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World population is zooming past its means to
support them all with quality of life - even sufficient
water is becoming scarce.
Over the past thousands of years, world populations were
kept small by cruel 'natural' methods - famine, disease,
wars, infanticides, murders, and genocides. The remains of
past civilisations lie among deserts they created thru
overpopulation that wrecked resources. Animal populations,
too, crash for the same reason.
Our present 6 billion people are alredy destroying their
means of future subsistence, although less than a billion
sharing our comfortabl standard of living 25 milion
economic refugees are in dire need, more than the entire
population of Australia. Even sharing resources and an
idolatrous faith that science will cope cannot allow more
population growth without immense suffering.
THERE ARE NO SPACES LEFT TO FILL UP. It is hard to find
any large areas where the environment is being sustainably
improved. Everywhere increasing disasters appear on Page
10 of the media. 'British marine life on brink of
extinction' (Age 17/7/02), and my sister in country England
mourns the last decade's loss of birdlife in her garden and
local woodland, and the escalation of pests.
Fish stocks, corals, fertile seabeds and soils, forests,
clean and sufficient water, breathable air, threatened
species and all precious wildlife - must they all go?
Only 6% of Australia is arable, and that is deteriorating
fast. Bushfires were'natural' but today the corralled areas
left cannot regenerate the diverse life destroyed because
there are no corridors for new life to come in again.
Recurring droughts and floods must be planned for.
The supposedly religious command to populate the earth
has been obeyed. Religions, politics, war and commerce must
stop playing for more human fodder. There are moral
commands to obey. |
The Right would mean that all the world shared the
responsiblity to ensure that everyone could have the means
to survive, with work, health care and educational
opporutnities, so that they could have this Right and rear
their child.
It would also mean ensuring that everyone could have
insurance for their old age, without having to rely on a
large family, hoping that one might live to care for
them.
A UN CONVENTION ON THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE could
1.Prevent cries of 'genocide' at family planning, because
it applies to all peoples
2. Oppose self seeking pro-natalist policies of
religions or countries,
3 Help ensure that poor families need not have too many
children in the hope that one might survive.
4. There could also be less fear among host peoples that
imigrants will swamp their culture by their larger families.
Countries accepting imigrants can expect them to scale down
their reproductive rate, while affording to all the social
justice to enable their Right to be enjoyed.
5. The lives of countless women as well as of children
would be improved.
6. The joys of children can be apreciated and enjoyed
more, and everyone in the comunity and in the extended
families share in their company.
7. Desperate countries like China would not be driven to
Only-One-Child directives which have such bad social
results.
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