Are you tired yet? That was the motto of the anti-abortion advertising supplement in The State Hornet late last month.
"Are you tired of all the rhetoric about 'choice?' Tired of the spin?" the insert asked.Well, I just took a nap, so I'm good, thanks - Actually, maybe I am a little tired.
I'm tired of traffic and tired of lines at the grocery store. I'm tired of a growing population, tired of poverty and hunger and tired of a shortage of natural resources. I'm tired of the depletion of the earth.
Whew, come to think of it, I'm exhausted.
I'm tired of people so faithful to their primitive reproductive urges that they can't think modernly. We have progressed past the days when life was all about raising children, hunting and gathering and carrying on the family name.
Now we live in a time where 6.5 billion people live on an earth estimated capable of properly sustaining between one and two billion.
We can't fully provide for all the people on earth as it is and this advertising supplement encourages bringing in more, even when they'll be the children of adolescent mothers or parents too poor to provide for them.
It's not selfish to recognize that you can't provide the best life for a child, it's selfish to pretend that you can.I'm tired of so many people still feeling the need to reproduce as though their lives are meaningless without offspring.
And, as their egos and ovaries are just aching for a kid, they don't consider the adoptable children that need parenting instead of the unborn one that doesn't exist or need anything yet.
Like me, Les Knight, founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, is exhausted as well."We can't be breeding right now," Knight told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's obvious that the intentional creation of another (human being) can't be justified by anyone anywhere today, because wherever humans live not much else lives."
I imagine that Mr. Knight (who, by the way, got a vasectomy when he was 25) is also a vegan, does not drive or drives an electric vehicle, uses purely solar or wind powered energy, recycles, reuses and reduces, and has a beautiful garden.
His solution to global problems is also more extreme than most of us probably consider but, crazy or not, Knight certainly has a valid point.
I couldn't care less about a fetus. Sorry. But if that fetus is going to be an unwanted or underprivileged baby; hell, if you're not going to be able to make his or her soccer games, than you're doing it a favor by not bringing it into a world that is hard enough as it is.
Of course, everyone has to figure out what works for them and their situation. People are going to keep having children (just like they're going to keep buying hummers and driving to the corner store) and people are going to keep having abortions, legal or not.
But no one can justify having more than two abortions any more than they can justify having more than the two children that can replace themselves.
After all, it's that excess 0.5 of our average 2.5 children families that has put us in this predicament in the first place. Let's take a tip from China on this one, eh?
We have to think ahead for the earth and ourselves, whether that means planning ahead to reduce family size or using birth control to reduce unplanned pregnancy.
Doing without either is simply irresponsible because the environment doesn't think your kids are cute and most the time neither does anyone else.
Contact Jen White at [email protected]
