“Pop Squad” offers a rare window into the mind of an abortionist. It also hints at a path for his redemption. 

Progressive media has been quick to dismiss recent accusations by high-ranking Republicans like former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that Democrats support “post-birth” abortion. Debunking DeSantis, an article from the fact-checking website Politifact notes that no U.S. state, not even those with the most permissive abortion laws, allows for the killing of newborn infants, and that the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act already confers legal personhood upon any infant born alive after a failed abortion. MSNBC contributor Steve Benen finds it beyond belief that “Republicans like Trump…seriously expect voters to believe that there are women, medical professionals, and Democratic policymakers who ‘want abortion literally when the child is coming out of the birth canal.’ That’s insane. There are no such people.”

Assuming that were true, one nonetheless wonders why these rebuttals never state that post-birth abortion is morally wrong. They merely point out that abortionists are prohibited by law from dispatching infants once they are born, in which case Republicans are attacking a non-issue. Perhaps to affirmatively denounce infanticide would play into the hands of the enemy, many of whom use the term to refer to abortion at any stage in a pregnancy.

Briefly setting aside the question of what abortion advocates actually think about infanticide, let us imagine a world in which the slaughter of children—not fetuses in utero—is not only legal but mandatory. Such a world is the setting for “Pop Squad,” a 2006 short story by science fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi. A cinematic adaption has since appeared on the popular streaming service Netflix as an episode of Love, Death & Robots, an anthology series consisting of animated short films. As absurd as “Pop Squad” may seem, closer inspection reveals that its premise has already been taken for granted by much of modern society.

Following George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, “Pop Squad” continues the “banality of evil” trope by casting as its protagonist a bureaucratic enforcer of a ruthless regime. The film centers around Officer Briggs. He raids an apartment where the inhabitants are illegally raising children. In the original story, Briggs recounts with sheer disgust what he witnessed upon entry: “I squeeze my finger over my nose and breathe through my mouth, fighting off nausea… The shit smell thickens, eggy and humid. The nosecap barely holds it off. Old peas and bits of cereal crunch under my feet. They squish with the spaghetti, the geological layers of past feedings.” He discovers a “brood” of children from whom emanates an endless cacophony of “howls” and “shrieks.” The mother is dragged away, kicking and screaming, and Briggs aims his pistol, ready to “pop” the children. He pulls the trigger just as a boy offers him a green stuffed dinosaur.

Why are kids being put to death? Does the human race not need the little vermin to replenish itself? It turns out that affordable rejuvenation (“rejoo”) treatments enable individuals to live on indefinitely. Desperate to halt environmental degradation, the state has made rejoo mandatory, as it causes infertility. Any children born to people who refuse rejoo are summarily executed. In Briggs’ words, “we can’t keep letting people into this party if no one ever leaves.”

The scene cuts to Briggs’ self-driving police cruiser escaping the rundown neighborhood. It soars through the clouds and approaches a futuristic spire where Briggs attends a symphony. His romantic partner, Alice, performs a majestic solo. At a ceremony afterwards, Alice, described in the story as “perfectly slim” and “well curved,” remarks that she “can’t imagine stopping the rejoo treatment just like that.” “Why give all this up?”, she asks, standing atop a balcony outside the dazzling art deco concert hall, the city glimmering in the backdrop. “So not having kids seems a small price to pay for getting to live forever!” Briggs teases that he would marry Alice had they not been immortal. Alice, alluding to her upcoming rejoo session, responds that “if we weren’t gonna live forever, I’d let you get me pregnant.”

Intentional or not, Alice is a caricature of those who identify as DINKs, or “Dual Income, No Kids.” To quote one journalist, DINKs “present themselves as permanent adolescents with a lot more money and time to spend on themselves.” “We don’t have kids to feed, but we’ve got lots of money to spend on goodies,” says one woman in a TikTok video showing her and her husband purchasing $252.88 of mostly processed foods. For her, marriage appears to be a never-ending streak of fun dates: “You cannot tell me that grocery shopping and a fresh slice of Costco pizza isn’t a good date night.” Aside from perhaps a shared income, the marriage resembles a non-marital relationship, and just like Alice and Briggs, many DINKs are indeed unmarried and will never marry. If given access to rejoo, DINKs will no doubt choose it. For now, many make the most of their finite youth by sterilizing themselves.

Not all DINKs spend their childless lives going on Costco shopping trips. Alice, for one thing, spent 20 years (or 15 years in the story) perfecting her solo. Briggs recalls her practice routine: “[S]he practiced on the balcony, testing herself, working again and again against the limitations of her self. Disciplining her fingers and hands, forcing them to accept [the instructor’s] demands, the ones that years ago she had called impossible and which now run so cleanly through the audience.”

Historian Christopher Lasch observes that the elite in Western societies live a highly regimented lifestyle consisting of private schools, extracurriculars, and social events, all to inculcate delayed gratification. This attitude of command and control extends to the corporeal. In 2022, American households earning at least $125,000 a year spent over $200 billion on wellness-related products. “It is as though the white-collar class thinks of the body as a machine to be preserved and kept in perfect functioning condition, whether through prosthetic devices, rehabilitation, cosmetic surgery, or perpetual treatment.” They express “an impatience with biological constraints of any kind,…a belief that modern technology has liberated humanity from those constraints…”

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