Baby-making in this day in age is the beginning of the greatest cancer of all--OVERPOPULATION. It is time for enlightened people to teach the un-enlightened that creating a new life form for the purposes of ego (In my opinion) is no longer desired or HEALTHY for the planet.

I have been involved with issues regarding overpopulation over 10 years. I have found, sadly, that the human mind cannot (or will not) comprehend the Big Picture. I can teach workshops stating facts and figures that illustrate how exponential growth rapidly divides finite resources - and it seemed to me that too few people could truly comprehend the gravity of the situation our earth is currently facing. Fewer still actually DO anything about it! It has been a discouraging journey for me. Our culture is so "in love" with the idea of family life, yet no one sees the social and environmental problems that go along with it. The same is obviously true for our consumptive habits: we're programmed by our media to buy! buy! buy! that to live simply would be antithetical to our identities.

The future looks grim for our civilization and our planet, and all I can do is sit back and watch helplessly.

Again, I think we should reward one child families with tax breaks, eductional grants, etc. and if people want to have more children they will pay more taxes and receive less benefits. The goal should be to halve the population of the world.

dlnelson7:
Well said and great idea. It makes me wonder why this idea of yours isn't mainstream for candidates and why the appropriate organizations aren't more vocal?

CompashCat:
I feel your frustrations. As I see 20 year-olds with three and four kids I feel like another three or four stabs of pain for the planet. I believe that like the "six degrees of separation" that ALL of the country's and the World's problems can be traced back to overpopulation.

I don't seem to understand any of you, sorry.

The idea of family is not ego and not always culture; it is ingrained in humans. Reproduction is a primal instinct at the same level as food is! Asking humans not to have babies is not only unfeasible, it is also completely unreasonable. People who have no family to nurture end up with all sorts of psychological disorders (violence and prostitution being usually consequences).

The point in overpopulation is that many people ABUSE their natural need to reproduce. While the West is shrinking in population, third world countries are exploding in growth. The reason are societies which encourage very large families (avergae of 7 or 8 in Niger, Mali and many other African countries, in Gulf countries or South East Asia, etc). Many of these societies as well are polygamous. So the question is: why would anyone want that many kids? and who is going to feed them! (likely if in Egypt, food will come in the form of imported wheat from the US). That's the real issue. It is abuse and this is due to many factors including poverty, lack of education especially for women, religious dogma, etc.

So why should those who do not abuse, and simply ask to have a balanced and happy family life,
pay for those who do?

It takes up to three kids per family to STABILIZE a population (2 to replace the parents and one for various contingencies like disease, war, infertility, etc).

Please stop advocating that westerners (or japanese or russians) stop having kids for the sake of overpopulation, that's nonsense. But yes ask the developed world to help emerging countries develop the tools to reduce fertility rates.

I was born in 1925 world population then was 20bil. USA population was 94mil
today we are more than 6.5 b.in the world USA population is at 300 million this in my life time of 82 years! how much brains does it take to figure out that this can NOT go on

middleground November 21st, 2007 2:39 pm

Hurrah for someone with a little bit of sense! Someone figured out that it wasn't that devil "Western Civilization" that was causing this problem.

Its always helpful to look at the problem itself and who is causing it rather than blame everything on an ideological punching bag.

MiddleGround: Very provocative post. Please let me respond as a psychologically healthy single, childless person who has devoted the last five years of her life volunteering overseas working in the area of women's and children's literacy - a single person who loves children and her biological family that are thousands of miles away.

Your statement: "People who have no family to nurture end up with all sorts of psychological disorders (violence and prostitution being usually consequences)." Besides the fact that violence and prostitution are not "psychological disorders," I would suggest that they are due to poverty, lack of opportunity, and other social ills. Let's take a count of the hundreds of thousands of young female Iraqi refugee girls living in Syria or Jordon who must turn to prostitution simply to buy food for their mothers, sisters, and brothers. Or how about the thousands of girls in Asia sold into prostitution to provide for their families? These people have family to nurture - precisely why they are prostitutes. When there is a family to feed but little or no food or water, violence (from fear, frustration, and impending starvation) is often the result. That they result from not having family to nurture is a profoundly (and obscenely) patriarchial and offensive remark.

Your quote: "But yes, ask the developed world to help emerging countries develop the tools to reduce fertility rates." Based on my own experience, one major reason for the high birth rates in developing countries is the unacceptably high infant mortality rate. In the villages where I work, over 55% of the children will never reach the age of 5. Also, there is no social security net in these countries like there is in 'developed' countries. The social security IS the children. To have the developing countries cut their birth rate is like cutting social security benefits for your parents. Are you willing to do that?

What the 'developed countries' (an abhorrent phrase to my ears) need to do is stop taking more than their fair share of the world's resources. I absolutely support one child families in these 'developed countries' because based on my experience of my twelve nieces and nephews and the hundreds of children in my villages, one 'developed country' child takes up as much as (and sometimes more than) five 'developing country' children.

In addition, the 'developed country' parents could just get over the attachment to their own genetics and adopt one or two or three of the children that already exist in the world. But horror of horrors, it would be different - and god forbid, maybe black or brown - genes in these children. Maybe the 'developed countries' could define 'family' more broadly to include the world family, not just their own genetics.

if you define growth as growth in human productivity - which is inseparable from growth in material living standards and in cultural/intellectual levels - the silliness of this kind of argument becomes evident. long live Karl Marx!

jld_overseas

I did not think my post was provocative (maybe to a few as always I guess). Thanks however for taking the time to respond and share experiences. It's good discussion no matter.

About the issues at hand, and with all due respect, I think you are mixing up a few issues.

