Every now and then someone accidentally tells the truth… reveals true motives… shows their hand… A week ago, Zell Miller, the combative old coot who used to be the turncoat Democratic Senator from Georgia did just that… although I hardly believe that this was his true intention…
Speaking before an Anti-Abortion fund raiser, Miller stated that 45 million babies have been killed since the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade in 1973, and that above all other issues, legalized abortion was at the root of the nation’s problems with the military, social security, and immigration.
Said Miller:
“How could this great land of plenty produce too few people in the last 30 years? Here is the brutal truth that no one dares to mention: We’re too few because too many of our babies have been killed. If those 45 million children had lived, today they would be defending our country, they would be filling our jobs, they would be paying into Social Security.”
For the sake of infotainment, let’s break down the fallacies and hidden agenda in the previous paragraph…
- How could this great land of plenty produce too few people in the last 30 years?
According to census statistics, there were 203,302,031 people living in the United States in 1970… and 281,421,906 people living in the United States in 2000… an increase of more than 78 million, more than any other 30 year period since the census was first taken in 1790.
BUZZZZZ… wrong you are… Mr. Miller, all due respect, but I don’t think a lack of population is much of a problem as far as the United States is concerned…
- We’re too few because too many of our babies have been killed. If those 45 million children had lived, today they would be defending our country, they would be filling our jobs, they would be paying into Social Security.
So in essence, Mr. Miller has a severe quarrel with an unwanted child being aborted in its first trimester, however, once that child reaches 18, Miller is perfectly all right with them burning to death in a Humvee “defending” our nation in a manufactured war…
More meat for the grill…
And there it is folks, the great disconnect among the pro-life community… while in the womb, the child is sacred and pure… but the moment it shrieks its first lungful of air, it is fallible and born of original sin… and therefore utterly disposable… especially so if it is born to a mother of lower socio-economic status. (or… of color…)
Apparently he is also fine with that unwanted child ending up working a dead end job at Taco Bell just so they can pay into a barren Social Security system… barren because Ronald Reagan stole all the money in the S.S. coffers to fund his eighties war machine…
Let’s discuss some cold hard demographics… It is common knowledge that most women who have abortions are young and poor… and that a large percentage of those unwanted children would have ended up poor as well… Most children born into hardship don’t get proper healthcare, nutrition, education, etc… so it is any wonder that they don’t grow up to be doctors, lawyers and captains of industry…? Those children fortunate enough to break themselves from the shackles of poverty to make something of their lives have beaten incredible odds.
So, where do a lot of these children end up? Well… a lot of them end up on the streets, or dead, or in jail… look no further than the controversial 1999 academic paper by economists Steven D. Levitt and John Donohue… The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, which chillingly links reduced crime statistics with the passage of legalized abortion… sad but true…
Let it be understood that I am not advocating that we abort children simply because their mothers are young and poor… what I am saying is that instead of supporting the unborn while ignoring the born, steps could be taken to curb unintended pregnancies in the first place. More sex education and less abject poverty leads to less abortion. For example, in the Netherlands exists a program called “Lang leve de liefde” (”Long Live Love”)… Teenagers are taught to make informed decisions regarding health and sexuality, and thusly, the Netherlands has one of the lowest teenage pregnancy rates in the world, and the Dutch system is seen as a model for other countries.
Except for this country of course… we prefer to remain in the dark ages, preaching abstinence, morality and no sex before marriage… as if any of that voodoo works on horny teenagers… hell, I used to go to Bible Camp just to get laid…
Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare… truth be told, one abortion is one too many, and just about any pro-choice advocate will tell you that… In a perfect world, abortion would be unnecessary, but the world is hardly perfect now is it?
Perhaps if people in the position of power (people like Mr. Miller) had done their jobs and passed legislation promoting sex education, advocating birth control, and rectifying poverty, we’d have far less than 45 million dead babies to mourn.
Perhaps if we spent REAL money and effort researching alternatives to fossil fuels, we wouldn’t be depending upon the military industrial complex, K Street, and Congress to dream up new imperial adventures for our lesser advantaged classes to die in.
But then again, that would be the moral thing to do.
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AMEN!
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Religious praises for secular sentiments aside…. :)
I saw something on this here:
http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/03/13/zell-miller-is-wrong-but-he-isnt-crazy/
sort of a different approach. Yeah. I don’t agree with Zell. You can’t blame legalized abortion for a failing war. Or even link it, really. But you’re kidding yourself if you think that abortion hasn’t changed the demographics of the West. For good? For bad? Who knows…
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A.joe -
Hey, thanks for that link… that helped me view some of the numbers from a different angle…
How about this variable…?
The possibility that NOT having an abortion may also reduce population… For example, what if having a child at 17 prevented the educational and economic development that would have allowed you to have three children in your late 20’s?
Ah yes, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics…
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Great piece if writing.
It always gets me when these old farts stand up and preach about the sins women are commiting by having abortions.
YOU come and take this baby and raise it and pay for its education then. Oh, no, not OUR family…someone else can adopt them.
