In what is definitely the weirdest thing you’ll watch today, two liberal (ok, they never admit to that but I can’t imagine they’re conservative) ladies do some weird form of chair exercising and summoning of Gaia (or something), while admonishing women that there should be “no more babies.”

In fact, they seem to be echoing a repugnant trope I’ve heard from the “party of science” that babies are actually parasites (they’re not).

https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/1108437000045162501

“It is an extreme biohazard to make justifications for parasitism…friends, we have enough humans on the planet,” says the older, wizened lady who appears to be using one hand as an antennae of some kind. “We don’t need any more humans. It is not ok for women to have babies and stop contributing to the process under the pretense that they’re doing a good thing by staying home and raising children. We don’t need children. If you find yourself pregnant, there are options. And you can have an abortion. No babies. Cut off the baby factories. We have 7.5 billion…humans on the planet, that’s too much. The actual ideal amount seems to be under 1 billion.”

“That’s true,” says her friend, who appears to be stoned to the gills.

So much to unpack…

First, back to the parasitism argument. Besides the obvious reality that parasites aren’t created from the genetic material of their hosts and then born (at least to my knowledge. Feel free to comment and prove me wrong), LiveAction cited a study a few years back that drove a nail in the idea that babies acted as parasites.

A study out of Cambridge University is shining light on the role the placenta plays in “ensur[ing] optimal health for both the mother and the fetus,” writes Dr. Fazale Rana of Reasons To Believe. Rana describes a “potential tug of war” that could theoretically happen between the mother and her preborn baby when it comes to the need for nutrients. But in reality, this doesn’t happen — thanks to the regulatory effects of the placenta. The placenta develops from cells belonging to the developing preborn child (blastocyst) after implanting into the wall of the uterus (between 5 and 8 days after fertilization):

Instead of being passive tissue that absorbs available nutrients from the mother, the placenta dynamically distributes nutrients between mother and fetus, optimally ensuring the health of both mother and developing baby… [by] receiv[ing] metabolic signals from both the mother and fetus and respond[ing] to this input by regulating the nutrient amounts made available to the fetus.

In other words, this research shows that pregnancy is not a competition between the rights of mother and child (as abortion advocates would have us believe).

So there’s that. Second, I’m not sure what the wizened woman thinks women should be doing to “contribute to the process” but bearing life is certainly one way of doing it. One day perhaps the lefty set will start to understand that telling people how they must contribute to society is basically a form of tyranny.

Third: “we don’t need children.” I mean…unless you want the human race to die out, you most certainly do. China has been employing a policy of doing away with one gender of children and they have a population living lonely, angry, and hungry. Talk about marching willingly toward apocalypse.

Finally, you see a lot of population control types talk about the Earth’s population being 3 times the sustainable level. And the climate change activists are joining in with the abortion activists in calling for fewer humans. But if you’re willing to take your “science” from two freaky, new-age ladies in lawn chairs, try expanding your horizons and looking for verification of their claims. There are conservative outlets that can help with that of course, but it’s always fun to point out liberal ones agreeing that overpopulation hysteria is absurd.

But the truth is that overpopulation in the United States is not even close to a serious problem. Even globally, overpopulation is an overstated problem.

It’s simplest to start with just the United States. How many people can the country support? Because I am an agricultural economist by profession, my bias is to first think about food. One simple question is how many people can the United States feed? Well, our net agricultural exports account for about 25 percent of the physical volume of agricultural production, which suggests that if we redirected those exports internally, the US could probably support approximately 25 percent more people. That’s assuming current technology and current diets and current land use.

In short, we could feed more than 400 million people, total, merely by consuming locally what we now export.

Whatever voices these ladies are hearing aren’t very rational ones. But they make for a pretty hilarious video.