One of the most controversial decisions by Sir Nicholas Stern in his flawed report on the economics of climate change was to value the welfare of future generations as exactly the same as ours, with a small discount to account for the slim possibility of the human race’s extinction. What, as the Economist blog asks, does this say about the utility society supposedly enjoys from abortion? With some 20% of pregnancies terminated in countries like the USA and UK, rising in to 50% in Russia, this implies a pretty substantial revealed preference discount rate applied to the next generation.