Birth Rates Drop in Omelas: If only we could walk away

National Media Museum public domain

I simply cannot accustom myself to the trait of feigning confused ignorance, particularly when the answer is manifestly obvious. On a possibly related subjected, there’s been an awful lot of apparent angst about falling birth rates in Omelas* in recent years.

I’m having some issues porting my subscriber list across to my fresh new account, hopefully glitch free, and Substack have lost my welcome email. One last kick in the chops eh Substack? I’ll fix it tonight or tomorrow, when life allows. So here’s a final rant from this account, going out in Celtic Chameleon style.

The human race isn’t at risk of extinction. We’re not even close, barring a cosmic event. Just ask mother Earth, currently comfortably sustaining the billions of humans squirming around in her lush and abundant embrace.

And yet, a nasty little “pro-natalist” movement has taken hold, slithering in the shadowy undercurrents, rooted in beliefs that undermine women’s humanity, autonomy, dignity and safety.

Much as you might prefer to dismiss this as a feminist rant, I’m not a feminist, nor do I think men means “all men”. I’m married to one man I love and admire, and birthed another who is perfect in his mother’s eyes.

And before you make any attempt to inform me that I am a traitor to womankind, read the article I wrote on the subject.

So, now that we have that out of the way, may I continue?

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The face of God

I am a mother. I see the reflection of God in my children’s faces, and a deep tug of connection and physical yearning for their comfort and safety whenever I hug them. For many years they were the reason, the rhyme and the song of my life.

They are mid 20s adults, doing well thank God, and my heart will forever walk around outside my body, carried within their blood and their bones.

Having my babies was the most important, enriching, difficult, painful, miraculous and marvellous decision I ever made. I would absolutely never wish my children out of existence, they are my magnum opus.

And if I was young again, knowing what I now know, I would almost certainly choose not to have children.

Not desiring motherhood is not, actually, all that difficult a concept to understand, as laid out below in simple bullet points.

But before we get to that, let’s talk about the trend of fauxfusion and coercive reproduction that keeps popping up on my timelines.

Fight for your right to remove hers

Elon’s been leading the loud and proud pro-natalist charge for quite some time, spouting simplistic rhetoric about the joys of parenting and claiming there will be population collapse if women don’t do their bit in the Kinder, Küche, Kirche department.**

Clearly, Musk is no Nazi, despite his push for women to be breeding sows for the fatherland. But in this writer’s not so humble opinion, he is the public face of many men who simply will not recognise women as actual human beings with intrinsic rights, desires and worth beyond their wombs.

There are men, and there are “not men” in Elon’s world, and the not men’s only true function is to plop out one baby after another, ensuring that the male babies get to grow up, spread their wings and fly, while their sisters mature into good breeding sows. Ad infinitum.

“We terrify girls into saying that if you get pregnant, your life’s over. But actually, having a child is one of the most delightful, happiness-inducing things you could possibly do” - said Musk, who has dropped at least 14 sprogs behind him by at least 6 different baby mamas, while nimbly dodging the exhausting and life limiting realities of day to day parenting.

It’s unsurprising that Elon thinks having babies is a bed of roses, considering he outsources all the risks and all the work.

Musk’s main contribution to parenting amounts to two deposits, an orgasm followed by a bank transfer.

So, putting aside the reality that bearing children sometimes kills women—yes, even now, and even in the West, sorry to burst your bubble—and changes their bodies, minds and lives irrrevocably and forever, it shows a distinct lack of self awareness for any absentee father to feel he has anything to contribute to discussions on parenting.

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Worse than establishing a harem, at one point Musk even stooped to surrogacy.

Nothing says “I see women as a disposable commodity” like surrogacy.

Big Surrogacy is a monstrous industry, filled with useful idiots for ghastly practices that regularly offer poor outcomes for mothers and babies.

Adoption seeks to redress the horrifying loss of a mother from a baby’s life while surrogacy intentionally deprives a child of that irreplacable bond.

