael Tooley advanced a related argument in his influential 1972 paper, Abortion and Infanticide. Tooley proposed that possessing a serious right to continued existence requires, broadly speaking, the capacity to conceive of oneself as a continuing subject of experiences. Since newborn infants do not possess the relevant developed conception of themselves, he argued that infanticide need not violate the same right to life possessed by persons meeting his criterion. The argument is striking because it does not merely weigh the costs and benefits of a particular killing. It attempts to establish that some human beings lack the moral status necessary to make their deliberate killing intrinsically wrong.
The difficulty is immediately apparent. Why should the possession of sophisticated psychological abilities determine whether a human being deserves protection against intentional killing? Infants lack many capacities possessed by adults, including language, abstract reasoning and mature self-awareness. But these differences ordinarily explain why children require greater protection, not less. A newborn cannot defend itself, negotiate its interests or articulate a claim to continued existence. The inability to make such a claim should not be confused with the absence of any legitimate claim.
The issue became particularly controversial in 2012 when Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva published After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live? in the Journal of Medical Ethics. They argued that newborn infants and foetuses possess comparable moral status because neither necessarily satisfies their definition of personhood. They further contended that circumstances which might justify abortion could, under their reasoning, also justify ending the life of a newborn. Their discussion extended beyond cases involving severe disability to situations involving substantial social, economic or psychological burdens upon families.
The terminology of after-birth abortion is itself philosophically revealing. An abortion concerns the termination of a pregnancy, whereas infanticide concerns the killing of a child after birth. Treating these as interchangeable categories is not a neutral linguistic choice. It encourages the reader to interpret the killing of an already-born infant through a framework developed for a different medical and moral situation. The authors' argument was explicitly intended to challenge the significance of birth as a moral boundary, but the proposed terminology risks obscuring precisely the distinction that requires justification.
Their argument also illustrates a central weakness in theories that identify moral standing with presently exercisable psychological capacities. If a newborn lacks a right to life because it cannot conceptualise its own future, what follows for individuals whose consciousness or cognitive abilities are temporarily or permanently impaired? A sleeping person does not presently contemplate continued existence. An unconscious patient cannot articulate preferences. A person with profound intellectual disabilities may never possess the sophisticated capacities demanded by certain philosophical definitions of personhood. Defenders of psychological criteria can introduce distinctions involving retained capacities, previous preferences, relationships or future development, but each additional qualification requires justification.
The deeper objection is that the right not to be deliberately killed should not fluctuate according to the sophistication of an individual's mental performance. Human dignity is not an achievement awarded upon reaching a particular level of intellectual development. It is a moral status that protects individuals irrespective of their usefulness, independence or capacity to express their own interests. This principle is especially important for those whose dependence upon others makes them vulnerable to exploitation or neglect.
The utilitarian response may be that moral decisions cannot ignore suffering. A newborn with an extremely serious medical condition may face a short life characterised by substantial pain, while the family may experience immense emotional and financial hardship. These considerations are undeniably important. A humane ethical framework must take suffering seriously, provide appropriate medical care and avoid imposing treatments that merely prolong the process of dying without offering proportionate benefit. But recognising the moral importance of suffering does not establish that deliberately killing an innocent child is an acceptable method of resolving it.
Here the distinction between killing and allowing to die becomes essential. Withholding or withdrawing disproportionate medical treatment may be morally permissible when treatment offers no reasonable benefit or imposes excessive burdens. Providing adequate pain relief and palliative care is likewise compatible with respect for the patient's dignity. Deliberately causing death as the intended means of eliminating suffering is a different moral act. Consequentialist theories may question the significance of this distinction when the outcomes appear similar, but deontological ethics maintains that intentions, duties and the nature of the act itself matter independently of the final balance of consequences.
