Overpopulation
October 12, 1999 marks the day when the world's population supposedly reached six billion. Many humanitarians and ecologists worry that soon the planet's population will become too big for our food production and resources to support. With the current population growth rate, the total population in the year 2050 is estimated to be between 7.3 and 10.7 billion (Kluger, "The Big Crunch" 47). Soon the Congress of the United States will vote on whether to restore $60 million of U.S. taxpayer funding over the next two years for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The United Nations Population Fund, for the past 30 years, has been involved with "brutal population control programs" such as China's genocidal one-couple, one-child policy. However, using taxpayer money to fund these programs is a total waste of time, money, and energy. The world is not overpopulated; thus, population control is unnecessary, it is also unethical and anti-religious beliefs.
Population control presents several problems for a country. The Philippines, for example, has an "artificial" birth control program, instated by the government and funded by UNFPA. The people of the Philippines, consisting mainly of Catholics and Muslims, are taxed to pay for this program. Because of its nature, contraception must be paid for every year, in increasing amounts. "Over 20 years from 1970 to 1990, it has cost our people over three billion pesos (P3,000,000,000), but has not significantly achieved its self-assigned goals of reducing poverty or improving quality of life." This is because artificial contraception is incapable of accomplishing those goals. "It is powerless in removing the yoke of poverty from our people. It is impotent in improving the lot of victims of economic inequity, which is the real cause of poverty," says Antonio B. de los Reyes (http://www.pop.org/students/cbreyes.html).
Contraception, a mild form of population control, goes against the grain of Filipinos, who traditionally respect life, and see children not only as resources for production, nor only as means of security for the future, but also as blessings from God and expressions of gratitude to Him. American propaganda and aid policy have portrayed this pro-life orientation as "anti-development", and the contraceptive establishment has gradually infiltrated into Filipino minds fewer children mean more happiness. Yet the impotence of past national governments in mobilizing the people's labor resources, and its squandering of the nation's capital assets, were the real problems.
Tropes regarding Puerto Rico and the Third World generally conflated the global south with overpopulation: “Overpopulation provided a sociological explanation for Third World poverty, one that denied a role for international capitalism or colonialism in producing these conditions.” Similar fears surfaced in Puerto Rico, helping to enable large pharmaceutical companies to invest in and develop the birth control pill. As Briggs argues, fears of overpopulation created the ethical space to justify such experimentation: “Reproductive research produced the pill as a specific technological fix to the Third World problem of overpopulation. In doing so, it rendered the account of overpopulation as more plausible by associating it with science and technological solutions at the height of the Cold War belief in
In Indonesia, for instance, The Agency for International Development (AID) reported that the Indonesian family planning program d...
In this mind baffling speech by Margaret Sanger, she explains the importance of attaining birth control as a female. She believes that “birth control should be available to every adult man and woman” (The Morality of Birth Control). In her opinion, every person over 18 should at least obtain knowledge of it, and try to practice it as much as possible. “Not only will birth control reduce the rate of disease and famine, it will also help heighten the standards of civilization towards teen pregnancy and child abortion” (Population Growth and Resource Depletion). Only then will people attain real morality.
In this world where people can acquire anything they need or want, we have to wonder, “Is the government controlling us?” Both the governments in A Brave New World and in the United States of America offer birth control pills and have abortion clinics that are available for everyone, thus making birth control pills and abortion operations very easy to acquire. Although both governments offer birth control pills and abortion clinics, A Brave New World’s government requires everyone to take the pills and immediately get an abortion when pregnant. This in turn shows us that A Brave New World’s government is controlling the population and the development of children. China is one of the few countries that currently have control of the development of children. In controlling the development of its children, China is also controlling the population levels. In any country, controlling the amount of children a single family can have can dramatically decrease the population levels. Just by having birth control pills and abortion clinics there for anybody to take advantage of shows that the involvement of either government is already too high.
Population expansion has been a serious problem to the human society for a long time because the resources and spaces of the Earth are limited. China, as the third largest country in the world, has one fifth of the world population. Chinese people used to believe that a larger population meant a stronger country. Therefore, from 1962 to 1980, which is the China’s baby boom, the population of China grew from 665 million to 981 million. The sharp population increase brought a series of problems, like environmental pollution, traffic congestion and shortage of water and food supplies. To reduce the population growth rate, in 1979, the Chinese government implemented the famous One-child Policy. This policy was planned as a short-term program, but it is still in use till now because of the successful prevention of about 400 million births. Meanwhile, the One-child Policy has been judged as a violation of human rights and a demographic disaster which brings gender imbalance, aging of the population and manpower shortage. On one hand, it truly lowers the birth rate and population growth rate of China. However, on the other hand, the One-child Policy has already done harm for the Chinese society. Although this policy seems to be undermining the right of procreation of millions of Chinese women, it is still the worst good idea that the Chinese government could have to keep the population down.
