DDT in Breast Milk, Microplastics in the Foetus, Pesticides in Food, Airborne Pollution, Radiation, Famines, Unemployment and War
And you ask me why I don’t have children?
The Christian God might have said, “The Earth is your dominion, go forth and multiply” some 2000 years ago. But God knows the situation now is radically different from when He sent Adam and Eve to an uninhabited Earth. Is it time to rewrite the Holy Books? Can the first editions be updated please?
Today, I encountered a woman, proudly boasting she had nine children. Nine! I could not stop myself from asking her words to the effect of, “Have you not heard of contraception?” There was no polite way to put it, truth be told.
It brought to mind a Pakistani woman in my English class, who lived in a two bedroom house with her in-laws, and husband, here in the North of England. They had ELEVEN children. Sad to say, she was like a hostage in the marriage. She spoke very little English, and when she went to her doctor and said, ‘Can I have the medicine to stop having children”, the doctor (a Pakistani-origin male, informed her husband and she got a beating and - no contraception.
But the woman I encountered earlier today, actually is boasting of having NINE children. She is proud of her intellect, and her profession and how she juggles her work with her role as a mother… Sheesh!
Wake up folks, in just the past century, the population of Planet Earth has grown from somewhere around 1.5 billion, to well over 7 billion. The cascade of inventions by mad Western Empire scientists, hell bent on leaving their names in the annals of fame, has created a cauldron of never-seen chemicals that are poisioning land, sea, and air and so we see that the very ecosystems upon which our lives depend, are unravelling before our eyes.
The Western concepts of progress, development, and advancement, have all centred on the primarily male ideas of building the biggest ships, the tallest buildings, the most powerful, most destructive weaponry and the most profitable pharmaceuticals that cure nothing but create chronic conditions, ensuring an ever-growing population of the semi-sick. (Semi-effective vaccines for COVID-19 anyone?)
Into this maelstorm, I ask you, how wise is it, to give birth to little ones?
Honestly, why should women choosing not to have children, choosing in other words, to refrain from subjecting more innocents to suffering, adding to the complexities and conundrums we still have no solutions for, (eg how to store nuclear waste safely that will be radioactive for thousands of years) when even a half-literate person can see, crops are failing, seeds they are forced into buying by Western multinationals, are becoming too expensive, there are droughts one year, and floods and mudslides another, the Doomsday clock inches ever closer to informing us of the impending complete annihilation of life on earth as we know it (currrently it is the closest to midnight at 100 seconds, that it has ever been) and yet still…. we have millions of idiots, whose medieval mindset prevails.
These are the people who say they can’t be fulfilled, unless they have some cute little lookalikes running around.
When it comes to women who feel they must fulfil their destiny as women, by becoming that exalted thing, a MOTHER I wonder if they can see a metre beyond their botoxed lips or two centimetres beyond their hijabi head?
What is more selfish than women bringing forth life in the conditions of the present century? The destructiveness of warring factions of patriarchs and their lust for power, are bringing us to the edge of extinction. Every scientist of note is declaring we are in the middle of the sixth extinction. Apparently the last one was some 6 million years ago, when some 60% of species did not survive.
So how selfish is it, to lazily accept the ancient cultural norms that say you are nothing if you have no children? In fact, bringing forth children to support you in your old age, or be your plaything and gladden your heart, distract you from addressing as an adult, the frightening realities of floods, fires, food insecurity, and the spectre of pandemics …. well to me, it shows up such women as having betrayed the very essence of motherhood.
For if we cannot provide a secure and healthy foundation for our children, from the breast milk we offer them when they are babies, to the air they breathe, the food they eat, then, surely we have betrayed them, just as much as the universally despised junkie, taking heroin and drinking alcohol while pregnant.
