Pro-life for the planet

This column is dedicated to Paul Weyrich and the nuns.

One of my biggest fears is instant reincarnation. When people have a near-death experience, they often report seeing a light at the end of a tunnel. But what if that light is the fluorescent bulb in the delivery room, and boom!— you’re on to the next life, just like that?! Not even a little break in between…

I’d like to think there’s at least enough time to sit on a barstool at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and reflect on the life I just lived. I can see myself: crying, laughing, crying again, with about six mutts asleep at my feet, when a life headhunter (who looks a lot like Han Solo) approaches to buy my martini and enlist me on another tour of duty.

“C’mon! Just one more time around.” He probably said. “It’ll be great: great food, great music, a great love.”

“Okay,” I said. “But no way I’m having kids. That’s a deal-breaker.”

Don’t get me wrong, kids are amazing and even those of us without our own want to see them all loved and educated so that we won’t be surrounded by idiots who can’t think critically to solve societal problems (see current members of Congress.) But at the rate we’re going now, it looks more like breeding for breeder’s sake than a well-thought-out plan for future generations’ benefit.

I’ve recently discovered the School for Moral Ambition. A think tank with the same initials as the high school I graduated from, St. Mary’s Academy. (Yep, the nuns gave me a diploma back in 1988.) SMA (now) is a Dutch program aimed at resolving Earth’s biggest issues, while SMA (then) was all about providing a well-rounded education— well, that and deterring teenagers from having sex.

Our prom was held in January because according to the nuns, that was statistically the month with the lowest teenage pregnancy rate. I’d like to thank the nuns for their diligence, but let’s be honest. I drove my best friend to Planned Parenthood; the real-life solution for a young woman who isn’t ready to permanently alter her entire life and become a mother at sixteen.

Despite what this Handmaid’s Tale of an administration would have us believe, some women live completely fulfilled lives without ever having children. And living without the responsibility of keeping small humans alive does come with some perks, like extra me-time for Zoom calls with a Dutch think tank dedicated to solving drastic crises facing our world. SMA’s research shows that the traditional way we look at solving these predicaments may not only be out-of-date, but also cost ineffective.

For example, to reduce waterborne illness in a community would you: A) install a brand-new system for potable water and sewer, B) treat all households’ water with chlorine, or C) add zinc to the anti-diarrhea medication given to children who consume tainted water?

The answer is C and most of us on Zoom got it wrong. These days, it is cheaper and easier to add zinc to medication than install an entire water system, and this way we are treating the problem at contact instead of trying to head it off at the start, which leaves vulnerabilities all along the way. Simply a new way of looking at obstacles we have always faced and opening our minds to new theories.

Of course, I immediately began thinking about how to get birth control into the hands of all the young women in the world. Overpopulation is the elephant in every room and yet we get so caught up in our own family trees, we can’t see the dying forest. (And spare me the workforce argument, China has already solved that with robotics.)

If we would just shift the way we think about procreation from quantity to quality, we could eliminate so much suffering. What a world it would be if each and every one that Han Solo recruited was 100% wanted, protected, and loved. Statistics show crime rates plummeting about eighteen years after abortion was legalized in this country. Women born between 1960 and 1970 are the only Americans to have had legal access to abortion for the entirety of their reproductive years.

Pregnancy as a choice is pro-life for the whole planet.