The Democratic War on Babies

It never ceases to amaze me, but here it goes again: Katha Pollitt, at the Nation, argues that funding family planning is an economic stimulus, and since funding for birth control would logically include money for abortion services, Pollitt's case is essentially to kill more babies in the diabolically-harebrained expectation that this will "create" more jobs:

The production, prescribing, buying and selling of birth control is an economic activity - funding more of it means more clinics, more clinic workers, more patients,more customers, more people making the products. Moreoever, the provision removed from the stimulus bill would spend money now- about 550 million, over ten years, a drop in the bucket - to save the government much more money later, as the Congressional Budget Office estimates would happen within a few years ....

More important, what about the economics of actually existing women and families? This is no time to be saddling people with babies they don't want and can't provide for, who will further reduce the resources available for the kids they already have and further limit parents' ability to get an education or a job. In a Depression, birth rates go down for a reason. People.Have.No. Money. Furthermore, when people lose their jobs they lose their health insurance. A year's supply of pills is around $600 retail. That's a significant amount of money to low-income women.

The idea that family planning contributes to economic growth was discredited over a century ago, with the historical repudiation of Thomas Malthus' claim that overpopulation would cause a lower standard of living (Nancy's nihilists are not up on literature, apparently).

The Democrats want a war on babies. I cringe at the thought of just being around people like Katha Pollitt, and for my readers with infants and young children, hold your loved ones close - you might have one too many for the state-planning mandarins of the Obama-Pelosi new age.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.