I recently acquired two pet goldfish. One?sleek and beautiful with enormous eyes and shiny black scales?I named Oprah.

My boyfriend named the other one Jesus. Fat, spotted and a bit psychotic, there was nothing holy or beautiful about that fish. However, we quickly learned that those were not the only reasons why “Jesus” would be an inappropriate name.

Oprah, who turned out to be a boy, knocked-up Jesus (or now, Jessica?).

If you’ve never seen goldfish eggs, the fertilized ones look like tiny bubbles with black clumps in their centers. I had certainly never seen goldfish eggs, and by the time I realized what they were, the proud parents had devoured the majority of them.

I rescued as many of the eggs as possible, but in the end, I turned out to be a failure as a fish mommy.

I was pondering my failed attempts at goldfish husbandry Monday morning when I noticed the field of Popsicle-stick crosses that had taken over the grassy mounds in the free-speech area behind the Union.

Students from the Catholic Newman Center planted more than 3,000 of the miniature grave markers Sunday night in recognition of “Respect Life Month.” Each cross represented about 32 abortions carried out per month in the United States, for a total nearing 100,000.

Thinking about the similar fates of my goldfish eggs and so many human embryos, I began to ponder the dynamics of life?specifically, I thought of evolution.

If ever there was a man who respected life it was Charles Darwin. He dissected it, analyzed it and philosophized over it so much that almost everything we know about life today bears some trace of Darwinian influence.

The most satisfying thing about Darwin’s ideas is that their entire purpose is to answer questions.

Why do finches on one side of an island have different beaks than finches on the other side? Because beak shape adapts to diet, which varies with position on the island. Natural selection favors characteristics that contribute to a species’ ability to sustain itself and multiply.

A good beak shape means well fed finches that have more time to spend multiplying.

This analysis, while satisfying when applied to finches, seemed to fail when I used it on my recent observations.

If the purpose of life is to contribute to the gene pool, then why would goldfish eat their own eggs? More importantly, why would humans want to destroy their own embryos?

From an evolutionary perspective, “Respect Life Week” makes a lot of sense. A society that suspends 100,000 new lives every month does not appear to be very concerned with multiplying.

Of course, on a planet with more humans than you can shake six billion sticks at, reproduction isn’t our biggest concern.

What about the goal of furthering our own genes?

According to Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, all individuals instinctively strive to spread their genetic material as far as possible.

From this perspective, evolutionary success is defined by the ability to create many generations resembling yourself, which makes the human (and pet goldfish) behavior of preventing reproduction even more confounding.

My explanation for the goldfish is that they are stupid. Because their lives consist of swimming, eating and pooping, goldfish gain no advantage by being extra smart, and thus evolution has done little for their intelligence.

The fish don’t know they are eating their own babies. Their natural behavior is to constantly pick at things, and when their human captors only feed them a few times a day, the fish have nothing to pick at but their own eggs.

Interestingly, goldfish only suffer from their stupidity when humans intervene in their lives.

The irony of humans is that evolution has made us smart enough to be able to construct an artificial environment for ourselves in which evolution does not seem to apply.

Take, for example, the feminine ideal embraced by American society.

If I am to embody the ideal, I should become well educated, strive for a career in the highest ranks of the professional world, have a lot of money, be extremely thin and be extremely beautiful.

Well, if I want to be extremely thin, childbirth should be the last thing on my mind. Also, if I do have a child, I will essentially have to hire a full-time caretaker for it because I will need to spend all of my available time advancing my career.

Food, clothes, toys, a nanny and a college education are very expensive. If I really want to be rich, I probably shouldn’t have kids at all.

Ironically, our society, which could not exist if women didn’t have children, seems to overwhelmingly advocate that women don’t have children.

Women who have proven themselves to be close to the ideal don’t have time to be mothers, but women who sacrifice their own success to have children will never be identified as successful.

If we lived in a society of pigs or cats or three-toed sloths, we would all admire each other for the number of our offspring.

Being humans, however, we only admire one another for the numbers in our bank accounts.

Perhaps this analysis can give us clues into why abortions happen in our world. From an evolutionary perspective, they make no sense.

There are plenty of resources in this country with which to support a new child?so why not let your genes multiply? Sometimes you just have to do unnatural things to get along in an unnatural world.

Abortion may not show respect for life, but it is the product of the same intelligence that allowed humans to split the atom and fly to the moon.

Hate it if you want, but the day we will see abortion eradicated from our world is the day when we all turn into three-toed sloths.

Ashley welcomes feedback at: [email protected] or send letters to: [email protected].