The Mainstream Pro-Choice View, Part Two

Continued from Yesterday. CapnCanCanMan just addressed how I was ignoring the argument that the reasonable pro-choice believe in, not the wackos who serve in NOW, not the people who advocate for abortion on the Internet.

That position, basically encapsulated is that human beings are not able to be abstinent, not able to control their sexual urges, and therefore must have the ability to have an abortion to cover their oopsy.

As I pointed out, this really argues for forced population control. Alan Keyes in a 1997 Speech to the Gun Owners of New Hampshire made the point that this mentality undermines our whole idea of freedom:

The view of human nature that tells our young people that they can’t control their sexual passion is the same view of human nature that tells us all that we can’t control our anger, we can’t control our jealousy, we can’t control those passions that lead to violence, and therefore we can’t be trusted with the guns we need to defend our way of life. These are the SAME agendas.

These are the same agendas.

What we see coming forward, then, is actually an agenda that undermines our liberty by undermining not just our sense that freedom is important; no. It’s worse than that. What they are undermining is our sense that we are capable of freedom, that we have the capacity to live as free people.

Because let’s be frank about it. Don’t kid yourself. If all of you in this room were convinced that freedom meant anarchy, that freedom meant violence, that freedom meant streets running with blood, property that could not be secured, that the consequence of freedom was going to be that we set ourselves against one another with no constraint and no control–NONE of us would be in favor of such freedom. We would, all of us, be willing to surrender liberty, if it meant we had to live in that kind of hell. And you know it.

So if somebody comes along and convinces us that we are incapable of disciplining and controlling ourselves, that concept, once it is inculcated, becomes the enemy of freedom, because we lose the confidence to claim our rights. We lose the confidence to believe that those rights are compatible with civilization, with decency, with peace, with order, with all the things that, in fact, we value. We do not wish to live in neighborhoods filled with fear; we do not wish to live with schools where our children kill one another. And so if we can be convinced that we are such people that, trusted with our liberties, that will be the consequence, guess what’s gonna happen? We will abandon liberty. And this is what’s happening.

Anyway, back to CapnCanCanman’s response:

Yes, abortion is murder…

Now, his point has been that we must allow abortion to save civilization from overpopulation. Now, what type of Civilization begins a statement with, “Yes, Its Murder” and follows up with a justification? Indeed, when we treat human life as cheap we undermine the very idea of what Civilization is supposed to bring. Whose lifes or liberty can be sought secure when we’ve replaced the idea that our rights come from God with the idea, “Its Murder but…”

No, because if our civilization is just a bunch of conveniences and things we think are so special that we’ll kill to hold onto them, then its not worth it. What will a man trade for his soul? Some, its money. Others will allow millions to die so we don’t have to excercise self-control.

The civilization he advocates is one devoid of decency, compassion or love. God is the belly and pleasure, and convenience. Its not the world I want to live in. Its not the world I want to leave behind. He goes on to write:

But you really can’t have a complete discussion of this issue without talking about overpopulation, and I find it remarkable (and telling) that no quote-unquote “pro-lifer” ever seems to address this issue with any seriousness or concern.

Well, lets address it. Of course, we’ve been hearing about the danger of overpopulation since Malthus and the left warned us under Paul Ehlrich, even though he turned out to be slightly off:

“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death.” (1968)

“Smog disasters” in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)

“I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” (1969)

“Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.” (1976)

Well, England’s still around and its 2006, so pay up, Doc. From Michael Meyer in Newsweek in September, we have this news:

At a conference in London, the U.N. Population Fund weighed in with a similarly bleak report: unless something dramatically changes, the world’s 50 poorest countries will triple in size by 2050, to 1.7 billion people.

Yet this is not the full story. To the contrary, in fact. Across the globe, people are having fewer and fewer children. Fertility rates have dropped by half since 1972, from six children per woman to 2.9. And demographers say they’re still falling, faster than ever. The world’s population will continue to grow—from today’s 6.4 billion to around 9 billion in 2050. But after that, it will go sharply into decline. Indeed, a phenomenon that we’re destined to learn much more about—depopulation—has already begun in a number of countries. Welcome to the New Demography. It will change everything about our world, from the absolute size and power of nations to global economic growth to the quality of our lives.

With 6 billion people, you could empty the whole world and put everyone in Texas, giving everyone (man, women, and child) 1500 square feet of space and if you want to be a smart aleck about some land not being habitable, you can throw a few people into Arkansas for good measure. The point is we have so much unused and unpeopled space on this earth, its ridiculous.

As to resources, Greenpeace (again hardly Conservative) says this:

Most hungry people live in countries that have food surpluses rather than deficits. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), we are already producing one and a half times the amount of food needed to provide everyone in the world with an adequate and nutritious diet, yet one in seven people is suffering from hunger.

This is before any type of advances in the science of agriculture in terms of the growth of hydroponics. This is really a bunch of nonsense and a poor argument for killing millions of innocent children.

I’ll have another piece sometime this weekend on Overpopulation.