Hey, did you hear the one about the woman who aborted her kid so she could save the planet?

That's no joke, but Darwin must be chuckling somewhere.

Toni Vernelli was one of two women recently featured in a London Daily Mail story about environmentalists who take their carbon footprint very, very seriously.

So seriously, in fact, that Vernelli aborted a pregnancy and, by age 27, had herself sterilized. Baby-making, she says, is "selfish" and "all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet."

Because Toni and her husband, Ed, are childless and vegan, they say they can justify one long-haul airplane trip per year and still remain carbon neutral.

Sarah Irving is another like-minded nature-nurturer. She and fiance Mark Hudson decided on him having a vasectomy to prevent the possibility of an inconvenient life interfering with their carbon-perfect ones.

Those of us who have managed to see a pregnancy through to birth recognize the irony of these tales.

If we're not saving the planet for our kids, for whom are we saving it? After we're all sterilized and aborted, who's going to appreciate the fact that global warming is, by golly, under control? Who's going to live to tell the tale?

Tell me: When was the last time you read a good book by a polar bear?

Human beings may unconsciously wish to maintain their genetic line, but that's not the reason most people have children. OK, most of us have children because we get pregnant. But otherwise, the planet -- glorious as it is -- is simply not that much fun with no one around.

The authors of the newspaper story seemed to have a sense of something gone awry, but I don't share their nostalgia for "innocent eyes gazing up ... with unconditional love" and "a little hand slipping into hers -- and a voice calling her Mummy."

Those little pleasures are for all to cherish in their own private moments. Please.

What I'm nostalgic for is sanity.

The couples who choose abortion and sterilization may not save the planet, but they're saving the gene pool a mess o' trouble by purging their own from the mix. The Darwin Awards folks, who honor those who improve the species by accidentally removing themselves from it, will have to create a new category: Continued...