This past December 21, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a chilling report. “Estimates Show Slowest Growth on Record for the Nation’s Population,” the headline read.
The official government report continued:
Between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021, the nation’s growth was due to natural increase (148,043), which is the number of excess births over deaths, and net international migration (244,622). This is the first time that net international migration (the difference between the number of people moving into the country and out of the country) has exceeded natural increase for a given year.
This stunning report has received little attention. For the media, the Census Bureau is only good for political news, and old news at that. Its latest appearance dates back to July 2020, when President Donald Trump published a Memorandum addressing how to count non-citizens in the decennial count. Illegal immigrants should have no role in the redrawing of Congressional districts in 2021, he wrote. “The radical Left is trying to … conceal the number of illegal aliens in our country.”
Opponents petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene, but the Court refused to do so in December 2020, stating that the particulars of the policy had yet to be determined. By July 2021, however, the Census Bureau fell into line with the Biden Administration’s immigration policies, and the final census figures made no distinction between legal and illegal residents.
Had illegal immigrants been accurately counted in the U.S. Census numbers, the disparity between the number of children born to Americans and the number of people crossing our borders would have been even greater.
Celebrating the Sterilization of Love
So while the Census report’s political impact is old news, the cultural trend that it identifies will have an even greater impact in the long run.
Why? Because America’s “birth dearth” is escalating. And America is not alone. In his Angelus message on the Feast of the Holy Family, Pope Francis celebrated the families who had come to Rome but also noted his “concern, a real concern, at least here in Italy: the demographic winter. It seems that many couples have lost the inspiration to have children and many couples prefer not to have children or to have only one child. Think about this. It is a tragedy…. Let us do everything possible to regain an awareness, to overcome this demographic winter that goes against our families, against our country, even against our future.”
PRI has reported often on the “demography is destiny” theme, and the news is not good. “The world’s most valuable resource is people”, says PRI President Steve Mosher, but others seem to embrace P.J. O’Rourke’s maxim that persists in Narcissism Nation: “There’s just enough of me, but there’s waaaay too many of you.”
And at times that celebration of sterility is surprisingly strident. While the Holy Father accentuated the positive on the Holy Family’s feast day, the Washington Post chose the same day to publish a major story accentuating the negative: “Men across America are getting vasectomies ‘as an act of love,’” read the headline. Its hero was “Andy,” a charming chap who had finally “decided it was time for him to ‘step up’ and help with the family planning. So he did something that the mere thought of makes some men cringe: he got a vasectomy.”
Last winter, our valiant Andy “happened to see a local news story about discounts being offered during ‘World Vasectomy Day.’ He made an appointment that day.”
“The procedure was a total relief, almost like the Covid shot — like I’m safe now,” says Andy. “I wanted to man up.”
The Post applauds. “With the Supreme Court set to decide the fate of Roe v. Wade next year and with more than 20 states poised to ban or impose restrictions on abortion depending on what the court decides, some reproductive rights advocates say it is time for men to take a more active role in both family planning and the fight for reproductive rights.”
And Andy is their man.
The Bezos Blog has been all-in for population control for years, of course. But the new vasectomy vector, anxious not to be misunderstood, makes one thing personally clear:
“Advocates … are not pushing vasectomies as a replacement for the right to obtain an abortion, nor do they believe men should have a say in the decision to have an abortion.”
Details, details. Isn’t that interesting. The Post has long opposed giving the unborn child a voice in the “choice,” but we wonder if wives should “have a say” in a man’s decision to have a vasectomy.
But why would they object? After all, vasectomy is “An act of Love, the ultimate way to be a good man,” says “the Vasectomy King,” a vasectomizer that the Post went all the way to Florida to interview between incisions.
But not all on the Left see vasectomy as a fountain of love. For Keith Olberman, formerly a professional cable channel caterwauler, vasectomy has become an instrument of hate.
Olberman recently came across a Christmas card from Mitt Romney that pictured the Senator’s attractive and bountiful extended family. “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men,” it read. “From my family to yours, Merry Christmas!”
“Somebody gift these people some vasectomies,” Olberman tweeted underneath the Romney Christmas greeting.
The report’s news that new immigrants outnumbered new Americans for the first time raises Vladimir Lenin’s age-old question: what is to be done? Clearly there are many more public voices, even among America’s Catholic hierarchy, that are advocating more immigrants, legal and illegal, than those urging American families to have more children.
Pope Francis properly calls the demographic winter a “tragedy,” and he is correct. If our bishops spent as much effort teaching the beautiful truths of Humanae Vitae as they spend advocating more immigration, their effort would mark a welcome step forward in the effort to turn the demographic winter into a flourishing and bountiful springtime of family life.
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If you found this interesting, check out a related story, “Long Term Complications of Male Vasectomies” by Kevin Hauber.
