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The Unrepentant Traditionalist
January 14, 2010
A Pro-life Manifesto: Part I
by Frank Creel
ARLINGTON, VA — Why has the pro-life movement been so unsuccessful? It has been almost 37 years, and 50 million dead babies, since Roe v. Wade, and “a woman’s right to choose” has never seemed more secure.
The answer to that question is very complicated, so I am planning to tackle the subject in a series of columns. Each column will deal with a different aspect of the issue. I will analyze the movement’s failures and propose course corrections. My hope is to provide a road map for rescuing America from its savage treatment of its youngest generation.
But first, let us review the reasons that the success of the pro-life movement is critically important for America’s future. I will return to reasons of morality later, but the issue carries great weight in terms of practical immediacy that no one should ignore.
Above all, there is, in fact, a real population bomb at hand — just not the one the Malthusians and the Club of Rome have been scaring us with for the past four decades. The population bomb that most damages America will not be an explosion but an implosion. Japan’s experience illustrates how ominous this implosion will be for our future.
Japan still has one of the highest standards of living in the world. In 1990, with a population of 127 million on an island the size of Montana, it had the world’s second largest economy. But the Japanese had legalized abortion in 1948, and this had a serious multiplier effect on other demographic factors.
Only 4 percent of Japan’s population engages in agriculture. Most of the rest reside in huge metropolises. There, women pursue careers, reside with their parents, and remain unmarried for longer periods or for good.
Japan’s birth rate has fallen to 1.37 per woman, lowest in the world and far below replacement level of 2.1 per woman. The average age has risen to 41, highest in the world. More than one in five Japanese are past the age of 65. Because there are so few young Japanese, the aging of the population and the plunging of the overall population will continue for generations.
More than any other factor, demographics explain the economic doldrums Japan has experienced over the past 20 years. But the actual situation is far worse than an economic slowdown. Japan is literally dying as a nation, and very little can be done about it at this point.
Japan is not the only case. Spain and Italy are also on the demographic skids. Of the 20 nations with birth rates below replacement levels, 18 are in Europe. If Europe survives at all, it will be thanks only to high immigration levels, a trend that will accomplish what the Turks could not at the gates of Vienna; to make Europe ethnically Asian and religiously Muslim.
Russia is in the worst shape of all. Its population is expected to fall to 107 million by 2050, when there will be 3 billion Indians and Chinese on its doorstep, itching to flood into its steppes.
We see in Europe, Japan, and Russia the harbingers of our own future. Without the large numbers of Hispanic immigrants and their elevated birth rate (3.75 per woman), our birth rate would also be below replacement level. While our situation is not as dire as those of Italy, Russia, or Spain, we are well on our way to an extreme demographic makeover. Such a makeover would further alienate us from our original political and constitutional dispensation, heavily skewing us toward an aging population, pushing our earner/dependent ratio toward parity, and virtually guaranteeing economic and political convulsions in the not-distant future.
The foregoing are considerations important to all Americans, provided only that they possess normal feelings toward their children and grandchildren. Whenever they encounter abortion apologists, pro-lifers should place great emphasis on the bleakness of our demographic outlook and the role played therein by abortion. We should also ask feminists why they support such brutality when 70 percent of the victims (probably more than that globally) are little baby girls. We should ask and Hispanics and African Americans why they support the genocide of their own peoples, since upwards of 80 percent of the victims are in these groups.
By any secular measure, demographic collapse, because of its irreversibility and finality, is the worst of all fates for any nation. But those of us who believe in a loving and just God should never forget that politics, economics, demographics, and the fate of nations are all as naught compared with the infinite worth and dignity bestowed by the Creator on every little bit of ensouled humanity.
We shall see in Part II that, in our past struggles against the principalities and powers who spurn the Creator as a fantasy and His inestimable art as blobs of tissue, we have been too much like gentle doves and not nearly so cunning as our serpentine foes.
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The Unrepentant Traditionalist is copyright © 2009 by Frank Creel and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. All rights reserved.
Frank Creel, Ph.D., a columnist and author, was an English teacher in the Peace Corps in Turkey. He is fluent in the Turkish language and in Arabic script.
See a complete biographical sketch.
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