A Unitarian Minister, Abortion & Social Security

John C. Rankin

[excerpted from First the Gospel, Then Politics …, 1999, Vol. 2, not published]

In the mid-1980s I met with a Unitarian minister in his study, the Rev. Jerry Goddard, with whom I addressed a debate at the Arlington Street Church in Boston, and with whom I had also addressed other public forums.

We were wrapping up the conversation, and I noted that if our present abortion rate continues, the future of social security will be jeopardized. When it comes time for my generation (the “baby boomers”) to retire, there will be some sixty million fewer taxpayers to underwrite the social security system. Or in a more biblical sense, sixty million fewer children to be there for their aged parents (I am exempt from social security as a minister – no thank you to top down government and a state run Ponzi scheme).

I said that I could imagine the generation of the baby boomers’s children knowing of or suspecting that they had aborted siblings. Then they would resent their aged parents when the financial burden created by a top-heavy ratio of retired people to working people hits the breaking point.

They could say, around the year 2020, “You know Mom and Dad, in your younger years you messed around and had children you aborted – not willing or feeling able to embrace the financial and emotional responsibilities. But now we cannot embrace the financial and emotional responsibilities to support you, and with not enough taxpayers to support the old social security system, we are going to vote for the new system that defers payments until you reach age eighty; and if you cannot be economically self-sufficient or productive in the meantime, we understand the need for voluntary euthanasia. You had your prosperity – do not rob us of our chance at it.”

Hyperbole? Perhaps. Jerry Goddard laughed at the possibility that abortion could cause such strain. Yet a few years thereafter, this subject had become hotly debated as the future of social security is in increasing jeopardy for this as well as other reasons. Hyperbole becomes fact when just a few public policy makers adopt such an attitude and seek to act on it.

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