Most Americans, ears ringing from the constant noise of "surgical" bombings and the screams of dying human beings classified as collateral damage, have missed Bush driving the latest nail into the coffin of international harmony. I'm talking about something that transcends not only the partisan side of politics, but politics itself.
Earth's population, frankly, is expanding faster than Oprah Winfrey's waistline at a book club meeting with punch and pie. Sometime around 1800, a billion people walked the earth. Clearly, this billion was unique not only because they collectively made up a nice round number, but because their sexual lust was so unbelievably insatiable that after only 200 years of torrential copulation, 6 billion of their equally horny kin stumble around the planet looking for as many suitable mates as possible.
In 50 years, they'll shoot out so many babies that there will be 12 billion people simultaneously exhausting the last vestiges of the earth's resources.
Of course, it's not like gated communities and SUV-lined cul-de-sacs populated by America's upper economic echelon are overflowing with babies. The population explosion occurs almost exclusively in the third world, straining local resources as basic as reliable sanitation.
Additionally, the number of young men with exceptionally bleak possibilities for their lives is easily converted into fuel for all sorts of terrorist fire.
In 1994, 179 nations drew up a pact at a United Nations conference in Cairo, Egypt, to provide women with the basic education, health care and contraception necessary to keep family size within reasonable limits.
Of course, such noble efforts were contested all the way by an unorthodox axis: the United States and the most repressive Arab nations, such as Saudi Arabia. Clinton, always wary of alienating abortion-minded soccer moms, couldn't muster up the political huevos to stick this treaty six feet under.
Needless to say, this didn't keep the American religious right from constantly advocating that the U.S. fight birth control and abortion access by using the good old fashioned "withdrawal method" of diplomacy. Close up the pocketbook and tell the rest of the world to (literally) screw itself into oblivion.
Luckily for the religious right, Bush, who cares about as much about the social mores of soccer moms as he does about the correct pronunciation of multi-syllabic words, succeeded Billy Clinton as president. In July, Bush withdrew $34 million from the U.N. Population Fund, citing some unsubstantiated garbage about the UNFPA subsidizing forced abortions in China.
Of course, removing money slated to educate poor Chinese women about birth control and family planning leaves forced abortion and sterilization as the only methods available to keep population down.
UNFPA places the damage caused by this $34-million resource cut at 4,700 maternal deaths, 77,000 infant or child deaths and 800,000 preventable abortions. A degenerate cynic might comment that all these statistics do indeed represent declines, however slight, in population. Of course, such soulless claims are quickly silenced in light of the fact that Bush's revocation of funding also caused an estimated 2 million unwanted pregnancies.
Jane Roberts, a retired French teacher out of Redlands, Calif., isn't about to let this pass. She was so heartbroken by the refusal of funds that she began a grassroots campaign to replace the money. As of Monday, she has raised over $73,000. While this is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the $34 million that Bush "reallocated," it does send the message that regular citizens don't have to stand helplessly by while Bush sublimates basic humanitarian efforts to petty domestic politics.
Solomon Rotstein is a humanities sophomore. Reach him at solomon.rotstein@asu.edu.
