Cardinal rips environmentalist advocates of population control, says small families are bankrupting Social Security
October 01, 2009
In a wide-ranging statement for Respect Life Sunday-- which the US hierarchy commemorates on the first Sunday of every October-- Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on pro-life activities, deplored a wide variety of threats to human life and dignity, including abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, and population control.
“In the current debate over health care reform, it has become evident that a number of Americans believe that the lives and health of only some people are worth safeguarding, while other classes of people are viewed as not deserving the same protection. Such an attitude is deplorable, all the more so in the context of health care,” he writes.
Unborn children remain the persons whose lives are most at risk in America: Over one million children each year die in abortion facilities … It bears repeating: Abortion-- the direct, intentional killing of an unborn girl or boy-- is not health care. Abortion robs an innocent child of his or her life, and robs mothers of their peace and happiness … Abortion funding can only increase the number of dead and grieving.
“Unborn children are not the only human beings disfavored under current proposals,” he continues. “Many people insist that undocumented persons living and working in the United States should not be allowed in any new system to purchase health-care coverage, and that poor legal immigrants be denied coverage for the first five years they are in the United States. Do immigrants forfeit their humanity at the border? How can a just society deny basic health care to those living and working among us who need medical attention? It cannot and must not.”
Cardinal Rigali also took aim at those environmentalists who support population control and said that small family sizes are bankrupting Social Security and Medicare.
It should not be surprising that the neglect, and even the death, of some people are offered as a solution to rising health care costs. Population control advocates have long espoused aborting children in the developing world as a misguided means for reducing poverty.
Some environmentalists now claim that the most efficient way to curb global climate change is to make “family planning" more widely available in the developing world. They report that an average of 2.3 pounds per day of exhaled carbon dioxide can be eliminated from the atmosphere by eliminating one human being. As used by population control advocates, the innocuous term “family planning" includes abortifacient contraceptives, sterilization, and manual vacuum aspiration abortions …
Since the advent of widespread contraception and abortion, a cultural hostility to children has grown. They are often depicted as costly encumbrances who interfere with a carefree adult life. No fewer than six recent books are dedicated to defending the childless-by-choice lifestyle – for selfish reasons, or to counter "overpopulation," a thoroughly discredited myth. In fact, if married couples were to have more children, Medicare and Social Security would not be hurtling toward bankruptcy. Since 1955, because of fewer children and longer life spans, the number of workers has declined relative to the number of beneficiaries, from 8.6 to only 3.1 workers paying benefits to support each beneficiary. Without substantially more young people to enter the work force as young adults, in 25 years, there will be only 2.1 workers supporting each beneficiary. Eliminating our young does not solve problems even on pragmatic grounds. It adds to them.
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