The lesson here? The Left hates imperialism, except when it comes to [checks notes] encouraging other nations to kill off its young for the good of Western nation’s standard of living. Bernie Sanders wants US resources deployed in poor countries to expand abortion, not just for “reproductive rights,” but to achieve zero population growth. That’s a necessary step in dealing with climate change, Sanders told a CNN forum last night:

QUESTION: Good evening. Human population growth has more than doubled in the past 50 years. The planet cannot sustain this growth. I realize this is a poisonous topic for politicians, but it’s crucial to face. Empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth seems a reasonable campaign to enact. Would you be courageous enough to discuss this issue and make it a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe?

SANDERS: The answer is yes. And the answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the United States Of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies and make reproductive decisions. And the Mexico City Agreement, which denies American aid to those organizations around the world that allow women to have abortions or even get involved in birth control to me is totally absurd. So I think especially in poor countries around the world where women do not necessarily want to have large numbers of babies and where they can have the opportunity through birth control to control the number of kids they have, it’s something I very, very strongly support.

We’ve been hearing the same dire warnings about the catastrophe of population growth for 50 years now, with the crash always just ten years away. Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968 and predicted massive wars and famine by the early 1980s. That book fueled massive and unfounded hysteria which prompted demands for government control of energy, food production, and especially population control. The fact that its predictions turned out to be utterly wrong still has not sunk into the skulls of some policymakers, who continue to echo Ehrlich’s nonsense dressed up in climate-change fashion:

“We could see climate wars in the future,” Pete Buttigieg says about the climate crisis.

“The bottom line is the President of the United States cannot keep us safe. And the reason he cannot keep us safe is he doesn't want to admit there's even a problem” https://t.co/5tm4g9g9jW pic.twitter.com/EtIHr05Idj

— New Day (@NewDay) September 5, 2019

Abortion was one of the tools of the Ehrlichian hysterics, and at least some people tried it out. China imposed a brutal and corrupt one-child policy for decades, forcing mothers to have abortions and encouraging a sex-selection process that has left the country with far too many single men of reproductive age. It has warped their social structure while covering up the real problems China faces — government oppression rather than population control.

China, however, applied that to their own country. Sanders wants to fund abortions in other countries as a solution to poverty, or something. S.E. Cupp hits the nail on the head in describing what Sanders proposes:

Let’s just state for the record: talking about needing “population control” through ABORTION for the sake of CLIMATE is talking about EUGENICS. The fact that @BernieSanders is willing to entertain this vile idea is not only disgusting, it should be disqualifying.

— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) September 5, 2019

To be fair, socialists have been making decisions on who lives or dies to support the ruling classes’ standard of living since Joseph Stalin massacred the kulaks and Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Sanders only breaks new ground in exporting mass murder through abortion to render the Third World less costly to the rest of us.

Even Sanders’ framing of this issue is imperialistic. If other countries want to fund abortions, they can make that decision for themselves. All the Mexico City policy says is that US taxpayers will not fund abortions in other countries. We do not have the authority to tell other nations how to spend their own money, nor does the Mexico City policy pretend to do so. If they do not want to abide by the terms of use of our funds, they don’t have to take them.

Update: You have to be a fan of Marvel’s Avengers series to get the joke, but suffice it to say that Thanos is the ultimate Ehrlichian (via Instapundit’s Stephen Green):

In a surprise move, last night Bernie announced Thanos as his running mate https://t.co/OKaRO0zRkp

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 5, 2019