The left's birth-control fixation is about more than sexual freedom.
"One family, one child, four modernizations": a Red Chinese propaganda poster from 1987.
By JAMES TARANTO
If there is one word that captures the Orwellian nature of contemporary feminism, it is "choice." It's not just the word's wide use as a euphemism for abortion. You can understand why people on that side of the abortion issue prefer to frame their position in abstract terms, as a defense of liberty, rather than concretely discussing the specific freedom they are defending. Some of them are no doubt sincere in saying that they favor "the right to choose" in general and have no brief for abortion in particular.
But not all. People who claim to favor "reproductive choice" are
often quite judgmental about the reproductive choices of others. This
column has occasionally noted anecdotal examples, such as the lady at a party last year,
a self-described feminist, who angrily described Sarah Palin as a
"moron" for having encouraged her pregnant daughter to carry the child
to term and "to marry the sperm donor" (feministspeak for the biological
father). Another was the man who encouraged pregnant and unmarried Katie Roiphie, a feminist author, to get an abortion and have a "regular baby" later.
Only a bit less harshly, Washington Post columnist Lisa Miller puts such sentiments into writing:Between them, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have as many
children--12--as the tribes of Israel. Ron Paul has five of his own, and
in an early debate, perhaps unwilling to be outdone by Michele
Bachmann's fostering of dozens, Paul boasted that when he worked as a
physician he delivered "4,000 babies.
"There's nothing wrong with big families, of course. But the smug fecundity of the Republican field this primary season has me worried. Their family photos, with members of their respective broods spilling out to the margins, seem to convey a subliminal message that goes far beyond a father's pride in being able to field his own basketball team. What the Republican front-runners seem to be saying is this: We are like the biblical patriarchs. As conservative religious believers, we take seriously the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply."
- Lisa Miller, religion editor, Washington Post
"We've come a long way from the days of the Bible, baby, and I don't
want to go back there," Miller declares. She goes on to celebrate birth
control, which enabled women "to take charge of their fertility, and in
so doing, to take charge of their education, their earnings potential,
and eventually, the planning of their families, and the loving,
nurturing raising of their children."
"Family planning is good for families," she insists, ignoring the
sharp rise in divorce and illegitimacy since 1960, when the Food and
Drug Administration approved the pill for contraceptive use. In
fairness, maybe she means to make a more modest claim--that for the
subset of the population who have been able to form and sustain
marriages despite the social dislocations of the past half-century,
birth control has on balance been beneficial.
But in any case, why does it so bother Miller that the Romneys,
Santorums and Pauls (and also the Palins, whom she mentions in another
paragraph) made the choice to have large families? If she cared about
choice, she would recognize it's none of her business. But contemporary
feminism does not actually value choice, except as a means to an
ideological end, which is the obliteration of differences between the
sexes. The biggest such difference consists in the distinct and
disparate demands that reproduction makes on women. Thus in order to
equalize the sexes, it is necessary to discourage fertility. Implicit in
contemporary feminism is a normative judgment that having children is
bad.
If this were made explicit, of course, the whole project would fall
apart. Feminism is politically unviable without the support of at least a
substantial minority of women, and women (or at least most women) do
have a maternal instinct. So feminism has to wage its war against
fertility covertly, rationalizing it in terms of other goals. A
revealing example comes from a CNSNews.com
report on testimony that Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and
human services, gave to a House subcommittee the other day:
"Sebelius told a House panel Thursday that a reduction in the
number of human beings born in the United States will compensate
employers and insurers for the cost of complying with the new HHS
mandate that will require all health-care plans to cover sterilizations
and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause
abortions.
The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for
the cost of contraception," Sebelius said. She went on to say the
estimated cost is "down not up."
We're skeptical that this prediction will pan out, because it assumes
that the ObamaCare mandate will lead to a substantial increase in
contraceptive use and thus a reduction in pregnancies and
childbirths. But Sebelius's logic, as far as it goes, is unassailable:
The pill is a hell of a lot cheaper than the medical costs (never mind
the nonmedical ones) of prenatal care, childbirth, pediatric care and
adult care until 26, the ObamaCare age of majority.
ObamaCare is just a start, argues Louise Trubek
in today's New York Times. A retired law professor, she was a plaintiff
in an unsuccessful 1950s lawsuit seeking the legal recognition of a
right to contraception, a right the Supreme Court affirmed in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965):
"We won the legal battle but not the war. Women are still not
guaranteed control over their lives, because the necessary social
supports were never secure. The initial goal of Griswold was to help
women--and even though the precedent has helped with same-sex marriage
laws, those initial needs, especially of poor women, have been left
largely unmet.
The universal coverage plan outlined in President Obama's
Affordable Care Act is a good step forward, and we should do all we can
to ensure it."
Sebelius's defense of the contraception mandate dovetails nicely with
Trubek's call for even greater expansions of the entitlement state.
Think of the money the government saves by preventing childbirth as a
down payment on the next big package of benefits.
Perhaps you have spotted the flaw in
the Sebelius logic. Yes, in the short term, contraception is cheaper
than fertility. In the long term, however, a war on fertility is an act
of cultural and economic suicide. Today's low fertility is tomorrow's
shortage of productive citizens--of the taxpayers who would have to pay
for the ever-expanding entitlement state.
The continuing collapse of European welfare statism is as much a
crisis of demographics as of sclerotic government. Even communist China,
which somewhat ironically lacks a Western-style welfare state, is
having to reckon with the unintended long-term consequences of its
one-child policy.
How’s that logic working out for Social Security and Medicare?
Fact: There were 159.4 workers for each Social Security recipient in 1940.
Fact: There were 16.5 workers for each Social Security recipient in 1950.
Fact: There were 5.1 workers for each Social Security recipient in 1960.
Fact: There were 3.7 workers for each Social Security recipient in 1970.
Fact: There were 3.2 workers for each Social Security recipient in 1980.
Fact: There were 3.4 workers for each Social Security recipient in 1990.
Fact: There were 3.4 workers for each Social Security recipient in 2000.
Fact: There were 3.3 workers for each Social Security recipient in 2005.
Fact: There were only 1.75 full-time private-sector workers in the United States in 2010 for each person receiving benefits from Social Security, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Social Security Board of Trustees?
How’s it working out for Europe?
I’ll tell you. We call it: Suicide-by-demographics.
- Sophie
America has some hope for the future, though. Its fertility rate has
not declined as sharply as in other Western nations, in part thanks to
families like the Romneys, Santorums, Pauls and Palins. The polarization
of American politics gives reason for hope about America's political
future, too. As we posited years ago in "The Roe Effect,"
the left's war on fertility is likely to have its greatest success in
reducing the fertility of left-leaning women, thereby ensuring that
future generations are more conservative. Now you can see why Lisa
Miller is in such a bad mood.
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