"Let's clean up our environment. Let's clean up our bodies, but most importantly, let's not permit our babies of the future to be polluted before they are even born"
About this Quote
The line lands like a public-health slogan, but its real engine is moral urgency. Louise Slaughter isn’t just urging recycling or better diets; she’s reframing pollution as an intimate, bodily violation that begins before anyone can consent. By pairing “our environment” with “our bodies,” she collapses the comforting boundary between “out there” ecological damage and “in here” personal wellness. It’s a rhetorical move politicians reach for when the policy details are complex: make the threat feel close, immediate, and nonpartisan.
The sharpest turn is “most importantly,” which elevates prenatal exposure above every other concern. That isn’t accidental. It taps a deeply American political pressure point: protecting babies. The phrase “babies of the future” widens the moral circle to include people who can’t vote, can’t speak, and can’t be blamed for their own risk factors. “Polluted before they are even born” suggests contamination in utero, a subtle nod to endocrine disruptors, toxic chemicals, and environmental justice arguments about who bears the cost of industrial convenience.
The subtext is accountability. “Let’s not permit” casts pollution as a choice society is making, not an unfortunate byproduct of modern life. That verb implies regulators, corporate actors, and lawmakers have their hands on the switch. Coming from Slaughter, a legislator associated with public health and chemical safety concerns, the context reads as an argument for stronger oversight: if harm is happening at the starting line of life, incrementalism starts to look like complicity.
The sharpest turn is “most importantly,” which elevates prenatal exposure above every other concern. That isn’t accidental. It taps a deeply American political pressure point: protecting babies. The phrase “babies of the future” widens the moral circle to include people who can’t vote, can’t speak, and can’t be blamed for their own risk factors. “Polluted before they are even born” suggests contamination in utero, a subtle nod to endocrine disruptors, toxic chemicals, and environmental justice arguments about who bears the cost of industrial convenience.
The subtext is accountability. “Let’s not permit” casts pollution as a choice society is making, not an unfortunate byproduct of modern life. That verb implies regulators, corporate actors, and lawmakers have their hands on the switch. Coming from Slaughter, a legislator associated with public health and chemical safety concerns, the context reads as an argument for stronger oversight: if harm is happening at the starting line of life, incrementalism starts to look like complicity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Health |
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