The easiest way to push a point across is by an appeal to child welfare. The second easiest appeal is to numbers or mass suffering. It comes as a mystery, then, why unborn lives are a glaring exception to the rule.

Their low status has been emphasized lately by very public uses of these appeals. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made children, at large, a significant talking point during his Senate confirmation hearings. “We cannot live up to our role as an exemplary nation, as a moral authority around the world, when we’re writing off an entire generation of kids,” Kennedy argued.