It’s pretty clear that a large majority of women are pro-choice. An in-house survey quoted in the May 20th edition of the Wall Street Journal found that “84% of women with college educations oppose overturning” Roe v. Wade, and 73% “strongly oppose such a move.” And that’s the Journal, a notably conservative paper.
And, in spirit, many men are with those women. I am one.
In fact, I feel so strongly that I have become something of a single-issue voter. All I need to know about a candidate is whether they are pro-choice or anti-abortion, and I’m good to go. It’s true, beliefs tend to cluster, and someone running for office who is pro-choice is also likely to favor things like educational spending, gun restrictions, and so on. But I would take a pro-choice, pro-gun contender over an aspirant who is anti-choice and anti-gun.
Why do I feel this way? Two basic reasons.
One, I am a populationist, believing that many of the ills visited on our world today — pollution, species extinction, resource scarcity, poverty, political and military strife — are a function of population. It’s not that they wouldn’t exist without overcrowding, but population pressure exacerbates them all. The human species should be taking any avenue — other than war — that leads away from overpopulation. If that’s not intuitively obvious, I cite my own…
