>>14105505Science does not have the answer, it only multiplies the suffering.
The Ancient Romans had the most sensible, ethical solution to this problem, and it was incredibly simple:
1) They acknowledged the fact that not all newborns will be raised by their parents. Some of them are sick and deformed, other times the parents are simply unwilling or unable to raise their newborns.
2) They did not recognize newborns as "people" until they were accepted by the father as his child within about 2 weeks after birth
3) The mother had to bring the child to term and give birth before any decision could be made.
If the newborn child turned out to be sick or deformed, they simply ended its life by leaving it to die of exposure, ending its suffering and saving the parents the suffering of having to raise it. The parents then go on to have a healthy child afterward
If the newborn is perfectly healthy but the pregnancy was unwanted, the parents have to make their decision to abandon it once it is already born and in the mother's arms. Without a doubt this made parents much more likely to keep the child than they had felt earlier during the pregnancy. If the child were abandoned, there was a good chance that it would be adopted.
And thus a fundamental problem of the human condition was solved simply and pragmatically. Compare this to today:
1) We tell ourselves that all children, once born, must be raised to adulthood.
2) We are unwilling to euthanize any newborn, no matter how sickly or deformed.
3) To avoid raising a sickly, deformed, or unwanted child, you can simply kill it before it is born, in the guise of a medical procedure.
This means that the suffering of both child and parent in the case of sickness or deformity is drawn out as long as possible.
It also means that parents get to decide to kill their child without having to have given birth to it and held it, making it much much easier to commit the very same infanticide you are trying so hard to avoid.