And all that aside, in order to attempt to defend this particular type of human trafficking, you must first be able to prove that there is a zero percent outcome of child rape, abuse and murder directly stemming from the practice of surrogacy.

This is very much not the case.

“In a recent sting operation, the FBI arrested and charged a Chicago man for knowingly distributing child sexual assault material and boasting about sexually abusing his young nieces and nephews. The arrest came less than a week before he and the man identified as his husband were set to collect their newborn son from a commercial surrogate in California.”

This is one example of a huge number of cases.

Big surrogacy has been grooming you into accepting its premise as a kindness for decades now. I can sympathise with those who have been so duped and am not claiming those who entered into the immoral pact of surrogacy are all wicked, perverted or selfish, but it is simply not relevant if you, your sister, cousin or aunty had a great experience with surrogacy — human trafficking is still always wrong.

If you can’t have children and want them, that’s a huge loss, and possibly a terrible personal tragedy for you.

But once again HUMAN TRAFFICKING IS ALWAYS WRONG.

The many human rights abuses inherent in surrogacy deserves its own post, and when I have the emotional strength to write about the horrors being inflicted on women and babies in its name, I’ll return to the topic.

Instead, for the moment let’s return to Elon, the public face of coerced reproduction.

Fleeing the scene

As he flees the scene, lecturing the female half of the human race on why Elon knows best, at least he’s tossing his multitude of baby mamas enough money to pay for cleaners, nannies and material necessities and comforts. Right?

Well, yes, to an extent.

To build a life on the foundation of two loving parents is to be truly blessed. You cannot replace with cold, hard cash the bedrock stability of knowing that both your parents love you, proven by their everyday supportive engagement and presence.

If forced to choose between living in abject poverty with two loving parents or being wealthy with one, I’d choose wealth of course, because I’m not stupid and have a firm grasp on reality.

However, the choice blurs when you take genuine deprivation out of the picture.

Elon has repeatedly chosen to be an absentee parent, offering money in lieu of a secure and loving parental setup, because this suited him, not because it was best for the child, or because he had no viable choice.

And please do not assume that I think highly of his wombs for rent, but the reality is that I know a great deal about the audaciously outspoken Musk, and very little about the multitude of baby mamas, and really have no interest in digging any deeper.

Anyway, Elon is not the issue, he’s just a symptom.

He is the polite face of the woman as brood mare movement.

The farrowing sow

I wouldn’t go so far as to say Mr Musk is actually in favour of forced birthing, but I’m reasonably certain that he, and many like him, care not one jot for the stark reality that many women have no interest at all in child rearing, or that this is a deeply personal choice every woman should be allowed to make without coercion.

I doubt, based on his public views, that he could come close to recognising the deep and horrifying revulsion felt to the very core by women at the notion of her body, her self, her actual physical reality being kidnapped for breeding purposes.

“Worse than rape” is how one woman I know described such a concept. “I’d just kill myself”, she added flatly, at the idea of being forced to become a brood mare.

But never fear, there are always ample numbers of pickmes at the ready, poised to be the cheer squad for their very own Nigel***, in this best of all possible worlds.

There is no birth rate crisis

To reiterate—the human race isn’t at risk of extinction. Not even close.

But even if it were, delegating half the human race to be brood mares is a monstrous and grotesque violation of a woman’s most basic human rights.

Long ago, when the internet was young and I still believed some of these men might not be disingenous misogynists, I tried to discuss one man’s commentary on an article, whereby he declared that women must “breed” to save his preferred group.

I pointed out that under his oppressive regime women would be treated as breeding stock, and so would no better off than under the other oppressive regime. I tried to make him understand that being consigned to baby factory status, regardless of the ethnicity, culture or creed of the men involved, is not a life worth living, but an unspeakable horror.

He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—get it.

Sadly, current social media is still rife with men threatening rape to enforce procreation, I’ve seen this stance both stated and inferred repeatedly.****

In short

Let’s assume you’re not a disingenous forced birther and are puzzled by the emerging reality that lots of women are not keen on having children.

