Abortion and the Suicide of the West

Jenelle Evans, 22, had an abortion this year. Originally featured on MTV four years ago as a pregnant teenager, Evans, who loves to party, had a son, gave the son to her mother to raise, got into heroin, got married and went to jail; her husband ended up in jail as well on drug charges. They got divorced. He didn’t know that Evans was pregnant. She got an abortion. He found out about it on the commercials for “Teen Mom 2.”

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Now she’s pregnant again. With a third guy. Who may or may not be seeing another woman on the side.

Since the legally and morally despicable decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade in 1973, American women have aborted some 56 million children. The vast majority of these children have been aborted for reasons that have nothing to do with rape, incest or the health of the mother. We have destroyed an entire generation of children purely for self-worship. Children are difficult; therefore, they can be done away with. Children are burdensome; therefore, they don’t exist in the womb. Or, as President Barack Obama once put it regarding his own daughters, “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

Meanwhile, the same society that has busily anesthetized millions to the murder of the unborn casually pushes social costs onto the next generation — a generation that, increasingly, does not exist. According to the 2010 census, just 24 percent of the American population is under age 18, compared with 39.4 percent that is 45 and older. America is aging, and aging quickly.

And what of the young? Their chief concerns these days are legalization of marijuana, state-sponsored same-sex marriage and provision of birth control. If we think the demographics and economics of the country look bad now, wait until America relies on a generation of overprivileged, underachieving Americans convinced of their own moral rectitude based on a puerile libertarianism freed of libertarianism’s consequences. Sex and drugs have replaced building for the future; abortion and the welfare state have replaced consequences.

In the end, this philosophy will lead to the dominance of the state. There are only two types of society that can survive. First, there is the heavy-entitlement, heavily regulated society, in which compulsion takes the place of free choice. Second, there is the free society, in which individual actions carry individual consequences. America used to be the second type of society. As we realize that there is no next generation to foot our bills, we will transition more toward the first.

So, how can we solve all of this? Not through the law — the law follows culture. The only way to restore an American future is to restore the social and religious institutions that fostered genuine American values. This means fighting back against the tyranny of those who conveniently proclaim to “live and let live” while simultaneously demanding that Americans with traditional values shut the hell up. This means emboldening our churches and synagogues to once again speak out on behalf of virtue. This means treating family as a priority rather than an afterthought or punishment.

Evans is a victim of the society that built her — a society that has enabled her misdeeds and rewarded her sins. But she cannot be the basis of America’s future. If she is, America will, quite literally, have no future.

Ben Shapiro, 30, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, a radio host on KTTH 770 Seattle and KRLA 870 Los Angeles, Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org, and Editor-At-Large for Breitbart News. He is the New York Times best-selling author of “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America.”

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