Professor John Harris makes some controversial remarks about infanticide (via Normblog):
"People who think there is a difference between infanticide and late abortion have to ask the question: what has happened to the foetus in the time it takes to pass down the birth canal and into the world which changes its moral status? I don't think anything has happened in that time. [....] There is no obvious reason why one should think differently, from an ethical point of view, about a foetus when it's outside the womb rather than when it's inside the womb."
This is surely the sort of argument you would expect from a pro-lifer. I'd always thought that the fundamental argument in favour of allowing abortion was that prior to birth the foetus was essentially a part of the mother and so ultimately her responsibility: at birth it becomes an individual and therefore subject to the concerns of society. So it could hardly be more wrong-headed from a liberal point of view to argue that birth makes no moral difference.
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