An interesting article by my friend Michael Cook, editor of the fine Australian journal Mercator, suggests that “Sooner or Later, Babies Will Be Too Precious to Abort.”  Using U.N. statistics, he points out that abortion is not only the leading cause of mortality worldwide, but outnumbers all the other causes combined.  Asking “Is this just a debating point?”, he answers “No, it’s the reason why abortion will eventually be banned everywhere in the world.”  Birth rates are dropping so rapidly all over the world that “Sooner or later, people will compare the decline in population to the number of abortions and conclude that this makes no sense at all.”

That may well be true.  I fervently hope that it is.  But I can see other possibilities.  Support for abortion is a facet of a whole cluster of disordered attitudes toward sex, marriage, love, fertility, natural law, and the preciousness of human life in general.  Demographic collapse may make it easier to challenge these attitudes – that is the hope.  But it won’t make these attitudes disappear by itself.  In fact, unless we do challenge them, they will condition our very response to demographic collapse, so that we become more disordered still.

Consider.  To our rulers, the most alarming thing about the decline in the birth rate is that populations age:  There are too few young people to pay for the care of all the old ones.  So, yes, the people who make the laws may call for having more little ones, but instead -- or in addition -- they may call for having fewer old ones.  Those who are now gung-ho for aborting the unwanted young might become determined to euthanize the unwanted aged.

Other people, who agree that we need more babies but don’t want to have any themselves, will ask, “Why do we need parents to have babies?”  Already, IVF separates the conception of the child from the loving embrace of his mother and father, so why not go further?  O brave new world!  We can manufacture sperm and eggs from ordinary cells, and gestate babies in womb tanks.  How many do you need?  Thirty million?  Fifty?  Eighty?  Coming right up.

Biologists are already investigating such possibilities.  If you talk with young people, you will find that a good many take for granted that this is our future.  Fatalistically, they assume that anything that can be done, will be done. 

Well, here is something that can be done!  Let us recover our awe for the preciousness of life.  Let us restore our lost reverence for its natural order.  Let us look forward to getting married and becoming moms and dads.