Oh, Roy…I am so totally on the same page as you.
45 million more kids getting their asses blown up in Humvees indeed.
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Just to correct something in your post Matt. Population is actually falling in the United States (or it will be) and in the rest of the global north. Currently every industrialized country has a birth rate below 2.1 (which is considered “replacement level”). The reason the population hasn’t decreased is because a significant amount of momentum from previous generations high birth rates has allowed the population to continue to rise (we’re having less kids, but there’s more of us). This momentum will peter off eventually (I think 2012 is the number statisticians are guessing at) and that’s when we’ll see the population begin to drop. It is actually a serious concern for the us (and most industrialized countries). If the trend continues I’ve heard statisticians argue that all of Italy will disappear in just under 200 years.
So in a sense, his argument is at least logical. (I should preface this by saying that I am Pro-Choice) but as A.Joe pointed out (thanks for that link - I hadn’t heard that argument before) his data seems to be wrong.
I did find it a little entertaining that he has so much love for the “sanctity of life” that he would suggest we should send “saved” babies off to war. What a weird, weird man.
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Er.. I meant Roy. Sorry, force of habit.
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As a conservative Christian, I believe with all my heart that abortion is wrong. On the other hand, I don’t believe that everyone else has to believe what I believe. And since I am not able on my own to care for a bunch of unwed mothers or their unwanted children, then I have to withold my judgement on their actions. Women do need to have access to safe abortions if they are going to have them whether or not I approve. It is a sad fact that saddling someone who may have already shown that they are irresponsible with the huge responsibility of raising another human being is pretty stupid and short-sighted. This is one of those areas where I wish the “What Would Jesus Do” people would just shut up. Jesus wouldn’t have been in a position to be in a position to get pregnant and therefore would never be in the position to have to deal with it.
I absolutely agree that kids need more education rather than being told to simply abstain but the education does have to include the possibility of abstainance because, believe it or not, it is possible for some. Not all teens have uncontrollable lust and they should not feel pressured to have intercourse just because they are supposed to be horny to the extreme. They should all be encouraged to choose the safer alternatives out there.
That said, Miller is indeed an idiot.
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I agreed with every single word of that post…you hit the nail on the head. And remember, while abstinence, morality and no sex before marriage is being promoted, EVERYTHING a US teen sees on TV, in the media, and all around them is promoting the opposite. The mixed messages leave them to use their own minds. But, unfortunately, when they are horny teens, their minds don’t always make the decisions.
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(and I’m so glad that Miller sees our children as nothing more than another cog in the wheel to feed a system. So we just raise ‘em so we can use them…strength in numbers. But their quality of life (or lack thereof) would produce new numbers that he hasn’t considered. I am with you in that I only believe in abortion as a last resort for those in a desperate situation…but to steer clear to beef up statistics certainly is not thinking of the best interest of anyone and is nothing to factor into the equation)
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I’m guessing Miller prolly got his rocks off when the Global Gag Order was reinstated on Bush’s first day in office.
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The religious/moral argument aside, abortion raises another important question altogether. That being the population crisis. The world’s population is accelerating so quickly that sooner than we’d like (as in, VERY soon) it will reach it’s carrying capacity and everything will go to hell. There won’t be enough resources to satisfy everyone. So if we can control the population in any way, it should be looked on as a progressive solution.
There’s the first solution: abort unwanted babies very early in the pregnancy.
And then there’s the second (Miller) solution: “abort” unwanted babies 18 years after the fact, by sending them out to die in a bloody war that serves only the interests of the rich and powerful.
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I think the problem is High School. All the nerds, smart kids, geeks and dweebs never get laid, so they concentrate on “learning”, but In the meantime, the jocks, idiots, potheads, drunks, machoistic assholes, sluts, ditzes and bitches and fucking each other’s brains out; working part time jobs at grocery stores to make a little money to buy each other nifty things, like cellphones, cars, beer, cigarettes, cds, dvds and ipods. They spend the next 50 years paying off debt from consumer spending sprees induced by mindless TV, but while the nerds, smart kids, geeks and dweebs become presidents and CEOS and live in big houses with hot ditzy wives and idiot children, the idiots who work for them can’t afford kids, so they go get abortions. The ones that get born end up being smart, because struggling against things creates creativity, and they become the nerds in the school. Half of them probably either commit suicide or get aborted, which is probably why there’s only a “fortune 500″ and more poor than rich. It’s like a generational cycle. That’s why all the assholes and idiots have rich parents, and the cool people usually come from some kind of poverty.
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great post.
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I personally believe that abortion is wrong. I certainly don’t trust every representative on the right to properly put forth an effective anti-abortion campaign, but what are you gonna do?
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Said it before, say it again
Roy El Saghir for president!
Brilliant!
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@ rupert
See my post above. The population is in fact not accelerating, and there is no chance of us reaching global carrying capacity.
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That’s a fantastic post. You really hit a tough issue very well. Though I would like to point out that it’s a very tough argument to make that a fetus doesn’t have a right to life; most pro-choice ethicists would take the line that the mother’s freedom plays trump in some situations (very few serious ethicists would argue for abortion under any and all circumstances). See the classic ‘wake up in a hospital hooked up to a terminally-ill patient’ example.
