In barely 40 years--many of us will still be kicking then--earth is expecting to host twice its current number of people. Six billion is company, dear ones, but lets face it: 12 billion is a "party" celebrating universal death. Abortion may soon become one of the more benign solutions to the looming crisis' of hunger and thirst. The ethical question of the future--as we slide toward 2150-- may not remain legalized abortion but forced abortion. With earth's resources badly damaged and dwindling, we're looking, maybe, to a time when eating helpless elders or dining on baby fingers could become the rule. Hospitals may turn into cafeterias where rich starvers dine on poor invalids. On the boob tube, Julia Childs' great granddaughter may smile sweetly as though nothing is amiss, delivering the recipes of the day. "Whether its aborted fetuses or full-term babies, it's the temperature in the oven and the freshness of the spices that count."

Governments, if they still exist, will sterilize and vasectomize newborns. Family Values will first become a quaint remembrance and finally an outlawed slogan. There will be no more illegal aliens, just illegals. Any not born under strict state control may, conceivably, be eliminated. Borders will become even more impossible to patrol and will disappear altogether as restive nationals, unable to locate supplies in their own lands, move from one bare vista to another.

Same-sex love, because it is non-reproductive, could become much celebrated as the most noble among various relationship-alternatives. TV soaps will have become even more explicit, showing bedrooms with shirtless hunks dutifully donning their condoms. Opposite-sex lovers, if they are unable to control their reproductive behaviors, may--in 2150-- be treated as civilization's greatest threats.

Long before 2150, hopefully, The Department of Defense will have developed a 100% effective condom. Some variation on RU-486, the abortion pill, may be advertised widely and distributed without cost. Vasectomies will have become routine.

Question: What is the current U.S. Congress doing or not doing about this looming worldwide overpopulation crisis? Do the legislators have a handle on the booming-baby future? No, not at all. Quite the contrary. A present, according to the Clinton Administration, and because of Congress, millions of people in overcrowded countries are being denied access to contraceptives and birth control pills. This is because Congress is responding to pressures from anti-abortion activists--fundamentalist religionists--who stand in the way of international family planning programs. These programs are not to be allowed, because of the religious right, to counsel abortion. According to astute observers, however, even non-controversial birth control programs are suffering severe financial shortages, having dropped from $548 million in 1995 to only $356 million in 1996.

Worse, Congress has greatly magnified this decline by putting most international family planning money in escrow. Thus, in 1996, only $72 million was released to foreign family planners, a dramatic decrease of 87% since 1995. Overseas family planning organizations--without these funds--are shutting their doors. The reduced funds, says the Clinton Administration, will result in "increased unintended pregnancies, more abortions, higher numbers of maternal and infant deaths and, of course, more births."

What can you do to help stem this Congressional insanity? Make sure your stand-ins in the U.S. House of Representatives and The U.S. Senate, know you intend to judge them harshly if they vote badly on this issue, that you know that the crisis of overpopulation is a long-term threat needing immediate attention. Congress is expected to vote in late February on family planning funds release. Tell your representatives to vote "Yes" on the release. Fundamentalists and orthodox religionists hope to maintain complete control over all matters involving reproduction and sexual choice. Each public representative who bows to the benighted wishes of the ever-meddling religious right becomes, thereby, a deplorable nail in the planet's coffin.

Consider making overpopulation a crisis about which you'll henceforth loudly say your say. Do this in letters to magazine and newspaper editors, in conversations with friends and in any public forum wherein you can clarify the horror of this crisis for those who forever ignore it. As it now stands, overpopulation is the one boiling kettle of worms that simmers quietly on back burners. Its time to push this explosive kettle onto the floor with every scalding consequence. Orthodox religious groups will oppose such moves, but so what? SILENCE==DEATH. Remember?