Abortion as ‘the root’ of the immigration ‘problem’

April 13, 2006

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that Georgia State Sen. Nancy Schaefer (R) crafted a bizarre connection between abortion and immigration when she argued, “I am convinced it is a consequence [of] the almost 50 million children we have put to death in their mother’s womb through abortion. The large, unfilled job market in Georgia would not be a problem if the almost 50 million Americans were here, filling many of those jobs.”

Of course, Schaefer is just an obscure far-right state lawmaker. No one else could take this seriously, right? Alas, the abortion-immigration nexus seems to be catching on with conservatives. (thanks to R.P. for the tip)

During the April 11 broadcast of his daily BreakPoint radio commentary, convicted Watergate felon and Prison Fellowship Ministries founder Charles W. Colson claimed that legalized abortion created a labor shortage, forcing the United States to solicit undocumented workers from other countries to fill jobs that might have otherwise been occupied by the “40 million sacrificed since 1973,” when the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion.

Colson asked: “But what’s the root of the [illegal immigration] problem? Why do we have a shortage of workers? Aha, that’s the unspeakable ‘A’ word that the elite dread the most: abortion.” According to Colson, “The reason we must allow millions of illegal aliens in to fill these jobs is because we have murdered a generation that would otherwise be filling them: 40 million sacrificed since 1973 to the god of self-fulfillment. And Americans are barely maintaining a replacement-level birthrate of 2.1 children per woman.”

Keep in mind, Colson is still a pretty major player in religious right circles. As Media Matters noted, Colson’s radio show reportedly draws a million listeners.

Maybe this lunacy will be quickly dismissed by more sensible voices in the immigration debate, but if this trend keeps up, we may be looking at one of the right’s favorite new talking points. Be afraid.

ah, but the Right subtly exposes its real goal. Note Colson’s final complaint in the quoted language: “Americans are barely maintaining a replacement-level birthrate of 2.1 children per woman.

Two telling aspects of this sentence. First, the concern that perhaps we aren’t burdening the planet’s resources enough and need to instead compete for supremacy with China and India in overpopulating a given land mass. How dare we have small families; we should be procreating exponentially! Why should we do that?

Well, the second clue is that he didn’t use a statitstic for children per family or per household; no, the statistic he chose was per woman. While there are legitimate reasons for doing so, I can’t help but think in this case it was because the real point here is that women should be baby-making machines. They should have no time to work, go to school, or even think for themselves. They should have 8 or 9 kids tugging on their aprons all day long. And to get that way, they clearly have to be pretty sexually available to men whose life is, essentially, get up in the morning, go to a job that rewardingly uses your skills (and for which you have less competition – no women), stop on the way home at the (newly-reconstituted) Men Only club for a cigar, a cocktail, the same old war stories, and patting the waitress on the ass as she goes by, get home and find dinner on the table (or else), and have sex with your barely-awake-enough-for-it wife.

But if a woman can have an abortion, she can assert control over this longing to turn the clock back to a television show caricature of the 1950s.
Really, you know deep down these right wing “christian” “patriots,” despite their alleged hatred of Islamists, have serious burka envy.

  • Unemployment is about the Republicans pro-corporate, pro-rich, anti-labor policies, while abortion is about individual rights, and never the twain shall meet. Dems should not get lured into a Malthusian debate that would make them look bad – that’s another Rovian trap.

  • Well, if Pat Robertson is raising the dead (see previous item) maybe he could fix this “problem” by reanimating the millions of aborted fetuses as their adult selves… half of them could be put to work as seasonal produce workers, nannies, and restaurant workers, and the other half could chauffeur the illegals back to their homes. Problem solved!

  • Forgot to add… What labor shortage? maybe a temporary spike induced by Keynesian stimulus of the deficits, but there are 7 million unemployed.

  • Gee, that’s funny. I thought companies were just trying to avoid the minimum wage, paying healthcare costs, organized labor, overtime pay, and age limitations. But maybe that’s just me.

    We would have “illegal” immigrants (illegal unless you’re an adorable kid from Cuba, then you’re escaping communism for the American Dream) even if every abortion in this country since 1973 had never taken place.

  • Saadam Hussein was an unwanted child. We all know how well that worked out.

    And these people are not “pro-life,” as they mostly support wars & the death penalty. If they say that we are “pro-abortion,” tell them the truth, that they are “pro-coathanger.”

  • We must subjugate our women and breed our own underclass! Quick – somebody find a copy of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” – didn’t that contain all the appropriate instructions?

  • I remember reading The Handmaid’s Tale in junior high and thinking “How scary! I’m glad that could never happen in this country.” Now, I am scared to read it again because I don’t want to know how close we are to living in that distopia.

    Will my (as yet unborn) children even be able to read books like The Handmaid’s Tale or will books like that be banned? Is it even a good idea to bring children into this future?

    I hope I’m overreacting, but reading about the beliefs of people like Sam Brownback make me think that I’m not. How can seemingly intelligent people really believe that a theocratic government is what the writers of the Declaration of Independent and Constitution envisioned?

