This book, in the main, is devoted to the question of benevolent infanticide. Its primary purpose is to understand what conditions, if any, warrant allowing or inducing the death of a seriously defective infant. More generally, the debate is concerned with two questions: what are the limits of the value of life? And what moral, legal, or other kinds of protection should be provided for the most helpless and vulnerable of all human beings?

Experts from different disciplines present new insights into the subject of ritual homicide in various regions of the ancient world.

Infanticide is one of the most common, yet least understood of all human crimes. Although academic articles document isolated aspects of this problem, a single, unified analysis of infanticide has not been completed until now. In Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life, Larry Milner provides the first exhaustive survey of infanticide, drawing on historical data from around the world. He then uses this survey as a basis for investigating why infanticide has been present in every form of human society throughout history. Both comprehensive and compelling, this important study will intrigue students of human psychology, social welfare, and child abuse, and will promote further research on this alarmingly overlooked atrocity

This book has two main concerns. The first is to isolate the fundamental issues that must be resolved if one is able to formulate a defensible position on the question of the morality of abortion. The second is to determine the most plausible stand on those issues. The issues are intellectually difficult and many of them have been more or less ignored in public debate on abortion. Tooley argues, however, that plausible answers can be advanced, and that they support a liberal position on the morality of abortion.

In this text, Jeffrey Reiman argues that an overlooked clue to the solution of the moral problem lies in the unusual way in which we value the lives of individual human beings - namely, that we value them irreplaceably. We think it is not only wrong to kill an innocent human child or adult, but that it would not be made right by replacing the dead one with another living one, or even several.

Drawing on philosophical notions of personal identity and the immorality of killing, Jeff McMahan looks at various issues, including abortion, infanticide, the killing of animals, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.

Infanticide is the crime of killing an infant. It is one of the commonest, yet least understood of all human crimes. Estimates of its frequency, based upon historical studies and modern data, indicate that up to 10-15% of all children ever born have been killed by their parents: an astounding seven billion victims! Most people find it difficult to accept that anyone, except the most severely mentally disturbed felon, would kill their own child. The author provides the first exhaustive survey of infanticide, drawing on historical data from around the world. He then uses this survey as a basis for investigating why infanticide has been present in every form of human society throughout history. Although academic articles document isolated aspects of this problem, a single, unified analysis of infanticide has not been completed until now. Both comprehensive and compelling, this important study will intrigue students of human psychology, social welfare, and child abuse, and will promote further research on this alarmingly overlooked atrocity. Dr. Larry S. Milner, an expert in the field of infanticide, brings to light reasons why parents have so often resorted to murdering their offspring. A board-certified physician in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Oncology as well as an attorney, Dr. Milner wrote this book to inform the public about the historical and current practice of infanticide in order to promote prevention.

Female infanticide is a social practice often closely associated with Chinese culture. Journalists, social scientists, and historians alike emphasize that it is a result of the persistence of son preference, from China's ancient past to its modern present. Yet how is it that the killing of newborn daughters has come to be so intimately associated with Chinese culture? Between Birth and Death locates a significant historical shift in the representation of female infanticide during the nineteenth century. It was during these years that the practice transformed from a moral and deeply local issue affecting communities into an emblematic cultural marker of a backwards Chinese civilization, requiring the scientific, religious, and political attention of the West. Using a wide array of Chinese, French and English primary sources, the book takes readers on an unusual historical journey, presenting the varied perspectives of those concerned with the fate of an unwanted Chinese daughter: a late imperial Chinese mother in the immediate moments following birth, a male Chinese philanthropist dedicated to rectifying moral behavior in his community, Western Sinological experts preoccupied with determining the comparative prevalence of the practice, Catholic missionaries and schoolchildren intent on saving the souls of heathen Chinese children, and turn-of-the-century reformers grappling with the problem as a challenge for an emerging nation.

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live.