(NaturalNews) Oddly enough, it is a study that was published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. What its author, Cristina Richie, of the Theology Department at Boston College, essentially concluded was that too many babies are having too much of a negative impact on the environment, so -- well, there should be fewer of them.
Oddly, though, the author does not recommend fewer Christina Richies.
An abstract of her study, titled, "What would an environmentally sustainable reproductive technology industry look like?" reads, in part:
Through the use of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), multiple children are born adding to worldwide carbon emissions. Evaluating the ethics of offering reproductive services against its overall harm to the environment makes unregulated ARTs unjustified, yet the ART business can move towards sustainability as a part of the larger green bioethics movement.
For the record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ART refers to methods and procedures to artificially achieve pregnancy.
The ART babies are destroying the planet!
Richie says that the integration of "ecological ethos into the ART industry" can result in "climate change" being "mitigated," while "the conversation about consumption can become a broader public discourse."
Further, she wrote:
Although the impact of naturally made children on the environment is undeniable, I will focus on the ART industry as an anthropogenic source of carbon emissions which lead to climate change. The ART industry is an often overlooked source of environmental degradation and decidedly different from natural reproduction as fertility centres provide a service for a fee and therefore can be subject to economic, policy and bioethical scrutiny.
In other words, naturally born children are bad enough on the environment; those children who are created artificially, then, are even worse, and therefore, the entire "ART industry" must come under further "scrutiny" (which is code for regulating it out of business).
Notice, too, how Richie argues from the position that "human-driven climate change" is a settled issue, though it clearly is not.
"In this article, I will provide a brief background on the current state of human-driven climate change before suggesting two conservationist strategies that can be employed in the ART business," said her research abstract. Then, comes her recommendations, which amount to nothing more than imposed population control, again, all based on unproven "science":
First, endorsing a carbon capping programme that limits the carbon emissions of ART businesses will be proposed. Second, I will recommend that policymakers eliminate funded ARTs for those who are not biologically infertile. I will conclude the article by urging policymakers and all those concerned with climate change to consider the effects of the reproductive technologies industry in light of climate change and move towards sustainability.
Wesley J. Smith, a bioethics attorney and special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, took issue with Richie's statements, characterizations and conclusions, in a blog post at LifeNews.com.
'Sorry, I can't get upset about global warming'
"I guess it takes global warming hysteria to get the bioethics movement to criticize what is known in the trade as 'artificial reproductive technologies' or ART," he wrote.
He also took umbrage with Richie's definition of children as little more than "carbon legacies:"
I don't know if Richie coined the term, but it is ridiculous. Children are children, not bundles of carbon producers.
ART is an almost unregulated industry, a lamentable circumstance with which many bioethicists are content. But Richie says global warming has to change the field's thinking about ART.
Smith also disagrees with Richie's contention that the ART babies are pushing the world's ecology over the edge, and he mocks her solution: "Regulate!"
What is "grim" about the situation, he says, is not Richie's conclusion that ART statistics are steadily rising, but is instead "the exploitation of surrogates in biological colonialism and the eugenic impetus that has sunk its fangs deep into the heart of the industry.
In the face of such human objectification, sorry, I can't get upset about global warming," he added.