Seriously, every discussion of population controls discusses the women but completely ignores the men. And the fact that in many of the places with the worst over population problems women have little or no access to birth control and little to no ability to say “no” to sex when their man demands it.
How about men limiting themselves to one child? Get snipped after that one. It’s a relatively easy and straightforward operation (as opposed to surgical sterilization of women which is much more involved and expensive). Even if women in such places wanted more babies they can’t have them if their partner is sterile.
Since men still tend to have more access to money and medicine it would be far easier and simpler to focus on limiting male fertility than female fertility in many areas. Except, of course, for male hang-ups which are more important, apparently, than overpopulation and justifies subjecting women to all manner of inconvenience (non-surgical birth control) and pain (surgical operations) in the name of limiting births.
Until there is universal availability of contraception and abortion at reasonable/affordable prices for all and easy access for all and equal society/legal status for all women then the notion of women “deciding” to have fewer babies is nonsense.
As I said, in most of the places where over population is at its worst women do not have easy access to birth control of any sort (often it requires male consent for her to get it) and abortion is becoming more restricted, not less, with time.
Unless you bring the MEN into the equation you won’t get fewer babies because the brutal truth is that in such places men can force conception on women and then deny them the means to terminate their pregnancies.
Uh, no. Latin America has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, and their fertility rates have cratered in the last couple of decades. El Salvador, where abortion is illegal even to save the mother’s life, has a slightly lower fertility rate than America (something like a quarter of women there have gotten sterilized). The same is true of the European countries with restrictive abortion laws (Poland and Ireland) for that matter. Abortion laws doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on fertility. The same is of course not true of contraception- that actually does matter.
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The issue is that you posted a link to a book and about the only thing you mentioned was: 1) it was anti-GMO; 2) it was endorsed by Goodall. Nothing about why the book is anti-GMO; no idea to discuss. What else could we debate? I’m certainly not reading the book on just that info any more than you’ll read a pro-GMO book just because it’s endorse by some minor celebrity scientist.
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We could debate some of the dumb things Goodall has said about GMOs (like the study she claimed showed allergic reactions in people traced to ingestion of GM corn (it didn’t). Or we could wonder why she correctly notes the scientific consensus supporting climate change, but ignores the strong scientific consensus supporting the safety of GM foods (instead praising those who “speak out” against this consensus).
“When the Post and the New York Times reported (Moynihan’s) findings, both avoided saying that Goodall had plagiarized—which, even by the strictest definition of the word, she did—instead writing that she “borrowed” passages, fully intending, apparently, to return them upon publication.”
It is noteworthy how many dubious and frankly loony websites have leaped on Goodall’s endorsement of the Druker book as evidence that it must be valid (including NaturalNews and collective evolution dot com (also known for revealing the Truth about extraterrestrials). This is all the more bizarre since such sites typically scoff at expert opinion on scientific matters as “biased”, “corrupt” etc., but are eager to promote a supposed expert’s opinion if it supports their ideology.
This is probably not the link you intended to post. Do you have another link to the article? I’d like to read it. I’m looking for a good article written (at least in part) by appropriate scientists that I can send to my GMO-suspect friends.
I wasn’t talking about JUST abortion - contraception is very available in Europe, even in countries where abortion is restricted. Likewise, it’s available in Latin America.
Look somewhere like one of those African nations where the population is still swelling and you’ll find women with no options for controlling their fertility, where even married couples have trouble either finding or affording contraception, and the men don’t trouble themselves with controlling fertility. If you don’t get the men on board, on some level - giving women some rights over their own bodies, seeing the wisdom of limiting births, whatever - then it doesn’t matter what the women want.
So stop putting it all on the women. It really does take two types to tango.