We can sum it all up in a few straightforward sentences.

• There have always been women, just as there have always been men, who did not want to have children. Yes. Always.

• Until very recently, most women had the choice to either spawn babies till their wombs stopped functioning, hope that death would claim them, fight off male attentions throughout their fertile years, or join a nunnery or similar sanctuary.

• Now that many women have the choice of whether or not to procreate, it’s utterly unsurprising (to most women at any rate) that what has always been a life changing and often life threatening endeavour is not particularly appealing to many women.

• And when you add to that the pornification of men to the point where they regularly and casually make repulsive sexual demands on young women, you now have all you need to understand the falling birth rate in Western societies.

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All truths are easy to understand

So, let’s sum it up in very simple terms.

Many women just don’t want to become mothers. And that's all the argument any of us should need.

The human race isn’t at risk of extinction, but even if it were, the horrifying notion of women as walking uteruses isn’t the answer.

Women are half the human race. If half the human race is not offered the same respect, bodily autonomy and rights as the other, then what you have is free men and enslaved women.

And that’s not a species that deserves to survive.

As a traditional wife and mother, who hopes one day to be a grandmother, I would far rather humanity came to an grinding halt than see one woman’s body kidnapped for the purpose of forced birthing.

I do feel for some young men navigating today’s dating scene. I work with a diverse group, young and old, male and female, and anecdotally speaking it’s slim pickings out there for everyone.

But that doesn’t mean one half of the human race should be a comfort blanket, support animal and doormat for the other half.

So, if raising a family is your goal, discuss this at the very outset of a relationship, set out in clear terms your plans to support these children, then make your choice accordingly from the many millions of women who do want to “breed”.

This will save you, and those women who do not want children, a great deal of time and torment.

Those who walk away from Omelas

“In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards; the floor is dirt, a little damp; the walls are bare” - from Those who Walk Away from Omelas by Urusla K. Le Guin.

And in this room there is a girl who never wanted to have children, but she is in labour, terrified, blood running down her legs, sweating and screaming and confused, used and abused - because, to many, her only viable choice is to accept the status of breeding sow.

I can do nothing to fix the nothing inequalities inherent in the enormous, complex systems we are all forced to exist within. As Eleanor put it, in The Good Place: “This is bullshirt! Nobody can live a life that’s good enough because everything we do screws someone else over somewhere down the line. The system’s rigged!"

But that doesn’t mean I have to cheerfully condone inhumane practices, assumptions or demands, even when made by billionaires.

So perhaps the next time someone scratches their head in fauxfusion as to why so many young western women are choosing not to have children, you can point out that the explanation is quite simple.

They don’t want to.

And that is reason enough.

And if they persist, perhaps you might explain that a species that relies on the shameful horror of coerced birthing is not, actually a species worth saving. Rather, for women and girls all over the world, it’s the stuff of nightmares.

If the human race deserves to exist, and that’s a big if, that can only be if both halves of the species agree to the bargain.

In short, gentle reader, I’d walk away from Omelas, if I could.

How about you?

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*If you haven’t read Those who walk away from Omelas by Urusula K Le Guin, I urge you to do so.

**There are dozens and dozens of different tweets and statements and videos of Elon bitching about birth rates and pushing the pro natalist aenda. If you really need me to find you some, ask. But Google, Grok and Chat GPT are your friends in this endeavour.

***Not My Nigel references a common defensive reaction that women who preference men over women claim “My Nigel would never behave like that!” derailing conversations about any abusive behaviour by men.

****https://www.raelambert.com/blog/the-twitter-mob-came-after-me-for-being-childfree - there are many, many more examples of this behaviour, if you choose to look.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-01/australian-who-fathered-surrogate-twins-facing-abuse-charges/5710796 - there are many more of these instances of horrifying abuse of children by single men who purchase babies through surrogacy.