Culture throughout the centuries

We've come a long way, baby. And we've ended up back where we started before the rise of Christianity. In the Church's infancy abortion and infanticide were commonplace events, requiring little deliberation. ... Indeed most cultures considered it a duty to place "defective" newborns on the dunghills at the edge of town, where birds of prey could pick them apart. Most families interpreted the word "defective" broadly, to include female children as well as those with disabilities or disfigurement. Plato and Aristotle commended the practice, and the Roman historian Tacitus said it was "sinister and revolting" for Jews to forbid infanticide.

Yet these practices created a crisis for pagans. Abortion and infanticide led to low fertility rates, high maternal mortality, a shortage of marriageable women... That makes for an unstable social infrastructure. Various emperors tried to legislate fertility, but the law isn't much of an aphrodisiac. Abortion kills a couple's love every bit as much as it kills their baby. And besides, people had grown accustomed to an unmoored, leisurely life, drifting from pleasure to pleasure, without the encumberance of children.

(Excerpted from Touchstone Jan/Feb 2008, pp. 25/26)

Remind anyone of today?