I wouldn't argue that we should legalize killing infants and toddlers, but I would suggest that the tendency for the whole society to lose its collective shit about infanticide is related to our discomfort with the legal status of abortion. Ethically, there doesn't seem to be much difference between an infant one day before and one day after birth. Of course, ours is not an ethical society, so killing one is perfectly legal while killing the other will inspire a vituperative media circus, widespread hand-wringing, and decades in prison. Why is that? It seems that mothers who kill their young children function as scapegoats, so that we may have a focus for the hazy sense of guilt that many of us feel about abortion.