Population Control Final

WORLD POPULATION Zofia Javed World population would not be a problem if there were unlimited land, unlimited water, and unlimited resources! Unfortunately, with overpopulation, there is the problem of sharing the same sized pie with smaller and smaller portions. People in developed countries who have been accustomed to a better quality of life are reluctant to give it up. In many cases, more efficient use of resources has come along hand-in-hand with improved quality of life. But there are still problems of over consumption, exploitation, the short-sighted search for an ever-higher quality of life. This is a difficult subject. Should people have fewer children or should people use fewer resources? Or both? Should one problem have priority over the other? World population is currently growing by approximately 75 million people per year. Who has contributed the most to over consumption of resources? The more developed nations with a relatively stable population growth and who use almost 50 times the resources of the poor, or the less developed nations whose populations will double again in 30 years, who will run out of food and water first, and whose population will only worsen with the increase of population? And then there is the question of ownership and distribution of resources, do the rich exploit the poor, and to what extent? Human life should always be treated as precious and special. So how is it that there are too many of us? As it has been said, this is a difficult subject. There is a delicate balance here: we want the poor countries to improve their economic situation and to improve the family's quality of life. This can be done to lower the birth rate. But we want the rich countries to consume less, perhaps lower the quality of their life. We need to balance the quality of life between the rich and the poor, at the same time, hoping to balance the family size between the rich and the poor.

For many years now, the worst population control program has been in China. The Chinese government decided to reduce population with an official policy of permitting only one child per family. The Chinese family policy used forced abortion, forced sterilization and forced insertion of IUDs (Contraceptives). Family planning workers used to monitor menstrual periods for the women in their assigned areas or workplaces, and inquired when a woman missed her period. Population control opponents however believe that population control poses a serious threat to women’s rights. Women should be allowed to have the choice of reproduction and to resist childbearing when they must. This is one of the basic human rights. If overpopulation must be controlled then it should be slowed or stopped by improving the woman’s life by educating her and creating awareness, NOT by abortion. ( http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap15.html) Proponents(supporters) of population control argue that they, too, have human rights in mind, but they put less emphasis on the rights of individuals and more on the well-being of the global community. It is important that people have control over their bodies and their families, but when extra bodies mean extra drain on common resources they are reaching beyond their rights. It should be kept in mind that our resources are limited whereas the population is not. It is true that we don't distribute the food or the wealth properly in this world but the point is that with every billion people that are added to the world's population, nearly half will either starve or be seriously malnourished. The problem is that the ones who seem to be following the “population control is violating human rights” idea are the ones in the developing countries, and that is a pure catastrophe. It's all well and good to talk about children as blessings, and they surely are, but if you aren't prepared to help to implement a system by which these blessings are fed and nurtured properly, then we may just be supporting the “culture of death” rather than the “culture of life”. The highest urban and rural growth takes place in some of the poorest countries around the world. Take Ethiopia for example, where bad economic policies have led to a lack of

education, food, health care and birth control. An Ethiopian, who has an average annual income of $180, cannot afford $40 for birth control pills. In other words, overpopulation creates poverty but poverty, in turn, contributes to overpopulation. Unfortunately, population growth continues to outstrip food availability in many countries. However, it is seen that nature has its own ways of keeping population under control. Huge tsunamis, severe earthquakes and disastrous epidemics sweep the population off the face of the earth. Millions of people die in natural disasters or manmade wars. Then how is it that people need to come up with population control schemes for the requirement of food to be satisfied when so many disasters are already contributing in the population control? The global economy produces enough food to feed 6 billion people in this world and even more, if it were distributed equitably. However, this food is not readily available to many millions of people. Some countries produce more food than they need for domestic use, while others do not produce enough to assure access to an adequate diet for all of their people. The fact is that developed countries do not want to give up their super doper lifestyle. They rather want to stay in their homes and criticize the governments of underdeveloped nations for not taking proper actions against overpopulation instead of cutting short their expenses, dining out every other day.

• •

40 percent of deaths worldwide are due to water, air and soil pollution Malnutrition afflicts 57 percent of the world population and kills 6 million children every year.

Bibliography: http://www.overpopulation-in-asia.com/ http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_c/mod14/uncom14t01bod.htm# http://overpopulation.org/solutions.html http://guatemala.takingitglobal.org/express/panorama/article.html?ContentID=16319 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3503

Reference: http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap15.html http://studentwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~j_dewitt/human_rights_debate.htm http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=88235 http://environment.about.com/od/healthenvironment/a/malnutrition.htm http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/child-malnutrition/childhood-malnutrition-bycountry-asia/