Interesting piece. I wonder if Kate, who thinks that:

"When there is no eternal judge and no expectation of judgement or life after death, then everything is now and all is about the self. No fear of Hell and no hope of Heaven -- you have to live."

would be surprised to learn that the author, Ridley, is a humanist (i.e. atheist or agnostic who believes that our bodily lives on Earth are the only ones we get):

https://www.humanism.org.uk/about/people/distinguished-supporters/Matt-Ridley-FRSL-FMedSci

So, count him as (yet another) secular humanist against sex-selective abortions.

But then, unfortunately, he's a secular humanist libertarian (economic libertarian, at least), who is all about small government and less regulation on business. Which would seem to be a perfect attitude for the guy who was chairman of the British bank Northern Rock for the 3 years, right up to the point when it nosedived - and went running to the Bank of England (big gummint!) for help. Happy ending - Ridley got to keep the 900K pounds he "earned" running said bank so very competently without pesky government interference.

No, I am not surprised. Nat Hentoff presented a lovely humanist argument against abortion many years ago. It seemed perfectly logical to me. I use it to argue about abortion with the hopelessly anti-religious. If your self is all you've got and has intrinsic value, then the life of an unborn person also the same inrtinsic value. How would you dare that life?

We've been over this argument before. Are you persuaded, Craig?

Of course we can thank the Heroine of Liberalism Margaret Sanger for starting us down the road to sex-selection abortions. She started with poor and race-based abortions and encouraged these type of abortions by attending KKK meetings and giving KKK members the idea to abort babies based on race/income levels. By the way, top Femi-Nazi and Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has received the Margaret Sanger award. One wonders how liberals, especially certain liberals who post on this board, go on and on about complaining about rich people such as Wall Street Traders and Bankers should be giving their money to the poor and helping out the 99%, but have no problem supporting abortion. The bulk of the abortions performed in this country on done on poor Hispanic and Black women and funded by taxpayers. Margaret Sanger would be proud of liberals today - they are fully supporting her dream of killing off poor minorities...

SInce the inception of Roe v. Wade 39 years ago, 173 million female unborn children have been aborted. This number represents almost half the population of the United States. The United States has helped fund abortions on poor minorities in foreign countries via Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama - all Liberals. They have helped the United States support the one-child policy countries of China and India. This had led to over 27 million women/young girls being forced in to sex-slavery due to the lack of woman for men to marry in these countries.

Of course liberals would be supportive of sex-selection abortions. One can only think what Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy would think of sex-slavery - right up their alley.

If the Occupiers want to do something good for the POOR - they might start with stopping abortion instead of supporting it.