Because telling people how many children they can have is more than a touchy subject.
This week: Should countries enforce population control? Let us know by email or in the comments below.
Bai Shaofeng has not met a single woman who will date him after nine years of living in Beijing. As a hairdresser in the world’s second largest city, he doesn’t make much money and can’t afford his own apartment – a deal breaker for most Chinese singles who have endless options. when it comes to suitors.
Today, China is home to 30 million more men than women, thanks to the decades-long one-child policy – which has forced parents to pay fines, undergo abortions and raise their children in secret. The government’s heavy hand on this issue has been widely seen by the West as a violation of human rights. In 2015, a two-child policy was introduced to compensate, but the damage was done: China now faces a labor shortage and a rapidly aging population without enough caregivers or taxpayers.
History is replete with examples of abusive population control efforts. 20th century America’s eugenics laws, for example, saw at least 60,000 people in mental institutions sterilized in a bid to eliminate “criminality, feeble-mindedness and sexual deviance”, according to Alexandra Minna. Stern. Eugenic Nation: Flaws and Borders of Better Breeding in America. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in its Buck v. Bell of 1927 the legality of involuntary sterilization of mentally ill patients, a decision that has never been reversed.
Some of their sons will never have the chance to marry.
Author Lihong Shi
But the world’s population of 7.6 billion people is expected to grow to 9.8 billion by 2050. More means fewer resources that everyone can share. Food security is a big concern, as is environmental degradation. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, more than half of the world’s wild animal population was killed between 1970 and 2010, including 76% of freshwater fauna. Widespread poverty is another concern, especially since birth rates are higher in developing countries.
So is it time for all countries to turn to drastic population control in order to sustain life on Earth, or is this a violation of human rights no matter what?
China first implemented its one-child policy law in 1979, aimed at curbing its burgeoning population and conserving resources. The costs of the policy were high – around 20.7 million people were sterilized and 14.4 million women had abortions in 1983 alone, according to a 2016 study in the journal Family planning studies. As a society that largely favored sons at the time, female fetuses were more often aborted, and the policy is estimated to have prevented 400 million births across China. Three years of the new two-child law has done little to compensate. Labor and care needs aside, there’s an even sadder prospect: For these parents, “some of their sons will never have the chance to marry,” says Lihong Shi, author of Choosing daughters: family change in rural China.
But government measures are not always so effective. In 1975, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi responded to accusations of corruption by declaring a state of emergency. His son Sanjay used this distraction as a way to introduce sweeping population controls. About 8 million men were sterilized in 1975, but this did little to reduce India’s population growth. Poor women just kept having babies, and India is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by 2024.
So, what can we do to fight effectively against the reduction of our planet’s resources and the degradation of the climate? In that case, those bumper stickers and t-shirts might be right: the future is female. Project Drawdown, a climate solutions coalition, found that combining family planning for women and educating girls about career and income opportunities has the most potential, not only to slow population growth , but also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this century. “Once women are more educated and earn an income, they decide to have fewer children,” advises Shi.
The education and empowerment of women may well save us all.
What do you think? Do we need to start having fewer babies – and is it the government’s responsibility to force us? Let us know by email or in the comments below.