That was jmullaney. 
Unfortunately, I haven’t had a prick in a while. 
From the Encyclopedia Britannica:
“The Nazi Third Reich invaded the bedrooms of its citizens before it moved its troops into the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. It forbade the display of contraceptives, which it condemned as the ‘by-product of the asphalt civilization’…In this most controversial aspect of birth control, legal positions have oscillated, depending on circumstance and on government. In 1935 Joseph Stalin reversed Lenin’s liberal abortion law in the Soviet Union, and the Nazis declared abortions to be ‘acts of sabotage against Germany’s racial future.’ In 1942 a woman was guillotined in Nazi-dominated France as a punishment for abortion, and in 1943 the government of the Third Reich introduced the death penalty for abortionists who ‘continually impaired the vitality of the German people.’”
I never said they would. You are confusing two separate issues. I was defending Skribbler’s worries. Five child births are a strain on the system. But supportable merely because they are not common. A hypothetical dramatic increase in multiple child births is in no way related to the abortion statistics quoted earlier. Furthermore, having these births for religious reasons is simply cruel. It is a terrible strain and a danger to the mother’s life.
Well now that I’ve pointed out how you confused the issue will you concede that 5 children to a birth is a strain on our system (large families, expensive births, increased medical care for low birth weight at birth and throughout life)?
Here is how I am drawing that conclusion. My sociology text gives the birth rate for 3rd world countries as 26 per 1000 (not 27, my apologies).
The U.S.’ current birth rate is 16 per 1000, already significantly higher then E.U. and Canada (Canada is at 12 per 1000) and it shows…
16+8=24 - not quite 26, but very, very close.
I repeat my earlier claims.
You are hand-waving. Perhaps that’s what you mean by mental gymnastics?
The “vast estate of the US” is already being taken into account earlier. Please note that no matter what size territory you are looking at, it is still the birth rate of a 3rd world country. Furthermore, U.S. states have vastly disparate populations. When I asked for an explanation, I meant please point out some untapped portion of the population that would provide an additional 1.37 million families a year willing to adopt and qualified to do so.
Furthermore, it is not difficult to project a 50% increase (and this is being optimistic, construction costs would make that even higher) in maternity wards, in orphanages, in social programs.
Increase the current growth rate of the U.S. by 50%, there are many sites online where one can find projections of what various population densities will mean in terms of feeding the people, housing them, providing for them.
An explanation of where these resources would come from is what I am looking for.
You have given very little in the way of explanation. Abortion as population control only sickens if one considers an embryo or fetus to be a human being. I don’t, therefore it doesn’t, and I consider these to be valid points.
I would constitute your failure to answer it to be indeed a kind of victory, and an example of the lack of foresight shown by pro-life forces.
Of course, on that note, if you just killed everyone it would solve a lot of problems.
(Shoulda known it was in the EB.)
Well, no one here is saying women who get abortions should be guillotined. But over at the Pizza Place, a few folks have said the woman should be punished like any first-degree murderer.
So do we do like the Nazis and make abortion illegal again, or do we continue like the Commies and leave it legal?
If we killed everyone, it wouldn’t solve our problems. Who would bury the bodies?
:rolleyes:
Pity I feel killing people is immoral.
That’s why I, and International Planned Parenthood advocate birth control.
Keeping people from developing is better then shooting them once they have (or watching them starve to death).
It’s really very simple. Either we control our birth rate, or we will overpopulate and life will be brutish and short.
Once the perfect form of birth control is developed that prevents fertilization, there will be no need for abortificants (ideally, an inexpensive, safe and fully reversible blocking of the tubes in a woman, ducts in a man). Until that time, abortions are an important part of family planning.
I’m not sure I see a difference. I’ve never noticed any food shortages where I am, either. You’d end up with that many more people who could work to make food too in any case.
I’m pretty sure that whole overpopulation thing is a myth.
For example:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/ZUNPOP.HTM
Mind elaborating, jmullaney? In which way do you feel overpopulation is a myth? Do you think that no matter how much population increases, we will find food to feed people?
Do you think that the death rate will increase to match the birth rate without human suffering?
Otherwise, I fail to see any sense in that statement.
In any case, I’d be very interested to hear how you would defend it.
I will refrain from calling people names, jmullaney, but really!
