Parameterized access of row or column of pandas DataFrame

I would like to get slices of a pandas.DataFrame using an axis argument to specify either rows or columns. That is, I would like the functionality provided by the function _loc_axis in the MWE below. Is there an easy way to do this?

import pandas as pd

def _loc_axis(df, idx, axis):
    """Call loc along proper axis"""
    # Axis as integer, error if axis is invalid
    axis = {0: 0, 'index': 0,
            1: 1, 'columns': 1}[axis]
    return (df.loc[idx, :] if axis==0 else
            df.loc[:, idx])

df = pd.DataFrame(
    data=[[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]],
    index=['a','b','c'],
    columns=['D','E','F'],
)

print(df)
print(_loc_axis(df, ['a','b'], axis='index'))
print(_loc_axis(df, ['F','D'], axis='columns'))

Produces output:

   D  E  F
a  1  2  3
b  4  5  6
c  7  8  9

   D  E  F
a  1  2  3
b  4  5  6

   F  D
a  3  1
b  6  4
c  9  7