If humans are a cancer, why should even one be allowed to disfigure the Earth? Why not turn back the population clock to zero?

Obviously, even the bitterest anti-people pessimists don't take the anti-people logic this far. The very fact they persist in living -- and complaining about other people being alive -- proves they think some people ought to live. That is, they believe their kind of people ought to live.

To this mind-frame it is always another kind of person who ought not to live.

For the voice on WTOP's "Talk Back Line," that someone else was the "fifth or sixth child" -- whose parents presumably will strap him or her in a safety seat in their "giant SUV" as they return from the hospital to their "McMansion."

The thought I had on hearing this comment was that a "fifth child" might be born who grows up to cure the disease that otherwise would have cut short the life of the anonymous caller himself.

A "sixth child" might be born who builds the business that gives the caller's child the opportunity to work, prosper, buy his own SUV and fill it with up with joyful grandkids.

Who knows? A "seventh child" might become the quarterback who brings joy to millions in the Washington area by finally leading the Redskins to another Super Bowl.

You don't need to be an economist to see it is a myth that man is a net consumer of material wealth. History proves the opposite. The world is brimming with physical and intellectual improvements made by successive generations of human inhabitants. Its so-called carrying capacity has been determined not by the width of its continents, but by the wit of man.

The Bible tells us God made man in his own image and likeness, gave us dominion over the Earth, and told us to be fruitful and multiple. It ought to be self-evident that if the future of the human race is ever endangered, it won't be from following this pro-life command, but from denying it.