Climate Change and Abortions

Readers recall my satirical post about the Green Party advocating compulsory abortions, to fight climate change.

Well again sometimes fiction gets close to truth.

John Holdren is President Obama’s Science Czar. In 1977 he co-authored a textbook which has some views which are, well … read for yourself. Now to be fair to him he says today he does not advocate compulsory population control, but it shows that such extremism is not as far away as we like to think.

So what did he say:

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

That compulsory abortions could be constitutional to save the planet!

One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

1977 was not that long ago. Now again to be fair to Hodren he doesn’t quite endorse forcing solo mothers to marry or abort, but he describes the possibility without disapproval.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

Mass sterilisation so long as it doesn’t affect pets ro livestock. Today the Greens might argue it is a bonus if it sterilises the cows also!

Involuntary fertility control
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A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
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The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

Maybe he once consulted to China? Who need toasters when you can use a sterilizing capsule.

If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

This could be a private members bill for ACT – the reproductive responsibility act 🙂

In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?

Well if you have too many wives, you are forced to divorce all but one of them. So what do you do if you have too many children?

Toward a Planetary Regime
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Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.

Now from my reading of this he wants the UNEP, now probably part of the UNDP, to control planetary population and resources. I’d say Helen Clark is liking her new job more and more.

Thank God this fruitcake doesn’t have any influence, such as being chief science advisor to the President of the United States of America. Oh wait a second ….