G
Guns Guns Guns
Guest
What if there were a solution to many of the global problems that confront us?
There is.
It’s called family planning.
It took humans hundreds of thousands of years, until the year 1804, to reach the first billion.
It took another 123 years to reach two billion, in 1927.
Since then, we’ve been passing these milestones like billboards along a highway. The latest billion took just a dozen years.
In 1999, the United Nations’ best projection was that the world wouldn’t pass seven billion until 2013, but we reached it two years early.
Likewise, in 1999, the U.N. estimated that the world population in 2050 would be 8.9 billion, but now it projects 9.3 billion.
What’s the impact of overpopulation?
Booming populations contribute to global poverty and make it impossible to protect virgin forests or fend off climate change.
Studies have suggested that a simple way to reduce carbon emissions is to curb population growth.
Moreover, we’ve seen that family planning works.
Women in India average 3.6 children, down from 6 in 1950.
As recently as 1965, Mexican women averaged more than seven children, but that has now dropped to 2.2.
But some countries have escaped this demographic revolution.
Women in Afghanistan, Chad, Congo, Somalia, East Timor and Uganda all have six or more children each.
What’s needed isn’t just birth-control pills or IUDs.
It’s also girls’ education and women’s rights — starting with an end to child marriages — for educated women mostly have fewer children.
Traditionally, support for birth control was bipartisan.
Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush provided strong support.
Then family planning became tarnished by overzealous and coercive programs in China and India, and contraception became entangled in America’s abortion wars.
Many well-meaning religious conservatives turned against it.
The result was, paradoxically, more abortions.
When contraception is unavailable, the likely consequence is not less sex, but more pregnancy.
Republicans are seeking to cut more money from global family planning — which would mean more abortions and more women dying in childbirth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/opinion/kristof-the-birth-control-solution.html?_r=1
There is.
It’s called family planning.
It took humans hundreds of thousands of years, until the year 1804, to reach the first billion.
It took another 123 years to reach two billion, in 1927.
Since then, we’ve been passing these milestones like billboards along a highway. The latest billion took just a dozen years.
In 1999, the United Nations’ best projection was that the world wouldn’t pass seven billion until 2013, but we reached it two years early.
Likewise, in 1999, the U.N. estimated that the world population in 2050 would be 8.9 billion, but now it projects 9.3 billion.
What’s the impact of overpopulation?
Booming populations contribute to global poverty and make it impossible to protect virgin forests or fend off climate change.
Studies have suggested that a simple way to reduce carbon emissions is to curb population growth.
Moreover, we’ve seen that family planning works.
Women in India average 3.6 children, down from 6 in 1950.
As recently as 1965, Mexican women averaged more than seven children, but that has now dropped to 2.2.
But some countries have escaped this demographic revolution.
Women in Afghanistan, Chad, Congo, Somalia, East Timor and Uganda all have six or more children each.
What’s needed isn’t just birth-control pills or IUDs.
It’s also girls’ education and women’s rights — starting with an end to child marriages — for educated women mostly have fewer children.
Traditionally, support for birth control was bipartisan.
Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush provided strong support.
Then family planning became tarnished by overzealous and coercive programs in China and India, and contraception became entangled in America’s abortion wars.
Many well-meaning religious conservatives turned against it.
The result was, paradoxically, more abortions.
When contraception is unavailable, the likely consequence is not less sex, but more pregnancy.
Republicans are seeking to cut more money from global family planning — which would mean more abortions and more women dying in childbirth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/opinion/kristof-the-birth-control-solution.html?_r=1