  • It’s not just the “A” word, but all those Godless contraceptives as well! Why, if artificial birth control were still outlawed, who knows how many workers we’d have who would be grateful, GRATEFUL to work for less than the so-called minimum wage. And to consider the full effect of sexual misconduct on our economy, imagine the impact on our labor force if all of the perfectly healthy seed that’s been spilled in the liberals’ onanistic orgy had become little snowflakes — er, human beings, as God intended. It would be Mexico and Canada who would be dealing with an influx of Christian immigrants; *our* problem would be solved. Thanks to the spirit-filled Rev. Colson.

  • Do we have to review the Romanian solution again to see just how dumb this idea is?

    If we had 40 or 50 million more U.S. born American citizens in this country, I would hope to God that they would not have to work stoop labor picking vegtables in California’s central valley. Yet Colson and Schaefer seem to think that is all these ‘lost’ people would be good for. Damn if I would want to invest 12, 14, 16 years in raising a child in America just to send him out into the fields to pick crops, or into the slaughterhouse to debone chickens.

    The Theocratic Reactionaries are getting dumber by the minute.

  • I’ve got the solution! It is a bit Orwellian and I still need to suss-out some of the details but let me know what you think….

    We go with the radical righty Colson plan and outlaw abortion and contraception. However, we only allow every Woman to keep 2.1 children herself. All the other children will become state property and we can use them as forced labor in California’s Central Valley, put them in the army and invade Iran etc…

    This will do many good things…1) Stop all the baby-killing, 2) Maxing out at 2.1 kids will allow “American” families to maintain a high standard of living since they won’t have to pay for all the extra children, 3) We will have cheap labor that will keep costs down, 4) We will have enough people to project our military will/power everywhere, 6) Parents can replace existing below average children with the better new ones that come along.

    As a parent I see #6 as a huge advantage! Here is the scenario:
    Me: Junior, your mother and I are going to go make another baby. The dishes better be done when we get done or I’m sending you to pick lettuce and keeping the new baby instead!
    Junior: Yes Sir!

    Wow! Helpful around the house and respectful!

    Can someone get me Chuck Colson’s email. I have to get him onboard!

  • I think the conservatives just want a ready supply of child sex slaves.

    Where do they think unwanted children end up in this country?

  • Schaefer and Colson quickly forget that these would be AMERICAN babies, and as Bush repeatedly tells us the immigrants are needed to do the jobs that Americans simply won’t do. We’d therefore need even more illegal immigrants to provide the services required by these extra 50 million consumers who are too good to do the menial tasks that only a lowly immigrant is willing to do.

  • “Bush repeatedly tells us the immigrants are needed to do the jobs that Americans simply won’t do.” – petorado

    Conservatives don’t listen to Bush on immigration. If they did, we could have had a new immigration law 2,000,000 illegals ago.

  • Isn’t this the argument that the caller was making on Bill Bennett’s radio show a few months ago, to which Bennett responded with his ill-advised “aborting all black babies would lower the crime rate” reductio?

  • Has anyone ever checked that 40 million number? It works out to an average of 1.2 million abortions a year. If you assume abortions are performed five days a week for fifity weeks a year, that’s 4800 a day.

    What government agency is responsible for compiling abortion statistics? How can I verfiy the 40 million? Conservatives have used forty million for a few years now. I would guess that abortion rates climbed in the ’70s and peaked in the early to mid ’80s.

    I’m a little suspicious when a number never changes. If the abortion rate was a million annually, the conservatives would be howling.

  • Oops! I just realized that Nancy Schaefer has it up to almost 50 million. Colson is the one sticking with the 40 million.

  • Hey, Georgia State Senator Schaefer may be on to something! That could be why Pope John Paul II took action back in the 1970’s to replenish the “shortage” of workers he knew we would have because of abortion. You could even say he helped create our current immigration crisis. In his 1984 book, “American Democracy & The Vatican: Population Growth & National Security,” Stephen D. Mumford describes the Church’s creation in 1975 of a national network of centers designed to assist illegal immigrants in circumventing the immigration laws of our country. These were even advertised on Spanish language radio stations, with a guide suggesting that assistance could be obtained from any Catholic diocese. He tells how Pope John Paul II, during his 1979 visit to the U.S., campaigned for the right of illegal aliens to migrate at will to our country.

    Of course those of us who have long fought the Catholic Church on the abortion issue see another motive in his action – the creation of a large voting bloc to further his narrow agenda. This is why we CANNOT give in to mob intimidation by the street mobs and grant these illegal aliens full citizenship with voting rights. Today they control the streets. With amnesty, they could control our elections.

  • Hey Zeitgeist, maybe Colson used the term “woman” because only women can give birth. Ever think of that? I too don’t think that you can make a logical link between abortion and immigration, but as someone who is pro-life, I welcome dialogue on the potential lives lost to abortion. There is a cost to this nation in the fifty million lives lost to abortion, but I don’t think it is an increase in immigration.

  • I wonder whether those 40 million aborted babies would have grown up to be democrats or republicans?

    • Comments are closed.