Pill Inventor Slams...of all things...the pill!

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=11004

Perhaps a bigger irony than when Roe of Roe v. Wade came out against the very court decission that is her namesake, one of the three chemists responsible for the creation of "the pill" has recently declared that his invention has created "demographic catastrophe."

Perhaps the logic that population declines usually preceed the failure of a culture/civilization might start to click for more westerners. The U.S. is only barely better than Western Europe, ... and that is through immigration and not natural increase (even with our teen pregnancy rates which are always lauded as more reason for more contraception and legality of abortion). Most European countries are moving into negative population growth, and France most recently has implimented a government funded system which will pay women to be mothers of more than one child (I believe the more children they have, the greater the tax breaks they are given, in addition to other government support).

History is always a good way to test how thing in the political/social play out. Within the Roman Empire, high rates of abortion and contraception among the native Roman population (who were the greatest benificiaries of the Empire) while freeing the husbands and wives for more social and political activities, reduced the number of native born Romans, which led to a decline among native Romans in the military, which combined with the Imperial Throne moving to Constantinople, left the Western Empire (which encompassed pretty much all hat is Western Europe; irony?) to resort to foriegn mercinaries...and history shows us how effective that was!

Much of the significance of this comes on the 40th Anniversary of Humane Vitae (as the link to the article makes known); Pope Paul VI is lauded as being prophetic in his encyclical, where he reaffirmed the classic stance of the Church against artificial contraception and abortion. Both not only violate the most fundamental right to life, but they have the added dibilitating effect upon society on a larger scale. Less people leads to less creativity, art, literature, philosophy, industry, whatever you name it. A civilization literally kills itself off, preventing growth in all areas.

What perhaps makes this even more bizzare is that with abortion and artifical contraception, there has been a rise in invitro fertilization, and other extra-natural means of procreation. In effect, pregnancy is something unwanted unless it can be controlled to the point where it can only take place where and when we want it to, and anything else is an inconvience. Now the number of people who can actually take advantage of all these technologies prevents it currently from having and even larger impact; only the very wealthy can afford the total trinity of birth control. But considering that healthcare will no doubt be turning into one of our inaleinable rights with the incoming administration, access to such technologies might increase, and one thing I have learned as a budding historian is not to place your faith in humanity.

In his "Abolition of Man" C.S. Lewis was convinced that the advent of such technologies, coupled with a moral relativism that was growing during his own time (and is taken for granted in our own; though most people straddle the fence and are only relative until something directly effects them, then morals suddenly become objective realities again) would lead to humanity not only conquering nature through science, but humanity conquering itself. Humanity would have everything controled, even it's own body chemistry.

The funny thing about what Mr. Lewis said almost 60 years ago, was that the things he feared (which sounded to many like science fiction) are quire real. Lewis saw the "abolition of human nautre" as the end result of our push to control. With no doubt in the coming decades, not only will we see people able to control when they have children, but they will no doubt be controling how the children biologically turn out. It will of course start with the good intentions of ending certain dibilitating diseases that are genetic in nature, but why stop at preventing the bad, when you can also encourage the good? Why should we even stay as limited as we are, when we no doubt at some point will be able to improve our bodies and minds beyond their limits as they are?

Of course, would we still be human anymore?