There have been statements made by some fiscal conservatives, most notably the governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour that we should not focus on life issues in this election and risk losing the election.
I was greatly disappointed when I heard this.
First of all, we have a moral obligation to protect the unborn.
Second, the Constitution of the United States clearly gives them the right to life, in spite of what Roe v. Wade said.
Third, observing life issues is economically smart.
In my opinion, it is not possible to be a true fiscal conservative and not be pro-life. Here is why. Adam Smith, who wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1775, established the economic principles necessary for any nation to grow economically. These principles have been proven true over and over again since then.
One of Smith’s leading principles states that a growing population from the children of its citizens is essential for a strong economy.
In his day, most families had four or more children each. This is important, because one of the primary things that children learn growing up is how to function in their nation’s economic system. In his day, immigration was virtually unknown.
But his statement does not apply to immigration, because history teaches us that it takes at least two generations for immigrants to learn a nation’s economic system and laws. This learning process assumes that they are legal immigrants who abide by that nation’s laws in the first place.
The National Right to Life Committee estimates that, as the nation marks the 37th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, there have been 52,008,665 abortions using either surgical or the abortion drug (RU 486) method. In its survey of abortion numbers, NRLC goes to the source by relying on the Guttmacher Institute, the former research arm of Planned Parenthood, which receives numbers directly from abortion centers themselves.
In the 1970s, there was an average of about 1.2 million abortions annually. In the 1980s, the average was about 1.55 million annually.
In 1990 through 1992, the average was 1.59 million. Since all of these aborted babies would be adults today, that would add approximately 32¼ million to our population.
If you add to that the reduced family birth rate, we are short over 50 million in that adult population group!
Given the current population of America, that number doesn’t sound all that great. However, because that number is wage earning adults, it will have a profound impact on our current economic situation.
According to Jerry Tuma, author of “From Boom to Bust and Beyond,” there were 76 million adult baby boomer consumers in our work force. These adults represented the bulk of the income, consumer purchases and investment into the business economy.
Due to the aging of these baby boomers, this purchasing power has declined since 2005. It has been on the decline, because the replacement generation is much smaller.
There are only 41 million “baby busters” (boomers’ kids) coming up behind the boomers. If things remain unchanged, there will be about 41 million “eco-boomers” (busters’ kids) coming up as adults after that.
This is a demonstration of the Biblical principle that whatever you sow, you will reap. We have sowed such a major decline in population growth that we are entering a time of a 53 percent decline in generational wage earner power in America followed by a 0 percent increase.
This is a huge deficit and spells disaster for economic growth.
So what does this mean for us in the long term?
Look at Japan, for example. No country has gotten old as fast as Japan. It has a similar abortion and birth rate history to ours. The big difference is that Japan does not allow immigration of any kind. So they have no way to offset their low birth rate.
They have been in a deep recession for several years and the predictions are that they will never recover.
They literally don’t have enough people to energize a recovery.
We won’t go down as badly as Japan, because we do allow immigration. However, we are looking at least 10 years of a stagnant economy.
Our increased debt has also exasperated this financial crisis. But even if we correct the debt problem, we cannot completely correct the population problem in much less than a generation.
This stands to reason since we spent a generation creating that problem.
What can we do now?
First, apply 2 Chronicles 7:14 in your life starting today. Incidentally, if you don’t know Jesus as Savior and Lord, this will not be possible. We need radical changes in our lives much like the federal government needs a radical change in practices.
Next, vote people into office with Biblical moral values on Nov. 2 and again in 2012.
These elections are pivotal for America’s long term survival and it will take both elections to clean house.
Next time we will look at some other steps we can take.
(Frank Clark has been a teacher in public, Catholic and Evangelical Christian schools since 1978. He is also a retired Christian school administrator.)