Joseph Biden is a Catholic who has made his peace with working on behalf of the most pro-abortion White House in history. While vice-presidents aren’t known for setting policy or making cutting edge news, their words are important — especially while traveling abroad. On his recent trip to China, to whom our country is deeply in debt, he clearly gave the impression that he had no problem with the morality of their one-child policy. Ethics aside, he said the greater challenge is to construct workable societal models.
The following is a portion of his remarks in which he responds to a question about our own deficit and America’s need to curb spending:
“But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable. So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that’s much less severe than yours, and maybe we can learn together from how we can do that.”
Interestingly, he points out that there is a harsh financial price to be paid when limiting families to one child: it is not sustainable. But what he glosses over in that equation (each worker supporting four elderly relatives) is the means by which they arrive at this state of affairs — lots of contraception, mandatory sterilizations for some, and forced abortions for those who break the rules. But, as he said, he’s not “second-guessing” that!
In an effort to clarify his remarks, he simply said that he had been misunderstood, but our foreign policy is clear: there are few with whom we will not do business, and gravely immoral state policies are not necessarily an obstacle when there is something larger to be gained. Presently, the United States needs to borrow money, and China has the ability to lend it.
While many in the “pro-choice” camp are uncomfortable with forced abortions, and even more are appalled at sex-selection abortions that predominantly destroy girls out of cultural preference, few are wringing their hands about the massive body count that is growing worldwide. No, the overwhelming anxiety today is about markets and economies. Ultimately, these financial discussions look at persons almost strictly in terms of demographics, wondering how many babies can be sacrificed on the altar of economic growth while not adversely impacting the twilight years of their would be grand-parents.
Thankfully, the Speaker of the House (also Catholic), John Boehner responded forcefully: “I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state.”
The same battle is being waged among the emerging presidential candidates. It will become distilled around two fundamental approaches. One camp will prioritize economic policy in terms of numbers and charts, stressing fiscal discipline and accountability. The other camp will stress the moral problem at the heart of the issue, due to a disoriented nation that has lost touch with God. They know that all the fiscal restraint in the world cannot save a nation that doesn’t know the price of a child.
[The Anchor 9.2.11]