Once upon a time, the birth of a baby would make the whole world shudder in fear – sounds like something out of a horror movie, doesn’t it? Well, it was a real thing, according to Mary Annaïse Heglar in 2019. Pretty scary stuff, folks.

In 1969, a graduate named Stephanie Mills used her commencement speech to speak out about the connection between environmental concerns and reproductive choice. She went ahead and made everyone feel super great by saying, “I am terribly saddened by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is have no children at all.” Who needs a happy ending anyway, right?

Mills’ words echoed throughout the country, as millions of women began to rely on hormonal birth control, and environmental activism became a real thing. That’s right, 1969 was a big year for both avoiding babies and saving the planet. Go figure.

Today, we’re all about doing our part for the environment, and people are starting to think twice about having children. It’s true that population growth contributes to climate change and that babies in America have pretty massive carbon footprints. But let’s not get too carried away with the blame game – there’s more to it than that.

Young people are concerned about the future and its lack of promise. It’s not all about carbon emissions, folks. And if politicians and policymakers want to encourage young people to have children, they need to step up their game. That means addressing climate change as a serious threat and actually doing something about it. Does that sound so hard?

Instead of taking away our rights to make our own reproductive choices, they should be convincing us that they have that whole environment thing under control. Any takers for that challenge?

Serious News: washingtonpost