Q: Do we have to stop having sex?
Sex is the way most babies are started, but is sexual intercourse really the primary cause of human reproduction? Let's consider the statistics:
The World Health Organization estimates that 100 million couples engage in sexual intercourse on an average day, which is only 3.3% of the world's six billion humans. This pitifully low amount of love-making results in around 910,000 pregnancies, thanks in part to contraceptives and sterility. For a variety of reasons, 55% of these zygotes don't make it through fetushood to live birth. According to a current U.S. Census Bureau estimate, 359,000 do make it daily.
So, less than 0.4% of each day's heterosexual trysts result in the creation of new humans -- a statistically insignificant correlation for proving causation. In fact, it rounds to zero.
Try it for yourself. Estimate how many times you've engaged in sexual activity in your lifetime. Now estimate how many times you were trying to make a baby. Divide the little number by the big number to give you the percent of times sex and procreation have simultaneously motivated you.
Perhaps if there were more opportunities for sexual gratification, so many people wouldn't feel the need to fill a nagging emptiness with a needy dependent.
[Please note: the above shows how statistics may be manipulated. If we approach the equation from the other end, more than 99% of us were started by sexual intercourse.]
Q: What's wrong with babies? Don't you like babies? VHEMT Volunteers love babies as much as anyone else. "Having babies" is not so much the problem -- having adults is what's causing the problems. The environmental impact of disposable diapers is heavy, but we are adults much longer than we are children.
People who envision having a baby often forget that they are creating an entirely new human being who will leave in a few years as an adult.
Youth is a wonderful phase of life, whether it's people, panda, or panther. It's sad to imagine there being no more of any of them. A baby condor may not be as cute as a baby human, but we must choose to forego one if the others are to survive.
Children's welfare will improve as there are fewer of them to care for. Considering the future world we are creating for future generations, procreation today is like renting rooms in a burning building -- renting them to our children no less.
Choosing to refrain from producing another person demonstrates a profound love for all life.
Q: What about our right to breed? Could VHEMT eventually lead to coercion?
While we righteously argue against coercive methods to improve birth rates, let's keep in mind that coercion is already with us. Reproductive rights are not universally respected, so we already have coercion and involuntary population control. Hundreds of millions of couples want to avoid conceptions, and are denied this right. Where is the outrage at this coercion?
Advocates of coerced contraception are vilified as "ecofascists," while advocates of coerced births are respectfully called "pro-life".
When breeding is an unquestioned right, we are also guaranteeing the right to breed slave labor, and to sentence someone to life in a rapidly deteriorating environment. A solid case could be made that procreation today is de facto child abuse.
Eighty million unwanted conceptions occur each year. 50 million of those are not carried to full term, and 78 to 80 thousand women die from complications of unsafe abortions as a result -- an outrageous denial of basic human right:s. Each year, roughly 30 million people are denied their right to not be born into a family that doesn't want them.
Those of us who love freedom, and who realize that none are free as long as anyone is oppressed, will continue to promote universal reproductive freedom and responsibility.
Seems as if our entire industrialized civilization is one big suicide cult. The symptoms surround us.
We propel our bodies about in fragile metal boxes, at potentially fatal speeds, without much care or reason.
We ingest so much poison that meat from our bones wouldn't meet government standards for pork.
We pull strands from the web of life, jump up and down on it, and expect it to hold our ever-increasing weight. Few notice there's no safety net.
Instead, we could be embracing life: voluntary human extinction offers a healthy cure for humanity's collective death wish.
"The destruction which has overtaken a number of civilizations in the past has never been the work of any external agency, but has always been in the nature of an act of suicide." ~Arnold Toynbee
A Study of History 1949
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