There are certainly a lot of assholes who jump on the morality bandwagon to try and push their own agendas (as Miller is transparently doing here) and it’s important to call them out. If we don’t show up the jerks who fall back on some ill-thought-out cut-and-paste morality they end up making the whole thing look bad. Bravo on two counts.
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*just ‘pointing that out’ not because I think anyone was missing it, but because I think it often gets overlooked. In liberal-leaning discussions it’s often too easy to loose sight of the fact that abortion is the ‘least favourable alternative’ in many situations.
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Wolfrider,
Hadn’t heard that. Last time I researched carrying capacity feels like only a year or two ago. I wonder if that statistic holds true to many countries that aren’t industrialized. And I can’t imagine that some of the countries with the biggest populations (India, China, etc) would fall below the replacement rate. It seems very interesting.
I might like researching the topic now that I know this. I’d very much appreciate a link to any sources on the matter if you wouldn’t mind.
Thanks.
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@ rupert
I don’t actually have any articles at the ready, it was something I covered in an Adulthood and Aging class at my university. This is what I could find after a quick google search.
http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/publications/summary/04120003.html
http://www.susps.org/overview/birthrates.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_rate
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
Sorry I couldn’t help more. If you have access to journal databases at a university or a library, JSTOR is a good resource for demography articles.
From what I remember, third world countries are still above replacement level (significantly) but they’re birth rates are dropping as well.
Of course, now that I think about it you might be right as well, carrying capacity isn’t only affected by population growth, but by consumption as well (if I’m not mistaken, its been a while). So if the consumption rates of industrialized populations are becoming excessive, perhaps that would be pushing us up towards carrying capacity.
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I know most industrialized countries are below their replacement rate, but you can bet that the third world is well, well above their replacement rate, same with China and most of the other Asian countries. I would also bet that they are having more than enough children to bring the world at large far, far above it’s replacement rate.
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There are too many people in the world already. They don’t consider the economy of the environment. Yes, environmentally there is a limit to the amount of people that is sustainable. Whether you support abortion or not it is ridiculous to say there are not enough people. What about all the plants and animals that support our existance? Maybe we need more animals in the world.
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@ rupert
Er… I posted a few links for you to follow but for some reason it got deleted…. Just do a quick google search, you’ll find some stuff. And to Kordan, you’re right in saying that third world countries are above replacement level, but their birth rates are falling as well. Globally it’s a downward trend.
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Wolfrider:
I hate to be a naysayer… but CIA factbooks state otherwise, as well as this link…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070314/sc_afp/unworldpopulation_070314153500
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El Saghir -
Good points raised. Though Miller could be technically right about the US’s birth rate being lower than replenishment, the population could’ve easily risen. I’m not sure about the “momentum” argument presented in the comments, but one conflating variable is another conservative hot topic: immigration!
Basically, it goes like this: stop the white, or at least white-washed, from aborting their babies and you’ve got an “all-American” lower class, and you don’t have to import people to do the shit-jobs, and thus don’t have to further dilute “American culture”, whatever the hell that is. Whether this is the thinking of staunchly pro-choice fundamentalist Christians, I’m convinced it’s the thinking of those elements of the Republican party that exploit fundamentalist tendencies.
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@ El Saghir
Actually your link confirms what I said. “Based on a continuation of a decline in fertility — and eventually the number of children, the global population will increase at most by 30 million people a year until 2050, the UN said.” The numbers have a tendency to fluctuate depending on the statistician, but about 10 - 12 billion is generally the momentum “cap” that I’ve seen being tossed around. The UN is definitely predicting a slower growth curve than most, but that still falls in line with what I’ve read. I’ve seen other sources put the cap at 2020, 2030, etc.
I never meant the population was falling, what I said was that the only reason we’re seeing population rise is because of previous decades momentum and that this momentum will eventually peter off. And my comment was focused on the global north. I think you’re either misinterpreting what the links are saying or what I meant. Demography is tricky, birth rates don’t necessarily have to correspond 1:1 with population growth, there tends to be a delay. Also keep in mind this quote from the article you cited “half of the world’s population growth by 2050 is expected to result from an increase in the number of people aged 60 and over.”
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Wolfrider:
1. I DID misintpret what you said. I thought you meant that population was in decline from this very moment on…
2. I understand that 100 year olds will be commonplace in the very near future.
3. This could all be moot, as lack of natural resources, disease, pestilence, and man’s innate ability to self destruct may cut those numbers significantly…
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@ El Saghir
1. No biggie, most of what I say is barely coherent anyway, and online its even worse. :)
2.True about the 100 year old comment, I’m not sure what affect that would have on the growth rate (although it shouldn’t have any affect on the birth rate). That would be an interesting thing to research. Then of course there’s the whole Singularity idea, so some of us might never die! :P
3. Agreed, and thinking that we will die off through low birthrates seems fare less likely than mother nature taking care of us herself.