China offs its young, now itself

We can all imagine 685 people between 20 and 35 standing in a large hall or church sanctuary. It's easy to picture. Now imagine all these people -- row upon row, score upon score -- trying to commit suicide.

That's the official number of Chinese who commit suicide every single day. That's a quarter of a million a year. An epidemic of depression and fear. And it doesn't include the much larger number of attempts.

Is it a surprise? Can you say "spiritual void"? A nation that kills its young through abortion (especially China's forced version) is a nation with no hope, no future trajectory to look forward to.

If abortion is understood as a modified form of suicide, this makes a kind of macabre sense.