As my co-host today, Michael Ford, would agree, it is good to learn new things. This weekend I learned that there is something called the “anti-natalist” movement. For those that did not take three years of Latin in high school, that means “against birth”. Immediately you might think that there has been a pro-abortion lobby in the country for nearly a century and why did it take so long for me to learn about it? But these people believe that humans shouldn’t procreate….at all.
The group heading up the anti-natalist movement in the US is called “Stop Having Kids”. I became aware of their “work” thanks to former Governor Scott Walker’s re-tweet of a re-tweet of a re-tweet of a tweet from the group that was leading to the usual social media “flame war” from proponents and opponents alike. The original tweet showed them “in action”, standing on random street corners holding signs that read “Why is having kids still celebrated?”, “Stop child abuse. (stop having kids)”, and my personal favorite: “A lot of humans wish they were never born”.
Intrigued by the level of self-loathing embodied by this group, I just had to check out their website. Not surprisingly, the site is filled with platitudes, intersectional word salad, and contradictory statements galore. The group points out several times that it is not anti-child–but then follows that with statements that choosing not to have children is an “ethical decision”. They call themselves “pro-choice” repeatedly, but point out that it is impossible for a child to “give consent” to be born. Giving birth is described as “imposing existence onto new, vulnerable life”. There are also illustrations of grown adults helping other grown adults–but it does not explain how the generation helping would be helped in the future without further human reproduction. My favorite line is “We believe that ALL humans should stop having kids, not that all humans should be forced to stop having kids”.
Anti-natalism has plenty of allies. Climate change alarmists are on-board, as fewer people around means less demand for energy sources. We’ve heard for over 100-years now that Earth is never going to be able to support the number of people living on it at any given time because there isn’t enough food or water. And the push for agenderism is helped by not having to have do the mental gymnastics of defending statements like “men can have babies too”. This might even help “incels” feel better about themselves and less angry at the entire female population.
As with all of the modern attempts to control human behavior and life-choices, “anti-natalism” has been tried as part of public policy in communist and socialist countries. China’s one-child rule was in place for 35-years and did achieve its goal. Except that female babies were often aborted, killed or passed off to others as Chinese society placed a greater value on having a male heir for the family. There are entire scholarly articles on the “Missing Women of China”–the huge gender gap created by the policy. But today’s generation of Americans probably never learned of the effects of these policies so they are more than happy to extoll them know–thinking they are on the “cutting edge of societal thought”.
One of my favorite authors, Jonathan Swift, caused quite the stir in 1792 by publishing his satirical essay A Modest Proposal where he suggests that the over-population of Ireland be solved by continuing to encourage the Irish to reproduce–and then feeding their babies to the English aristocracy. We might want to keep that one away from a generation that sees previous “warning novels” like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as guides to modern living.
I should also note that at the bottom of the “Stop Having Kids” website is a quote from Malcolm X about “supporting justice no matter who is against it”. The same Malcolm X that had 6 children.
