Crowding out a right to choose

BAD NEWS supposedly comes in threes, so it's no surprise that last week saw a trifecta in the race to breed ourselves into oblivion. There was the South Dakota bill proposing a ban on all abortions other than those to save the life of the mother (that's right, no exceptions, even for rape or incest). Then on Tuesday, the Supreme Court shut down an anti-racketeering lawsuit against pro-life groups that blockade abortion clinics. Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that last Saturday at 7:16 p.m. Eastern time, the world's population hit 6.5 billion. Two years ago, the same bureau issued a report noting that our numbers had roughly doubled in size between 1960 and 1999.

I'm generally not one of those pro-choicers who screams Armageddon each time some legislature pulls the kind of stunt we're seeing in South Dakota. It's pretty clear this bill was designed to take the temperature of our newest Supreme Court justices, and even President Bush has called it too extreme. For my part, I'd like to impale those protesters on the wire coat hangers that would make a gruesome comeback if they had their way. Fortunately, Congress some years ago stepped in to make blocking clinics illegal.

Still, the timing is uncanny. Although there are clearly too many of us, our government seems to think we should reproduce even when we don't want to. Granted, on one level, the abortion issue doesn't have a lot to do with the overpopulation issue. Contrary to certain conspiracy theories among many pro-lifers, most population watchdogs don't align themselves with the abortion-rights set. The concept of family planning, particularly as it applies to the developing world, has replaced the more sinister-sounding population control. Even the lobbying group Zero Population Growth changed its name four years ago to Population Connection. Somehow the word "zero" rattled the bones of a culture that prefers to only connect -- and only expand. But the connection we can't seem to make is the glaring correlation between consumerism and fertility, even though we worship and feel entitled to both.

Like a lot of people, I tend to get enraged when I see demonstrators holding up pictures of dismembered, late-term fetuses and sanctimoniously reminding women that their babies aren't just material objects. For one thing, it's misrepresentative (the vast majority of abortions occur within the first 12 weeks of gestation, when the fetus is no more than a few inches long). For another, it's hypocritical.