Hey, did you hear the one about the woman who aborted her kid so she
could save the planet?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1933628/posts

Women Who Have Abortions to Save the Planet Are the Selfish Ones

Life News ^ | 11/30/07 | Kathleen Parker

Posted on 12/02/2007 10:20:48 AM PST by wagglebee

Hey, did you hear the one about the woman who aborted her kid so she
could save the planet?

That's no joke, but Darwin must be chuckling somewhere.

Toni Vernelli was one of two women recently featured in a London Daily
Mail story about environmentalists who take their carbon footprint
very, very seriously.

So seriously, in fact, that Vernelli aborted a pregnancy and, by age
27, had herself sterilized. Baby making, she says, is "selfish" and
"all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the
planet."

Because Toni and her husband, Ed, are childless and vegan, they say
they can justify one long-haul airplane trip per year and still remain
carbon neutral.

Sarah Irving is another like-minded nature-nurturer. She and fiance
Mark Hudson decided on him having a vasectomy to prevent the
possibility of an inconvenient life interfering with their carbon-
perfect ones.

Those of us who have managed to see a pregnancy through to birth
recognize the irony of these tales.

If we're not saving the planet for our kids, for whom are we saving
it?

the fact that global warming is, by golly, under control? Who's going
to live to tell the tale?

Tell me: When was the last time you read a good book by a polar bear?

Human beings may unconsciously wish to maintain their genetic line,
but that's not the reason most people have children. OK, most of us
have children because we get pregnant. But otherwise, the planet --
glorious as it is -- is simply not that much fun with no one around.

The authors of the newspaper story seemed to have a sense of something
gone awry, but I don't share their nostalgia for "innocent eyes gazing
up ... with unconditional love" and "a little hand slipping into hers
-- and a voice calling her Mummy."

Those little pleasures are for all to cherish in their own private
moments. Please.

What I'm nostalgic for is sanity.

The couples who choose abortion and sterilization may not save the
planet, but they're saving the gene pool a mess o' trouble by purging
their own from the mix.

The Darwin Awards folks, who honor those who
improve the species by accidentally removing themselves from it, will
have to create a new category:
People Too Narcissistic To Procreate.

Far be it from me to suggest that people must have children to be
content or to contribute to life on Earth.

But abortion should never
be confused with a selfless act. It is clearly the ultimate and most-
vivid expression of the opposite.

Raising children is quantifiably the most persistently unselfish act
known to mankind, as millions of veterans of sleepless nights will
attest. Parenthood is when "I" takes a backseat to "thou" -- when the
infant-self submits to adulthood so that the real infant gets a
necessary turn at the well of self-importance.

Although I doubt there are many willing to sterilize themselves in
order to reduce the size of their carbon footprint,

such extreme
materialism is the evolutionary product of our gradual commodification
of human life.

Suddenly, the unborn is of no greater importance than the contents of
our recycling bin. Like Weight Watchers dieters substituting carbs for
sugars, we trade off future members of the human race to neutralize
insults to Earth's balance in the present.

Here's how the mental calculation goes: Let's see, if I abort my
child, maybe I can travel first-class to the United Nations Climate
Change Conference in Bali.

Is this the slippery slope that pro-lifers prophesied?

Once such
utilitarian concerns edge out our humanity -- and once human life is
deemed to have no greater value than any other life form

-- how long
before we begin tidying up other inconveniences?

Wouldn't it be helpful to eliminate some of the less productive
members of society

who, like the cows they no doubt eat, are emitting
hazardous methane, one of the greenhouse gases that contribute to
global warming?

That seems an absurd projection, but then not long ago, so did the
aborting of babies to thwart global warming. The deeply caring,
meanwhile, are always the ones to watch.

Tenderness, it has been said,
leads to the gas chambers.

On a lighter note, we might have avoided all such concerns if only the
mothers of Toni, Ed, Sarah and Mark had been as "virtuous" as they
are.