This article explains why Population control is not as good a thing as people think it is. some excertps:
The Myth of Over population
Today the Cold War is over and the population bomb has proven to be a dud. The specter of famine was never more than that—a ghostly phantom receding on the horizon. The number of people in the world currently stands at 5.9 billion, far below the 8 to 12 billion that Stein Bie, head researcher for the Food and Agriculture Organization, recently estimated the earth can easily support using existing agricultural technology.4 Food shortages occur in war zones—as in the Sudan—or in socialist economies—as in North Korea—but massive famines resulting from crop failure are a thing of the past.
Moreover, as noted above, world population growth is slowing dramatically. Demographers are now agreed that the population of the world will never double again.5 Based on our review of U.N. Population Division figures, we at the Population Research Institute expect that global population will peak at seven billion or so in 2030, then begin a long decline.6
The reason for the coming depopulation is shrinking family size. The Census Bureau reports that the world's totally fertility rate (TFR)—the number of children born per woman during her reproductive lifetime—has declined to 2.9, its lowest level ever. As recently as 1985 the worldwide TFR was 4.2. In many countries, couples commonly stop at one or two children. There are now 79 countries—representing 40% of the world's population—with fertility rates below the 2.2 needed to sustain their present numbers. The developed nations have been hit the hardest. Fifteen of them, including Russia, Germany and Italy, already fill more coffins than cradles each year. But this "birth dearth," as Ben Wattenberg has called it, has now spread well beyond the developed world. There are now 27 "developing" countries where women are averaging fewer than 2.2. children, including such unlikely nations as Sri Lanka and Thailand. While the population of portions of Africa, Asia and Latin America will continue to grow for several more decades, the rest of the world will soon be in a demographic free fall.
If the human face of this population implosion is melancholy—villages bereft of children, schools closed for lack of students—the economic consequences are nothing short of grim: Labor shortages cramp production, the housing market grows moribund, and this in turn creates a drag on real estate and other sectors of the economy. One wonders how much of Japan's current economic malaise can be directly traced to insufficient numbers of young people to power the economy?
Humanity's long-term problem, it now seems, is not going to be too many children, but too few: Too few children to fill the schools and universities, too few young people entering the work force, too few couples buying homes and second cars. In short, too few consumers and producers to drive the economy forward. The imploding markets of Europe and the economic sluggishness of Japan will spread soon enough to the U.S. and the rest of the world. All this prompts a pragmatic question: Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on contraception, sterilizations, and abortion that will only bring that day closer?
Population Control Violates the Rights of Women and Couples
Population control advocates have been quick to claim credit for falling birthrates—and to ask for more billions to finish the job. But anyone who has seen the checkered path of "family planning" programs in the developing world finds it hard to take their claim—or request for additional funds—seriously.
Something over two-thirds of the world's fertility decline can be accounted for by simple modernity, as women marry later, have greater educational opportunities and work outside the home. The only population-control programs that have enjoyed conspicuous success have relied on the more or less compulsory sterilization of large numbers of women. The most notorious example is China, where for two decades the government has mandated the insertion of intrauterine devices after one child, sterilization after two children, and abortion for those pregnant without permission.
But the use of coercion in family-planning programs is not unique to China. The Population Research Institute has documented abuses in 37 different countries, most recently in Peru, where for the past two years a sterilization campaign has run roughshod over the people of that country.
Coercion takes various forms. First, there are repeated visits to the homes of holdouts. As one woman remarked, the workers came "day and night, day and night, day and night" to urge her to be sterilized. Bribes and threats are also employed. Hungry women are offered the opportunity to participate in food programs, including programs supported by the United States, if they agree to sterilization. Women already participating in food programs have been threatened with expulsion.
Rural women report that no mention is made of sterilization's health risks. Nor are they given the opportunity to choose alternative methods of family planning; in fact, Natural Family Planning is actively discouraged. There have even been sterilizations performed on women without their consent, often during the course of other medical procedures. Victoria Espinoza of Piura has testified before a U.S. congressional committee that doctors at a government hospital told her she was sterilized—without warning or permission—during a Caesarean delivery. Her baby later died. She can have no others.
Dr. Motta attempts to defend the pressure tactics. "If the Ministry of Health did not do the campaign house-to-house people would not come," he asserts. As far as the repeat visits are concerned, "It was a doctor's responsibility to convince the patient into doing what was best and having [a tubal ligation]. Women in Peru have many children
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