I just finished reading “Summer House with Swimming Pool” by Herman Koch. It’s a fairly good book but I do find the author’s opinions quite annoying (maybe it was meant to be provocative?) Anyway the main character, a doctor, is ruminating about his time in medical school and a professor who was discussing natural law which governs the survival of the species. The professor states that nature is unfair, unjust, hard hearted regarding the human female. The female can produce one baby a year but the male can produce twenty babies a year (or more) which ensures the survival of said species. Once a female can no longer conceive, she becomes unattractive, is considered useless and is destined to live a long life, poor and lonely. Meanwhile hubby is off making more babies because even as an old man, he can still produce sperm. Too bad for the female, but it’s just the way it is.
The first thing I thought was “Ah ha, so that’s why so many Pro Life leaders are baby making MEN”. By nature, females are not supposed to decide if she will carry a baby, the MALES are! Nature never anticipated the appearance of contraceptives (or did she?).
Then I thought, “Hey, wait a minute. If this is true, why did nature give the female a powerful brain (which results in her ability to become a doctor, architect, engineer, teacher, astronaut) and emotions (which can cause hurt feelings when she is no longer useful). If the role of women is only to conceive, then wouldn’t nature have made us a bunch of flop mops?”
Then I thought, “What if too many babies were being made resulting in too many natural resources being consumed, not enough food, water, warmth, living spaces? What if a result of these many, many babies is that there is too much violence (murder, rape, wars). What if the Earth was in danger of becoming unlivable because of all these babies? What if humans were in danger of becoming extinct because of competition for all these resources?" What would Nature do? Evolution, darling.
Nature realizes that humans are highly intelligent and would have figured out a way to prevent conception. We would evolve in the sense that women would control the number of babies to make (don’t worry guys, you can still have great sex). There would be less and less violence, more and more resources and the lakes and rivers and streams would run clear again and the species would survive