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Population Control Essay INTRODUCTION The myth of overpopulation is one of the most pervasive myths in Western society, so deeply ingrained in the culture that it profoundly shapes the cultures world view. The myth is compelling because of its simplicity. More people equal fewer resources and more hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, and political instability. This equation helps explain away the troubling human suffering in that ‘other’ world beyond the neat borders of affluence. By procreating, the poor create their own poverty. We are absolved of responsibility and freed from complexity. The population issue is complex. Hartmann (1995) asserts that to put it into proper perspective requires exploring many realms of human experience and addressing difficult philosophical and ethical questions. It entails making connections between fields of thought that have become disconnected as the result of narrow academic specialization. It demands the sharpening of critical facilities and clearing the mind of received orthodoxies. And above all, it involves transcending the alienation embodied in the very terms ‘population bomb’ and ‘population explosion’. Such metaphors suggest destructive technological processes outside human control. But the population issue is about living people, not abstract statistics. PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH POPULATION CONTROL The myth of overpopulation is destructive because it prevents constructive thinking and action on reproductive issues. Instead of clarifying our understanding of these issues, it obfuscates our vision and limits-our ability to see the real problems and find workable solutions. Worst of all, it breeds racism and turns womens bodies into a political battlefield. It is a philosophy based on fear, not understanding. Now this picture both the population predictions and the social predictions are challenged by those who argue especially against compulsory population controls. It is argued that we do not have accurate figures showing the number of people now existing in the world, that we have no reliable way of forecasting future population growth, that there is no acceptable standard prescribing optimum population size, and that although the pressures of population may contribute to some social ills, they are not the primary cause of them. Those who respond to the population problem in this way point the finger in other causal directions to account for environmental decay to our economic system, which encourages environmental destruction, to our technology which is responsible for high-polluting individualized transportation, and to our minimal emphasis on public or mass transit and so on. They also point to the fact that some nutrition experts give us assurance that food resources exist which would permit the feeding of the worlds population even if it doubled. ALLEVIATING SOCIAL ILLS THROUGH POPULATION CONTROL The point is, this argument continues, that a number of voluntary moves can be undertaken to mitigate whatever causal influences population growth has on our social ills. We can produce more food, redistribute people, provide meaningful jobs for women outside the home, provide family planning programs, contraceptive information and services, early abortions, voluntary sterilization, and so on. Anything short of government coercion. Anything short of violating or overriding what is taken to be a fundamental moral and constitutional right the right to procreate and to have as many children as one wants. Gordon (2002) relates in her book that population control measures would alleviate certain local pockets of poverty, as population excess was relative, not just to the means of subsistence, but also to the system of control over the means of subsistence. In the same light, population control has always been closely associated with economic, moral and feminist issues in the United States. Many had also become aware that development by itself was not a magical solution to rapid population growth. The idea of social reform in early twentieth-century America was embedded in the larger understanding that scientific principles could and should be applied in an effort to alleviate social ills. The great social ills we face today: poverty, war, hunger, disease and ecological degradation are clearly rooted from the sheer effects of population excess to the global situation, which is why the direct solution to the problem, which is population control, is the first and most potent step to take towards lessening the evil impacts of said social ills to the global community. Although many critics claim that overpopulation has been the famous scapegoat for society’s ills, the fact that population could be controlled to a manageable degree could and would facilitate a general ease in the social inequalities being experienced by the world over due to the scarcity of resources available to the privileged few who has the means and the power to be in charge of the distribution or even the consumption of such scant resources. The growth of population very rapid in the less-developed countries, but not negligible in most developed countries, either will continue to compound the predicament by increasing pressure on resources, on the environment, and on human institutions. Rapid expansion of old technologies and the hasty deployment of new ones, stimulated by the pressure of more people wanting more goods and services per person, will surely lead to some major mistakes actions whose environmental or social impacts erode well-being far more than their economic results enhance it. This gloomy prognosis, to which a growing number of scholars and other observers reluctantly subscribes, has motivated a host of proposals for organized evasive action: population control, limitation of material consumption, redistribution of wealth, transitions to technologies that are environmentally and socially less disruptive than todays, and movement toward some kind of world government, among others. Implementation of such action would itself have some significant economic and social costs, and it would require an unprecedented international consensus and exercise of public will to succeed. Throughout its history, the emphasis and primary concern of the population control movement has been the welfare of the family; it has stressed the economic, educational, and health advantages of well-spaced, limited numbers of children. Population control cannot be achieved in a social or economic vacuum, of course. To formulate effective population control measures, much greater understanding is needed about all peoples attitudes toward reproduction, and how these attitudes are affected by various living conditions, including some that seem virtually intolerable to people in developed countries. Even more, it is essential to know what influences and conditions will lead to changes in attitudes in favor of smaller families. OUTLINE INTRODUCTION PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH POPULATION CONTROL ALLEVIATING SOCIAL ILLS THROUGH POPULATION CONTROL WORKS CITED Hartmann, B. (1995). Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. Gordon, L. (2002). The Moral Property of Women: The History of Birth Control Politics in America. Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.