The first country to adopt a population control policy was India, though that did not stop the country from passing the 1 billion mark. In 1952, 6.5 million rupees were made available to conduct studies in fertility and family planning (Samuel, 54). For the first five years (1952-1956), the Indian Government was not sure what to do with the information and the population continued to grow at a rate of two per cent per year. After 1962, the Indian Government decided to limit the size of families, yet did not have to put effort into persuading the people to favor the idea. However, the people lacked a serious motivation to limit their procreation (Samuel, 56). India's population continued to grow. Contraceptives were also introduced, yet even after the education of the people, they went unused. The women were not given a choice when it came to reproduction. The men did not want to use the contraceptives, and they could not be forced by their partners. It was said that without an improved standard of living and improved education, ...
Educating the public about the importance of family planning is essential to reduce rapidly increasing birth rates. Human demographics have a profound effect on the population dynamics in both developed and developing nations. In more developed nations, there are significantly lower birth and death rates (Schneider). This would mean that the labor force of these nations is greatly limited. There is a risk of a bigger percentage of the elderly compared to the young generation. A higher older population undermines productivity, thereby inhibiting economic growth. In less developed nations, birth and death rates are high. Their economies struggle to maintain this high population. There is over-reliance on foreign aid. Labor is often transferred to the developed nations. The future of these nations is quite unpredictable (Das
Following a thirty five year policy which was geared towards improving economic and social concerns within the region, the Peoples Republic of China has begun to facilitate its family planning regulations. Prior to the establishment of China’s population policy, the population experienced massive increases and decreases of its magnitude. Consequences of civil and global wars before 1949 led to high death rates in the country. As country conflict came to an end, and new leadership, population growth was greatly encouraged by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. During this time, the size of Chinas population grew subs...
The world’s population is rising rapidly from seven billion to the estimated nine billion in 2050 (Ellis, Overpopulation is Not the Problem). Every human being adds stress to the Earth’s resources. Numerous places like Africa and China maintain a copious amount starvation and poverty. There are days when people go without food, water, or shelter. There is even such happening in the United States. In such places, it is difficult to find contraception, or birth control, which leads to unplanned pregnancies. These situations are rooted down to overpopulation, which is when there are too many humans. However, there is a multitude of ways to reverse such negative effects. Population control is a necessary act that will benefit the world through sparing natural resources, decreasing famine, and controlling unplanned pregnancies. A worldwide effort would have to take effect in order for a successful future.
Population growth in this world is a major problem today. Population is increasing by 150 people per minute. This is starting to become a major problem because countries are lacking the necessities to balance development and consumption. This overpopulation in China was caused by the excessive amount of birth rates and decreasing number of deaths. Significant increase in population led to a considerably difficult problems of employment and shortage of resources and money. As for the government’s involvement regarding the Family Planning Policy; this law placed high strains on the family planning departments in the government. They had to completely change their ideas and ways of functioning to regulate the new rules that follow this law.
In a recent article, 21 bodies of babies were found thrown into a river. It was believed that the bodies were dumped by the hospitals (Associated Press, 2010). Labeled as medical wastes, it is indeed a fact that this policy has caused numerous unnecessary and innocent deaths. Little ones are a precious and irreplaceable gifts from God and it is not human beings right to end the lives of these priceless gifts. In conclusion, the one child policy is a very good method in controlling overpopulation. Although it may seem like a good plan but many ethical and human rights and beliefs are violated in the process. Couples should have the liberty to have as many children as they want. Hence, a better management by the government on this issue must be made.
While the world has issues with immigration, health care, drugs, gun control, taxes, and so on going on in the world we forget to think about the fact that our world is facing an issue as impractical as population growth. The idea that having a child will create issues for a country is odd, but it is the case for many countries, including the United States of America. “The U.S. is the third most populous country in the world and has the highest population growth rate of all developed countries,” ( Chamie 1) to further analyze this issue to put it in perspective of the global issue it actual is by comparing the United States current issue with population growth to the population growth issue in China.
The United Nations projects that the global population, currently at 6 billion, will peak at about 10 billion in the next century and then stabilize or even decline; can our plan...
...he second way to attempt to decrease the population is through increased active family planning programs. Especially in poor countries, it is a lot harder for women just to jump into the work force, and even harder for a poor country to become industrialized. For example, in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, birth rates have decreased from seven children per family to only 5.5. This is largely because forty percent of Bangladesh's woman now take part in some form of family planning.
Nowadays a prime example of one such policy is the past one child policy in China. Overpopulation has been an issue in China and the Chinese government has executed their own solution on this issue. The usefulness of the one child policy has been debated but data shows that it has in fact decreased the population during the time it was active. Birth control policies might be a viable solution to the current crisis of overpopulation but many argue that it would be unethical. The situation of China’s overpopulation can be very different from the US situation as well. The American people have much more control with their own personal liberty laws and many argued that a policy that restricts the amount of children our families can have would violate our human right to reproduce. However, birth control policies are not the only