The point has been made many times in this thread that European countries are at, or below the replacement rate.
This doesn’t mean people there have stopped having sex. They are using contraceptives, and having abortions.
The danger of overpopulation isn’t (of course) assumed to be despite these practices, it is as an extrapolation of birth rates with inadequate or no birth control.
Ah, but according to this link there is a danger of underpopulation these days. I don’t know how major a factor abortion was for population control in 1945 where he begins his study. If population isn’t growing in Europe, Latin America, China, or Russia, exactly where is this global threat you are talking about?
If population control measures aren’t hindered.
I’m referring to the population explosion that would occur if pro-life forces had their way.
The world population is still increasing at significant enough a rate to cause concern, all the more because it is concentrated in areas (think, even more slash and burn rainforest devastation). But yes, it is getting under control.
No thanks to institutions like the “pro-life” Roman Catholic Church which is unfortunately quite strong in many of the areas where population is still high.
Please note of the countries the link you gave listed - E.U., Brazil (a wealthy latin american country), Magreb (hardly 3rd world), China (instituted massive restrictions in reproduction, by law), Russia (former Communist, few pro-life, easy access to birth control).
Think of the countries it DIDN’T list.
India, massive increases in population.
Pretty much all the African countries where it is increasing.
United States. Yes, still well above replacement rate and growing, although not to any serious extent.
The link also claims population stability in South/Central America. I don’t have any interest in examining this at the present as I have to finish up my work within the next 15 minutes. Suffice to say it only makes any strong claims for one of the richer countries.
One suspects an agenda on the part of the writer, but I don’t have time at the moment to investigate that either.
Also note that the interviewee states outright that population regulation follows from improvement in the standard of living.
Does he think that increases in standard of living equals people stopping sex?
No, obviously there is an increase in birth control and abortions, which is borne out by easily accessible statistics on E.U. countries, Canada, and the U.S.
ure, you have your agenda, the people who wrote their link have theirs. Who knows?
Here’s another one:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLENC/ENCYC048.TXT
Basically, if parents are too lazy to raise two or more kids, in the long run there ain’t gonna be much of a future.
And you can read every last exciting detail of the pro-life agenda here:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLENC/
I don’t want to get caught up in this debate.
One last thing. International Planned Parenthood and the U.N. are well aware that Italy has dipped below replacement rate. There is hardly a danger of underpopulation, however, in the overall world population, and other E.U. countries are just over or stable.
In any case, he never states that this was the case 45 years ago, merely that there was a trend towards lower populations. Which is what you’d expect, as economic status improves, and as abortions become more accessible and safe, and birth control cheaper and more effective.
Again, this is hardly worldwide.
Ack 6 minutes left! Gotta hurry!
Mind picking out the bits that matter from that extremely long entry?
I understand wanting to avoid debate and stick to slinging of links, but at least save us the trouble of picking through all the other rhetoric in that link.
Certainly I have an agenda, but I’m merely pointing out that those people were avoiding the mention of countries where population is very much on the rise.
People would have to stop having children for a very long time for us to worry about not having a future, and it will be quite some time before we reverse current population growth.
Or those countries in which population is exponentially growing not count, in your opinion, towards our future?
Once population is under control perhaps then the push can be toward encouraging an average of a bit more then 1 kid per person. Now, however, is definitely not the time.
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya aren’t 3rd world?
Actually, we have a split decision on the Commies. It’s true that abortion laws were liberalized under Lenin. But under Stalin, abortion was again outlawed. (See this excerpt from The Soviet Union–A Country Study [(Raymond E. Zickel, ed. (Washington, D. C.: Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, 1989).]; under Lenin, “[t]he state legalized abortion, and it made divorce progressively easier to obtain”, but under Stalin “[t]o provide greater social stability, the state aimed to strengthen the family by restricting divorce and abolishing abortion”.) So it appears that the pro-choice side is ahead two Evil Dictators to one in the Guilt-By-Association contest. (Does anyone know Mao’s position on the issue? Given China’s policies on population control, I suspect he would even up the score.)
:rolleyes: OK. Abracadabra. The population is under control. Always has been. Overpopulation is a myth. Prove me wrong, without a chorus of “It’s a small world after all,” please, thanks.