This distinction is not merely a technical exercise in moral philosophy. It protects vulnerable patients against the possibility that their lives will be judged expendable because others believe death would produce a preferable outcome. The problem becomes particularly serious when the individual whose life is at stake cannot consent, cannot understand the decision and cannot challenge the assessment made on their behalf.
A related issue concerns disability. Any ethical framework that permits the deliberate ending of an infant's life partly because of anticipated disability must confront the possibility that it is confusing disability with a life lacking sufficient value. Many disabled people lead meaningful lives despite considerable limitations, and predictions about future suffering or quality of life are often uncertain. The interests of parents and caregivers deserve serious consideration, but they cannot automatically determine the moral worth of the dependent person.
There is also the problem of competing interests. A utilitarian calculation may include the suffering of parents, the financial costs of medical treatment, the availability of healthcare resources and the anticipated welfare of the child. Yet these variables can be assigned different weights, and the outcome may depend heavily upon subjective judgments. The person most directly affected by the decision may have no effective representation within the calculation. Deontological protections function partly to prevent precisely this possibility: they establish limits upon what may be done to an individual, even when others anticipate benefits from the action.
This brings us to the slippery-slope problem. The expression is sometimes dismissed as a logical fallacy, and rightly so when it is used to claim that permitting one practice must inevitably lead to another without explaining the causal or conceptual connection. But slippery-slope arguments can be serious philosophical objections when they identify a principle whose implications extend beyond the circumstances in which it was originally introduced.
If the moral permissibility of deliberately ending a human life depends entirely upon the balance of suffering and welfare, then the same principle may apply wherever the relevant calculation produces a similar result. The categories could extend from newborn infants with severe medical conditions to other individuals who lack developed self-awareness, cannot communicate preferences or require extensive care. This does not establish that every utilitarian would endorse such conclusions, or that societies adopting consequentialist policies must inevitably move towards them. It demonstrates instead that a purely aggregative calculation may lack an internal prohibition against sacrificing an innocent individual for the perceived benefit of others.
The philosophical problem is one of consistency. If killing is justified because a newborn lacks developed personhood, the theorist must explain why other human beings lacking comparable capacities are protected. If killing is justified by suffering, the theorist must explain why intentional death is permissible rather than compassionate care. If killing is justified by burdens imposed upon others, the theorist must explain why those burdens override the dependent individual's claim to life. Without principled limits, each justification invites further applications.
Defenders of utilitarianism may respond that the consequences of permitting infanticide would be socially disastrous. Public trust in medicine could collapse, vulnerable groups could experience fear, and the practice might produce more suffering than it prevents. Rule utilitarians can therefore defend strong prohibitions against killing because such rules promote human welfare over time. This is an important response and demonstrates that utilitarianism does not necessarily entail support for infanticide.
Yet a difficulty remains. If the prohibition is justified solely by its beneficial consequences, it remains theoretically open to revision whenever circumstances are judged sufficiently exceptional. The deontological objection is that some acts should be prohibited not merely because their prohibition usually produces good outcomes, but because they violate duties owed to persons. Human beings must not be treated simply as instruments through which the welfare of others is maximised.
A Christian account of human dignity provides one foundation for such a prohibition. In the biblical understanding, human beings possess inherent worth because they are created in the image of God. Their dignity does not depend upon intelligence, productivity, physical health, social standing or the approval of other people. The newborn infant, the disabled person, the elderly patient and the healthy adult share a moral standing that precedes any calculation of their usefulness.
This Christian perspective also explains why dependence should generate obligations of care rather than permission to eliminate the dependent person. The vulnerable are not moral failures because they cannot support themselves. Their vulnerability creates duties for families, communities and institutions. The appropriate response to suffering is compassion, treatment where beneficial, relief of pain and practical assistance, rather than reducing the moral protection afforded to the sufferer.
