"God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide"

Rebecca West’s declaration equating the banning of books with the moral abhorrence of infanticide delivers a forceful argument for the sanctity of intellectual freedom. She asserts that the act of banning a book is not only wrong but as inconceivable and monstrous as the destruction of innocent life. The choice to pair book banning, often dismissed as a mere administrative or cultural control, with the universally condemned act of infanticide is a deliberate escalation. West pushes readers to understand the gravity of censorship, refusing to allow anyone to minimize or rationalize its effects. By doing so, she highlights how the destruction of ideas, voices, and stories is a form of violence against society itself.

The comparison suggests that banning a book is an act that kills something essential: the possibility of dialogue, the germination of empathy, and the expansive spectrum of human thought. Just as infanticide eliminates a life’s potential, so censorship annihilates the life of ideas before they have had a chance to be considered. West implies that every book contains within it the potential for growth, a new perspective, a challenge to the status quo, an opportunity for transformation. To ban a book is to strangle these possibilities, ensuring they never come to fruition.

The phrase reflects a fierce commitment to freedom of expression, suggesting that no authority, governmental, religious, or social, should possess the power to dictate what literature can be accessed. By invoking such a severe analogy, West does not merely express disapproval; she summons moral outrage and demands readers recognize the deep injustice inherent in literary censorship. Her statement calls for vigilance and resistance against any infringement on the right to read, learn, and imagine. It is a passionate defense of the written word, grounded in the belief that to ban books is not simply to reject a text, but to perpetrate a profound harm against human potential and cultural vitality.