Singapore Changes Its Tune: “Stop at Two” Now Raps “Make a Baby Tonight”

Poster from Singapore's Anti-Child Ad Campaign. Bad Government Policy is Hard to Reverse.

Reader advisory: the following is rated PG-13

Today is the anniversary of Singapore’s independence, and they’re celebrating by urging citizens to make a baby. With headlines like “Thursday’s the Day to Go All the Way for Civic Duty in Singapore,” and a new commercial rap video produced by Mentos to “Get Your National Night On,” Singapore is fighting a battle with one of the lowest birth rates in the world.

What a difference 40 years make.

In the 1960s and ’70s, Singapore’s government was in the forefront of Malthusian fears (flavored with eugenics), with a population control campaign for residents—especially low-income and less-educated—to Stop at Two and then get sterilized (at right).

China just might want to take notice.

Oh, and we might want to take notice, too: is the Obamacare contraception mandate, rolled out August 1, a bit of the same?

Maybe we ought to take a lesson from Singapore and reconsider: Big Brother doesn’t know best, and such decisions are best left to families.

What a rad concept.

Here’s the video, now going viral:

Mary L. G. Theroux is Senior Vice President of the Independent Institute. Having received her A.B. in economics from Stanford University, she is Managing Director of Lightning Ventures, L.P., a San Francisco Bay Area investment firm, former Chairman of the Board of Advisors for the Salvation Army of both San Francisco and Alameda County, and Vice President of the C.S. Lewis Society of California.
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