A secular deontological argument can reach similar conclusions without relying upon theological premises. A rights-based approach may hold that the deliberate killing of innocent human beings violates a fundamental protection necessary for equal membership in the moral community. Kantian ethics, although requiring careful interpretation when applied to infants, emphasises the prohibition against treating persons merely as means to other ends. Other philosophers defend human dignity through accounts of embodied identity, basic human equality or the inherent value of human life. These approaches differ in their foundations, but they share resistance to the idea that moral protection should depend entirely upon calculations of aggregate welfare.
The challenge for such theories is to explain the source and scope of these rights rather than merely assert them. A philosophical defence of the sanctity of life cannot rest exclusively upon emotional revulsion towards infanticide, however understandable that revulsion may be. It must explain why vulnerable human beings possess moral standing independently of the psychological capacities emphasised by Singer, Tooley, Giubilini and Minerva. The Christian answer is grounded in creation and the image of God; secular accounts must establish the same protection through other moral principles.
The historical context also deserves attention. Infanticide has occurred in numerous societies for reasons involving poverty, disability, inheritance, social status and family circumstances. The spread of Christianity contributed to moral traditions emphasising care for abandoned and vulnerable children, although Christian societies have not always lived consistently with those principles. Historical examples demonstrate that infanticide is not merely a hypothetical possibility invented by modern philosophers. They do not, however, prove that contemporary bioethical arguments will necessarily produce a return to ancient practices.
The Netherlands provides a modern example of the complexity of the issue. Under tightly regulated procedures associated with the Groningen Protocol, Dutch medical practice has permitted the deliberate ending of life in certain exceptional cases involving newborns with severe medical conditions and suffering. This is not a general permission to kill unwanted infants, and the legal and clinical requirements are restrictive. Nevertheless, the practice raises precisely the question at issue: whether severe suffering can justify intentionally ending the life of a patient incapable of consenting.
The debate surrounding Virginia's proposed constitutional amendment on reproductive freedom should be approached with similar precision. Robert Malone argues that the proposed changes raise serious questions about late-pregnancy abortion, medical discretion and the protection of developing human life. Those issues are distinct from the legalisation of infanticide. The amendment does not expressly authorise killing infants after birth, and the philosophical arguments advanced by Singer and others should not be presented as proof that the legislation does so. Criticism of the amendment, if made, should rest upon its actual language and likely legal consequences rather than conflating abortion with the killing of newborn children.
The philosophical dispute is sufficiently important without such conflation. At its centre lies the question of whether human life possesses a moral status that cannot be reduced to welfare calculations. The theories advanced by Singer, Tooley, Giubilini and Minerva challenge familiar assumptions about personhood and the right to life. They deserve serious engagement rather than abuse or censorship. But their arguments also expose the difficulties that arise when moral protection is made dependent upon developed psychological abilities or the preferences of others.
A society committed to equal human dignity must be able to explain why the helpless deserve protection even when they cannot assert their interests. It must distinguish compassionate treatment from deliberate killing, recognise the limitations of predictions about quality of life, and resist the temptation to regard dependency as a reason for diminished moral worth. These obligations are not obstacles to humane medical practice. They are among the conditions that make such practice trustworthy.
The central objection to unconstrained utilitarian reasoning is therefore not that consequences are irrelevant. Consequences matter enormously in medicine, public policy and ordinary moral life. The objection is that consequences cannot be the only consideration. Moral duties and individual rights establish boundaries within which the pursuit of beneficial outcomes must operate.
Without those boundaries, even the most vulnerable human life can become subject to negotiation. With them, compassion is directed towards caring for the sufferer rather than eliminating the person whose suffering presents a difficult problem. That distinction marks a fundamental difference between a morality grounded exclusively in outcomes and one that recognises duties owed to human beings simply because of who and what they are.
The ultimate question is whether the right to life is something a human being must qualify for, or something that places limits upon what others may do. A deontological ethics of human dignity answers that the innocent person must never be reduced to a disposable variable in somebody else's calculation of the greater good. The newborn infant is perhaps the clearest test of whether we genuinely believe that principle.
