The following is a satirical essay by Delight in Truth friend and follower Matt. Originally written in High School, it brilliantly shames our society into realizing the grave sin and injustice of aborting millions of unborn babies.
My Humble Proposition
There is an issue which has divided our nation for far too long. It is an issue that angers many Americans against each other, and I would like to offer my humble proposition to permanently resolve the issue in a way that is both acceptable and beneficial to all. I propose a solution that would also serve to strengthen our country. I offer my humble proposition to resolve the issue of abortion.
First and foremost we would outlaw abortions immediately. This should assuage the concerns of even the most extreme opponents of abortion. In conjunction with this we would create a national database for unwanted unborn children. Any woman who is pregnant and does not want the child would be required to register her child as unwanted. This can be done any time up to the ninth month of pregnancy or even after birth up to a reasonable age, such as one year. This does require the woman to carry the child for 9 months, but in exchange it allows her a one year trial with the child after birth to determine if the child is wanted or not. This is a tremendous benefit over the current abortion-based system because it would allow her to assess the personality of this child in a way she can’t currently because the decision must be made before birth. Under this program, once the child is declared unwanted, the government would cover all expenses of medical and child care. Further if the child is declared unwanted after birth she would still be eligible for reimbursement of medical expenses and reasonable child care expenses.
The next step is, of course, the management of the unwanted children, which I will hereafter refer to simply as Unwanteds. Certainly there is an expense to U.S. taxpayers for delivering and raising the Unwanteds, but with foresight it should be easy to see the benefits of this system. The Unwanteds can serve untold benefit to our society. Education of the Unwanteds can be minimal as they will primarily be working at hard labor and jobs valuable Americans don’t want. Further their living conditions and food can be kept at minimal levels. I estimate that by age 12 they can begin to earn their keep in various forms of labor. It should be possible to create a program in which a percentage of the value generated by the Unwanteds can be provided to their birth mothers as an income source long-term. This would help compensate the mother for the 9 months of carrying the Unwanted.
Currently, the military has roughly 1.5 million active members, and 1.5 million reserve members. Currently there are also roughly 1.5 million abortions annually in the U.S. You can see that only two years of Unwanteds could populate our entire military. This would prevent the loss of valuable American lives in any future conflict. The remaining Unwanteds can perform other hazardous or undesirable jobs. They can provide low-cost factory labor to compete with countries like China. Those who demonstrate exceptional ability and attitude could be rented for private service to valuable Americans. Because they are not citizens we need not be concerned with things like a minimum wage, or excessively comfortable working conditions.
Perhaps there will be a few who feel this is unfair treatment of the Unwanteds. One would logically expect, however, that they will in fact be grateful both to their nation and to their birth mothers who offered them the opportunity to live and contribute to their mothers and their nation. If an Unwanted made the illogical decision that death would in fact have been better, they can always be provided the opportunity to make this decision for themselves. It might even be possible to create a program in which an Unwanted, of exceptional talent and work ethic, could eventually purchase a Wanted status and become a valued member of American society. In this scenario it would even be possible to allow a reunion between the grateful Unwanted and the potentially proud birth mother if both parties agreed.
I believe this solution provides a resolution to the abortion issue that is satisfying for all parties. We prevent the abortions as opponents desire, but we also create a system in which the mothers are able to convert their Unwanted pregnancies into a much-needed income stream. This seems to be a benefit to all involved.
Delight in Truth 
that’s pretty deep thinking for a high schooler, and even though it is satire, it touches some deep biases on both sides of the abortion issue. Matt’s use of the word “Unwanteds” really stings and bothers (as well it should), and it’s hard to believe we live in such a society, where certain human beings are afforded no dignity because of their inconvenience.
I just watched Ravi Zacharias lecture for 2 hours, and he recalled a hostile woman telling him that she did not like his God, because what gave God the right to decide and to pick and choose who gets to go to heaven and whom to hell. And Ravi replied, “Madam, yet, when you choose to abort your baby, you call that a moral decision.”
what I found stinging is the reference to the creation of a cast system or a class system, with humans and sub-human status…
and that is really what we are doing with abortion…
We recently received an article from fellower commenter Gabe Bogdan, where the writer’s basic argument was, ‘yes we know we’re killing human life, some lives are just more valuable than others’. I fear that we are at a point in our society where such a proposal is not terribly shocking, and might actually get some percentage of support.
As Chris notes, we already have a caste system, we’re really just arguing about the boundaries and parameters now.
you are right Matt, the new front now is eugenics. As a country we seem to always wait for someone else to do it first, so we can say, “See, they’re doing it in Canada, and Norway… it’s not so bad…” and then the campaign starts here, full blown. And we wonder how people could justify admiring Hitler, knowing full well that he was exterminating human beings. We have our answer right here, in our own generation. Once the initial shock wears off, some people will accept anything, including the murder of innocents.
The bystander phenomenon is very interesting. It’s very interesting how hundreds of thousands of Germans stood by and even participated in the murder of 6 million Jews and others… Same thing with eugenics in the early 20th century… The depraved human soul… that is the explanation
Imagine if I had a candidate who could rebuild an economy damaged by wars, who could rebuild our country into a superpower, could mobilize national patriotism, and basically everything one might want from a national leader, but he just had one little quirk…he wanted to kill all the jews….Most Americans would say he’d never get elected….Now imagine the same candidate for president, except his little quirk is he thinks it’s okay to slit babies throats in the womb…or after they’re born if the intent was to abort them (i.e. they’ve been registered as ‘unwanted’). Oh, what happens when we compare ourselves to ourselves and judge ourselves by ourselves. We (American society) actually think we’re so much better.
Satire it may be (and good writing), but no doubt thought-provoking.
It is ironic how little value there is for the life that God gives, and how an unborn baby’s life is ended because, well, it’s a “matter of choice”.
You’ve got the world hoping to find ancient traces of bacteria on Mars and then extatically declare that there’s “life on Mars!”. Yet the most helpless and vulnerable life, the baby-to-be-born, we terminate because it is “Unwated”.