Posted on 03/21/2005 1:19:32 PM PST by Pokey78
I am, as Tony Blair might say, deeply passionately personally deeply personally opposed to abortion. But, unlike him, I think it ought to be an election issue.
Not because of my personal beliefs: I happen to believe a lot of what we call "late-term abortion" is in reality early-term infanticide, but, if you don't accept that that's a human life that's being destroyed, my deeply personal passionate beliefs aren't likely to sway you one way or another. That's where so-called progressive politicians such as Blair and John Kerry have it all backwards: the point about abortion is not that it's a "matter of conscience" for individuals to "wrestle with", but that it's a crucial part of the central political challenge of our time.
Almost every issue facing the EU - from immigration rates to crippling state pension liabilities - has at its heart the same glaringly plain root cause: a huge lack of babies. I could understand a disinclination by sunny politicians to peddle doom and gloom were it not for the fact that, in all other areas of public policy, our rulers embrace doomsday scenarios at the drop of a hat. Most 20-year projections - on global warming, fuel resources, etc - are almost laughably speculative. They fail to take into account the most important factor of all - human inventiveness: "We can't feed the world!" they shriek. But we develop more efficient farming methods with nary a thought. "The oil will run out by the year 2000!" But we develop new extraction methods and find we've got enough oil for as long as we'll need it.
But human inventiveness depends on humans - and that's the one thing we really are running out of. When it comes to forecasting the future, the birth rate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2005, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2025 (or 2033, or 2041, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management, Systemic Racism and Gay Studies degrees). If that's not a political issue, what is? To cite only the most obviously affected corner of the realm, what's the long-term future of the Scottish National Party if there are no Scottish nationals?
When I've mentioned the birth dearth on previous occasions, pro-abortion correspondents have insisted it's due to other factors - the generally declining fertility rates that affect all materially prosperous societies, or the high taxes that make large families prohibitively expensive in materially prosperous societies. But this is a bit like arguing over which came first, the chicken or the egg - or, in this case, which came first, the lack of eggs or the scraggy old chicken-necked women desperate for one designer baby at the age of 48. How much of Europe's fertility woes derive from abortion is debatable. But what should be obvious is that the way the abortion issue is framed - as a Blairite issue of personal choice - is itself symptomatic of the broader crisis of the dying West.
Since 1945, a multiplicity of government interventions - state pensions, subsidised higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything - has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that in Europe a child is now an optional lifestyle accessory. By 2050, Estonia's population will have fallen by 52 per cent, Bulgaria's by 36 per cent, Italy's by 22 per cent. The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?
Shortly after 9/11, I wrote in these pages about one of the most curious aspects of the new war - the assurance given to Islamist "martyrs" that 72 virgins were standing by to pleasure them for eternity. The notion that the after-life is a well-appointed brothel is a perplexing one to the Judaeo-Christian world, and I suggested that Americans would be sceptical if heaven were framed purely in terms of boundless earthly pleasures.
But, on reflection, if the Islamists are banal in portraying the next world purely in terms of sensual self-gratification, we're just as reductive in measuring this one the same way. America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands.
"The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol."
Ah, the protocols of the elders of science. Odd the way scientists have such little regard for scientific progress. It's highly likely that many birth defects - not just the bilateral cleft lips - will be treatable and correctible in the next decade or two. But once you start weighing the relative values of individual lives, there's no end to it. Much of that derives from the way abortion has redefined life - as a "choice", an option.
In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life in Florida or the cleft-lipped baby's in Herefordshire has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.
The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it's the demography, stupid.
Actually, that's "Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Short." That was also the name of The American Spectator's law firm for a while.
Your own namesake forced a good deal of legislation on this topic in the early days of the Roman Empire. Seems Augustus figured out there were too many little barbarians running through Europe and too few little Romans. He turned out to be right, of course. Perhaps the coming Moslem majority will be as kind to today's Europeans as the Goths were way back then. And perhaps not.
That's a pretty scathing indictment. Unfortunately, it's true for many.
Bump to read later
Would Mormonism qualify as "Judeo-Christian" in your scheme?
"Liberals are abstractly compassionate and personally hedonistic. "
Well said. in fact, the liberal philosophy now falls apart at so many levels that it is like going to sea in a boat whose skin is made of burlap sacks.
I just wonder when they will wake up, like Rip van Winkles, from a hundred years of sleep.
A sodden image, to be sure!
The French have been trying all sorts of goverment programs to encourage childbirth.
The end result is a wash.
Basically all the government can do is make childbirth and childrearing a little less expensive and a little less encumbering to the parents. It's still easier to stay childless.
So this goes to Steyn's point which is that we have created a culture and mindset that is indirectly opposed to children.
I imagine this is where we will need something like a Brave New World where society will theoretically get a continuous flow of factory designed and factory reared children without anyone having to care for them except those that are paid to. An endless sea of consumers and producers and taxpayers without having to clean diapers or fend off projectile baby food!
See my freepmail. Mail me back if that didn't clear things up a bit.
another great article
Is it soilent? I thought it was Soylent. And isn't it part of Future Shock?
True, but that is somewhat counterbalanced by converting conservative children once they enter college.
In a few decades you will be able to euthanize children right before their 13th birthday so you don't have to put up with the cost and worry of having a teenager around.
ping to read when I'm not half asleep.
I am not sure how it is spelled, but I do believe that the movie was a stand alone. Charlton Heston played the main character of a police officer of some kind.Future Shock was another title altogether.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Do you really believe you can legislate life from those who wish death?
Actually, accurate portrayal of present-tense socialist orders. The one thing all "overpopulated" countries have in common is socialism. At one point, half the unmarried ladies over the age of 16 in Petrograd were prostitutes.
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