Should the Baby Live? Abortion and Infanticide: When Ontology Overlaps Ethics and Peter Singer Echoes the Stoics

Concerning abortion and infanticide, ethics has always seen to each one as quite puzzling an issue. The dilemma expectedly goes like this: “Are they morally good, permissible or acceptable, or are they not?” All three major approaches in ethics, viz. virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism, have fervently exerted themselves in order to settle both. A virtue ethicist is expected to approach the issue wondering: “Is performing abortion and infanticide indicative of virtues, to wit of character traits that the virtuous agent possesses?” A deontologist would bring the dilemma up for discussion asking: “Is conducting abortion and infanticide in accordance with some moral rule or principle?” To an act utilitarian, on the other hand, the same question would strike as: “Do abortion and infanticide promote the best consequences, to wit those in which happiness is maximized?” All three approaches have been applied to the subject matter ever since the classic era, sadly with no remarkable success and, most of the times, even without the slightest suspicion of the promised rigor.