July 10, 2013

Source: Shutterstock

For example, Republican 2016 contender Jeb Bush announced last month that we should back the Schumer-Rubio bill because “€œImmigrants are more fertile,”€ which will help rebuild the “€œdemographic pyramid.”€

Having babies is evidently one of those jobs Americans just won”€™t do. So rather than fix the problems that discourage prudent American citizens from starting families, the elites have decided that importing more non-Americans will boost toilet-paper sales and thus be Good for the Economy.

In the elite mindset, while a larger population is an unarguable good, any concern over the quality of the bigger population is an unquestionable ill. Airing doubts can get you Richwined.

Thus, a big scandal this week is the revelation that a couple of prison doctors in California talked 150 pregnant female convicts into getting sterilized after they delivered their latest bundles of joy. The Atlantic recounted with horror the assertion of one inmate:

As soon as [the doctor] found out that I had five kids, he suggested that I look into getting it done. The closer I got to my due date, the more he talked about it,”€ said Christina Cordero, 34, who spent two years in prison for auto theft. “€œHe made me feel like a bad mother if I didn”€™t do it.”€

Yet the US has long had a policy of discouraging teen motherhood on the grounds that teenagers aren”€™t ready to be good mothers yet. For example, the federal Center for Disease Control’s Teen Pregnancy webpage forthrightly states:

The Importance of Prevention: … Teen pregnancy and childbearing bring substantial social and economic costs through immediate and long-term impacts on teen parents and their children.

This seems to be working, as the teen fertility rate has been falling.

On the other hand, the notion of anybody with any authority in America attempting to discourage through similar moral and empirical suasion felon fertility, illegal immigrant reproduction, welfare motherhood, or births out of wedlock would be simply beyond the pale.

Since my job is to speak the reasonable ideas that are presently thought unspeakable, here’s a suggestion. President Obama is a big fan of basketball, and the NBA has a famous “€œOne and Done“€ rule mandating that young stars spend at least one year in college before jumping to the pros.

Obama should thus promote the phrase “€œOne and Done”€ as a simple mnemonic advice for women who are in jail, on welfare, unwed, or illegal: Unless you get your life together, you shouldn”€™t have more than one child.

Of course, those extra children will be the future base of the Democratic Party, so that would never happen.

Instead, I guess the Republicans will have to try Jeb Bush’s pyramid scheme.

 

Columnists

Sign Up to Receive Our Latest Updates!