Birth Patrol
Paul J. Cella III on the Fears of Those Who Worship the Means but Hate the Ends
On the way home from work some time ago, I found myself idling behind a car featuring a bumper sticker pithy and imperious, but mostly revealing, that instantly aroused my contempt. It read: “Stop breeding.” Now such a directive is simply dishonest, for the only way to really accomplish it is by something undreamed of by its promoter. We are unlikely to see a bumper sticker declaring, with subversive relish, “Stop having sex,” or be implored by some lurid billboard, “Celibacy now!” Even “Chastity now” would be a thing to be remarked.
In all likelihood the opponent of breeding has probably not even contemplated issuing such demands. If someone told him to stop having sex, he would most likely find the idea either laughable or bizarre and odious. Yet to accomplish his goal in any meaningful way would require adherence to these demands.
It is possible, through the impressive technology of modern medicine, to significantly diminish birthrates; it is not yet possible to eliminate birth. Many Western countries have gone a long way toward the proffered objective of a cessation of breeding; none have yet achieved it. Even the most sophisticated communities of sterile Europe have birthrates higher than zero.
Gluttonous Breeders
The Stop Breeding movement was given a bit more fleshing out, though certainly no greater wisdom, in a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle by one Mark Morford. “Who are you to judge?” the columnist begins ironically.
Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child . . . is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? It’s wrong to . . . suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that’s . . . contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and . . . a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it?
How a statistical rate can be vicious, or an economic condition unrepentant, is a question left unanswered; nor are we to stop and consider the moral stature of a man who openly refers to a class of human beings as a “viral outbreak.”
The diatribe is too rapid for such reflection, and now it becomes more ugly and graphic: “[It’s] actually painful to imagine . . . the ravages [the mother’s body] has endured to give birth to roughly one child per year for nearly two decades,” and “[It] is not for this space to visualize frighteningly capacious vaginal dimensions. It is not for this space to imagine this couple’s soggy sexual mutations. We do not have enough wine on hand for that.”
The writer does manage to stumble upon an insight of sorts: namely, that by failing to breed, the Left (his word) makes manifest its death wish. “Where,” he asks plaintively,
Paul J. Cella III is a writer living in Atlanta, Georgia, and editor of the website Cella's Review ( www.cellasreview.blogspot.com).
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Subscribe (Print + Online) 
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Subscribe (Online Only) 
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
33.2—March/April 2020
Christian Pro-Family Governments?
Old & New Lessons from Europe by Allan C. Carlson
27.2—March/April 2014
on C. S. Lewis & the New State Paganism by W. E. Knickerbocker
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
Support Touchstone
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
