A full fifty per cent of all babies born in the United States are unwanted, either at that moment or at all. This is truly a dreadful statistic and puts the US at the top of all developed countries in terms of lack of family planning.

Why is this? Because, first, for poor people unable to support an unwanted child, there is a lack of sex education in general. The “moral” police quote the “sanctity of life”. The “sanctity of life” has given us 9 billion humans on Earth, placing a huge load upon the planet’s resources, to say the least. Secondly, you have the biggest single church, the Catholics, still against family planning (only male prostitutes are allowed to wear condoms? is this now Catholic teaching?). Worse, if a poor, ignorant young woman wants an abortion she is faced by a crowd of angry bigots trying to bully her in the name of God, determined to close down abortion clinics.

The true moral issue is this: bringing unwanted children into an unloving world is a sin. Period.

Epicurus believed that you could not have a civil society if half the population were brought up without being wanted and without loving parents. He would be delighted to discover, were he alive today, that sex education and family planning were available to the enlightened. But then he was a humanist, not an ideologue.