Why a right to life rules out infanticide: A final reply to Räsänen

Joona Räsänen has argued that pro-life arguments against the permissibility of infanticide are not persuasive, and fail to show it to be immoral. We responded to Räsänen’s arguments, concluding that his critique of pro-life arguments was misplaced. Räsänen has recently replied in ‘Why pro-life arguments still are not convincing: a reply to my critics’, providing some additional arguments as to why he does not find pro-life arguments against infanticide convincing. Here, we respond briefly to Räsänen’s critique of the substance view, and also to his most important claim: that possession of a right to life by an infant does not rule out the permissibility of infanticide. We demonstrate that this claim has little support, and conclude that Räsänen has not refuted pro-life arguments against infanticide. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Rodgers, D and Blackshaw, B (2019) Why a right to life rules out infanticide: A final reply to Räsänen, Bioethics. Which will be published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14678519. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.