Book Review in WSJ

(TL;DR click here to read the review : points to note, book discusses gender-selective abortion, author is anti-Christian, anti-West, inadvertently ends up exposing the error of the mantra of "choice")

The Wall Stree Journal (not my first choice of reading matter to come out of NYC, to be frank, although my first choice - the Murdoch paper - is a guilty pleasure) has a good review of a book called "Unnatural Selection". Read it here.

The review provides a large number of important points concerning the issue of "gendericide" (sex-selective abortion) which are made in the book, and so this article does (if nothing else) provide ammo for various debates you might be having. And all for free!

However, the wider review of the book (which I think I can recommend for people not wanting to dip into the latest Le Carre this Summer) provides some very important points which I feel are even more instructive.

The author of the book, Hvistendahl, is anti-Christian, anti-West, liberal etc. etc. She is a feminist in the bad sense of the word, and her main problem with the massive death of very small women is not the death of said very small women (or even, it appears, the ancilliary problems associated with gender imbalance) but rather the potential use of gender-selective abortion as a weapon against abortion rights.

Which is, I guess, par for the course. Move along, nothing to see here, right?

Perhaps not - because this review makes the following point; I reproduce it verbatim;

"Despite the author's intentions, "Unnatural Selection" might be one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion. It is aimed, like a heat-seeking missile, against the entire intellectual framework of "choice." For if "choice" is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against "gendercide." Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother's "mental health" requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: "I have patients who come and say 'I want to abort because if this baby is born it will be a Gemini, but I want a Libra.' "

This is where choice leads. This is where choice has already led. Ms. Hvistendahl may wish the matter otherwise, but there are only two alternatives: Restrict abortion or accept the slaughter of millions of baby girls and the calamities that are likely to come with it."

And with that (the last lines of the review) I'll close. Oh, wait, no ... the author (Jonathan Last) is a writter at the Weekly Standard.

I fear your WSJ priviledges have been revoked, Johnny ....