Population Control: The Anti-Birth Lobby
PEOPLE hate other people’s children:
As for “population policy”, the sanest response is not to have one. The only humane approach is to let each family, in every country, choose its own fertility rate according to their own desires and concerns for the future. Forget about “national birth rates”: every family is different. Even within nations there is – and should be – no such thing as a “norm”. Some people will want to have only one child – or none at all. Let them. Others, despite the easy availability of contraception, will want a home tumbling with children. Let them. The alternative is tyranny and torment.
Other people’s chidlren are horrid…
May 20th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Unfortunately some people also hate their own children, or at least they hate them enough to ensure that only those of a favoured gender are born; with or without population control measures.
So at what point does social intervention become justifiable?
Back in 2006 The Lancet reported that there had been 10 million “missing female births” in India in the past 20 years.
By “missing,” that meant females who were aborted.
The practice has nothing to do with state-enforced norms and everything to do with the personal desires of the parents.
Dominic Lawson carefully avoids even admitting the existence of the half a million female foetuses aborted in India each year.
But then he has to, since admitting it would destroy his Arcadian vision of a world in which the invisible hand would take care of everything…
May 20th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
The statement “the sanest population policy is not to have one” is the exact opposite of truth. Not having a population policy is what has put mankind on the rapid road to the destruction of his own environment.
As to hating children, actions speak louder than words, and the most damaging thing one can do to the welfare of future children is to conceive many of your own. This is the one single most destructive act most of us could possibly do to the future environment. Each child will produce many tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, and consume many tons of resources even under the “greenest” lifestyle, to say nothing of the additional children conceived in successive generations.
Does the writer consider it a terrible imposition on his freedom to have to submit to a licensure exam for driving, or a speed limit, or to pay for goods and services, rather than merely taking them? Is it such a big imposition to avoid injury to others, or to their environment, or that of future generations?
Which is more important, the freedom to reproduce at will, or having clean water to drink, and non-pollluted air to breathe, adequate food and shelter?