"Economics, Population, and Abortion"

Our guest blogger today is Rev. Kharma of Kharma Futures.This is a thought-provoking read that deserves your consideration.

Economics, Population, and Abortion
by Rev. Kharma

I have read many different articles over the last few years addressing economic trends. In the last year they have focused on the housing bubble and it’s relevance to our current economic crisis. Inflated housing prices spiraled out of control, and eventually collapsed which created a chain reaction throughout the economy of the US and the world. Often we are told that the economic problems we face will not settle out until the housing market rebounds. When we begin to buy houses again, at re-inflated prices the US economy will re-inflate and we will back at our old pace once more, spending money we don’t have.

This afternoon I opened my newest issue of First Things. It sat on my desk for several days, I have been apprehensive about reading it. The original editor and driving force, Fr. Richard Neuhaus died earlier this year. The journal has inspired and educated me for more than a decade since I read the first issue I encountered. His passing has made me wonder just who is capable of picking up the banner he so ably carried during his tenure.

In this issue there is an essay, dealing with economics and families. I have seen bits and pieces and hints about this, but Daniel Goldman had fleshed out and given life to the ideas as no one has ever done. He describes the theory that it is the distribution of young and old that has continued to refresh and renew our economy for generations. The young families have need of houses and all the accessories which would accompany that. The older members of our population have need of investment and growth of financial security. This has worked for generations, providing a continuous cycle of growth and expansion, opportunity and advantage for all concerned.

The demographics since the late 1960’s have begun to erode this model. Increasingly families are smaller, fewer children means fewer and smaller houses. As happens more and more often, there are single parent homes and homes with no children at all.

Make no mistake here, I am not, and never will criticize someone who has a small family, or even no children at all. Not everyone is cut out to raise a family.

The problem here is not the occasional small family or childless couple. The problem is a society that has devalued the family entirely. We have created a new ethos where having a family and raising children is not only removed from the primary role of a society, it is now frowned upon. Those who have a family are regarded as outlaws, and the green movement had demonized them. We are no longer sustaining our population. Societies are aging. We hear over and over that the US Social Security program will be bankrupt due to a lack of wage earners paying to support those receiving benefits. Virtually every Western nation is moving toward demographic extinction. In his article, Mr. Goldman displays a chart which shows the age of ‘Advanced Nations”. In 1965 the population aged older than 65 was approximately 10% of the general population. Those under age 4 made up about 8%. Projected for the year 2050, the trend shows a remarkable shift. Over aged 65 is projected to be more than 30%, while those under age 4 show less than 5%. Clearly this presents an unsustainable strain on the traditional economic cycle.

What is it that could account for this? Mr. Goldman’s article is not meant to address this.

However, as I read it a number kept presenting itself to my mind. I kept thinking of a number I have heard over and over. That number is in the range of 50 million.

That number is the estimated number of humans who would be current Americans had they not been aborted. Our culture of death has wiped out the hope of our generation.

All the economics lectures, and demographic analysis ever written cannot erase that fact. The Culture of Death that has enveloped our society has caused a devastating erosion to our ability to fund our own nation.

We can debate deficit spending, socialism, and capitalism, democrats and republicans in government, but we face a stark reality.

America is rapidly aging. We are aging as a nation because we have become essentially self-centered. The inconvenience of bearing and raising children has been alleviated by the simple answer of eliminating the children considered such a burden.

This is certainly one of a panoply of factors which include delaying marriage, reduced size of families, and many other fractured and altered family structures. However the fact remains, that had fifty million children not been murdered before they were born, we would be facing an entirely different demographic today. Perhaps individual wealth would not have grown so fast. Individual self fulfillment might not be such a sought after goal. We surely would not have a society which faces extinction simply because we are growing older and are not able to fund our expansion. One may debate the morality of the issue, and many do. The straight economics are simply numbers. We are dying, and we are not replacing our dying members. There are many ways to look at it, but there is simply no way to see it differently. We are paying the price of convenience. We are paying now for the elimination of a generation which we never permitted to exist.

The culture of death has created a wound in our society and the infection continues to weaken us. Combined with the unlimited demand for government payment for individual needs we are facing a bankrupt nation. America, we are paying for our choices, no matter if we decide to face it or ignore it.

We can look at so many of the dangers we face as a society and point back to the devaluation of live embodied by the abortion culture. The devaluation of life spreads and creates an ethos of total selfishness which infests and debases every aspect of our world today. The total self absorption, the movement toward the importance of the self and the instant gratification which has been exalted as the pinnacle of achievement all flow logically from the mindset which decides that one individuals life is more important than any other consideration. We are no longer looking toward self reliance, but rather to self preservation.

The nation which was formed with a minimal government to protect basic rights is now a nation which wants a strong government to provide everything at the expense of others. Instead of a generation willing to go to war to save the world, we have a generation which seems to want to beg the world to save them. Instead of raising children and providing for the future, we want to have the government raise and provide for us.

We have taken the dream of the founders and turned it on its ear. We have perverted the original republic and corrupted it to a democracy which feeds off its children instead of protecting them.

That cliff is getting closer and closer and the nation is sliding faster and faster into the abyss.