• Article Tools
• Print
• RSS

Every Child a Judas?

Radical Professor Suggests Every Child Would Prefer Not to Be Created

By Joshua Mercer 

At the Last Supper, Jesus made a statement that can sound shocking to modern ears: “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.”

Never had and never will a more devastating line ever been uttered.

But an Australian-born professor at Princeton University believes we should think twice before anyone has more children on this planet. To him, every new baby is a Judas. No, he doesn’t think all babies will betray the Lord. In fact, he’s not even religious. He simply thinks it will be better for them to never be born.

Writing in the New York Times on June 6, Peter Singer starts his argument with the tired overpopulation myth:

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment.

Do you see how Singer sets up the equation? You are either selfish in wanting children or you are noble for putting the Earth first by not having children.

If anything he’s got this equation completely backwards. As the father of three young children, I can add my testimony to countless other parents who sacrifice to place their children’s interests first.

And in fact, those who willingly forgo children often acknowledge that they don’t want to deal with the demands of child-rearing and the loss of doing whatever they want with their time and money. This is not to criticize those incapable of having children, but rather those who are able to have children but refuse to share with the world children of their heritage.

These “barren by choice” stand on the shoulders of countless generations but refuse to lift up the next generation. Sounds like the very definition of selfishness.

But Singer won’t stop his argument with this bogus matchup of selfish parents vs. noble barren. In deciding to reproduce, Singer writes, “very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself.”

So, we go from “every child a wanted child” (that deplorable slogan of Planned Parenthood) to Singer’s new formulation, which sounds a lot like “every child, a Judas.” Peter Singer’s view of life on earth is so dim and depressing that he can’t imagine any child wanting to be born, let alone created.

Singer believes that the very existence of humans threatens the planet. His solution: No more children … ever:

Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

You care about the next generation so much, you won’t create them? Isn’t calling for the end to our species the ultimate argument of, “to save the village, we had to destroy it?”

Thankfully, Pope Benedict XVI offers a more sensible approach, one that understands the proper role between man and the environment. As he wrote in his latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth):

On this earth there is room for everyone: here the entire human family must find the resources to live with dignity, through the help of nature itself – God's gift to his children – and through hard work and creativity. At the same time we must recognize our grave duty to hand the earth on to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it and continue to cultivate it.

Human ingenuity and stewardship are the crucial ingredients to establishing a planet where humans can live in harmony not only with themselves but with all of God’s creation.

In direct contrast to Peter Singer and other secularists, Pope Benedict considers the contraceptive mentality itself as anti-environment.

If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves.

The pope says that if we don’t respect the dignity of human life and instead subvert the proper role of procreation, then we shouldn’t be surprised if future generations don’t respect the environment. Sadly, Peter Singer’s answer to this is to not have future generations.

Joshua Mercer is Director of Communications and co-founder of CatholicVoteAction.org, a grassroots organization that provides a voice in politics for hundreds of thousands of lay Catholics. Previously, he served as Chairman of Students for Life of America and also Washington Correspondent for the National Catholic Register. Joshua lives with his wife Lori and three children in Michigan.

---

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.