* When one wants to make a broad judgement about an issue, examples are no proof. It is wonderful you are single and psychologically healthy. I am also single and hopefully fine :) But this is not making the case for much. Living a life of singlehood is not healthy by any standard and in all societies. It should not be advocated
(in my opinion).

* About "not having families to nurture turn one to prostitution"! I am sorry you got that from my post but you surely misred me completely (and
took an offensive position may I say). Just remove the word prostitution from my wording, it was fairly peripheral (and even parenthesized). All I meant to say is that a functional family is one of the best bets against that kind of behavior
(but again forget about this if it still bothers you, the big picture is elsewhere).

* That "young females in poor countries turn to prostitution" is absolutely not in contradiction with what I wrote but rather reinforces it. People in third world countries by having to provide for far too many kids end up in horrible situations.

* You say "To have the developing countries cut their birth rate is like cutting social security benefits for your parents. Are you willing to do that?".

This is true but you are presenting this like a fatality and I am not sure why. Yes I am willing to do that, and I am willing to do much more! I simply have to provide compensation.

Perhaps you will be surprised to know that I am from a third world country. I am not pontificating from somewhere in the west. Perhaps I could tell here about a good experience that has worked in one particular emerging country and has helped cut its birth rate to less than 1.5 % (i.e. less that renewal rate). This is Tunisia (although the same situation seems to apply to Iran nowadays).

Very briefly (or the post will explode), Tunisia since independence from France (1956) created a ministry of family planning (yes a ministry) and
devoted 1/3 of its budget to education and another 1/3 to health. It decided not to invest a penny (or so) in armaments. For decades doctors and nurses went to remote villages to teach women HOW NOT to have children (notice the big difference: they were not preventing them from having children, they were telling them how to naturally avoid unwanted pregnancies and take better care of infants). Many women live miserably by having too many kids and many you will be surprised to know don't want that many kids. Of course once education started to kick in, and women started to have careers, demographic growth fell like a rock.

The Tunisian experience is now being exported to many other countries, last I heard is Niger who is trying desperatly to cut its enormous fertility rate. This is by the way what I have been suggesting to "westerners" (through media like
this) to do for years. Don't just give money to cure disease (good enough) but give money and policy to help cut demographic growth. It's not "racist" to do that.

In brief: we all deserve to have a kiddo or two, add a bit of happiness to life, and the planet won't collapse.

um...huh? Negative growth. Well, that's just silly.

"Economic growth produces the opposite of what it promises. It does not imply greater well-being or employment for the people, or greater efficiency in the use of resources. Quite the opposite: it generates poverty, inefficiency and injustice. There is an abundant historical record to support this argument."

Every economically undeveloped nation in the would is overrun with poverty, inefficiency and injustice. They severely lack well-being, employment for the people, or greater efficiency in the use of resources. According to Mr. Esteva, economic growth would cause more of the same. So I guess the impoverished people of the world are just doomed.

"To continue to propose a high rate of economic growth as a social goal is pure nonsense. It can only be attributed to the ignorance of a simple soul, cynicism or a combination of the two."

If this is the case, I wonder to what he attributes dooming people to live lives of poverty.

By the way Mr. Esteva, deaths from cancer are on a rapid decline. It's all greatly due to growth in technology, science, knowledge of the human body and diet, and, yes, economies.

roger 9 pretty much summed it up.

jld_overseas hit it also with ADOPTION instead of procreation.

middleground: "While the West is shrinking in population..."
The west may have a birth slow down but population is HARDLY shrinking. This is an exponential impossibility.

Celebrity: the German population in 2006 fell by 160 000 people. The Russian population has lost over a million (or more) since a decade ago and so has japan. The exponential model is just that: a model that works assuming CONSTANT RATE of growth. This is not the case always.

I think I want to quit here but ... how can anyone advocate Adoption as a solution!? to what? some people "produce" and some people educate? How do you so casually take kids from their mothers?... my mode of thinking is not like some progressive people out there clearly.

you want to know the benefits of adoption?

Thanks to middleground for citing the Tunisian experience. It seems to me that that is the way to go-to make sure that women all over the world have control over their bodies and can produce only the children they want, and that those children get the medical care they need so that they survive. Over and over again, it is proved that when women are empowered, their country's standard of living and economy improve. We need to be sponsoring such programs everywhere-and not tying funding to one small part of our population's fundamentalist religious ideas.

And on another level entirely-as an animal breeder, I am always surprised that efforts to control human population growth always center on the female. It's a lot more efficient to deal with it on the male side-they can sire a lot more children than women can bear. So along with birth control for women, I think there should be safe vasectomies available for men-and they should be trained as to why this is a good idea.

The only solution to overpopulation is raising the standard of living (security) for people with a history of large families. As a conservative, I once thought the opposite - that people were poor because they had too many children - at least I learned. Predatory capitalism produces excess poverty, ergo, unsustainable population growth. Capitlism does just fine when relegated to luxuries' - that doesn't include basic shelter, food, water, healthcare, education, and satisfying employment. Those items bring true security - and will lower birthrates.

Equality, security, and justice are the only means of stabilizing the current population - and then we'd all better figure out how to reduce it (quickly) or that will be done for us in the traditional way - famine, wars, and/or mass extinction. Stupid is as stupid does.

As for dysfunctonal families - extremist conservatives are the mainstay of such travesties. They abuse others, particularly their own families (who are most vulnerable) and create misery for all. Curb conservativism - the extremist variety - and many of our ills will be mitigated. (And no, I don't need liberal nuts to figure out how to do that - they don't have any answer either, other than supporting sustainable societies.)

It is in the Holy Bible:"Be fruitful and multiply."
Perhaps this also applies to corporations.

Bill Clinton recently held a talk about giving. He ended by saying that the trouble is that we are 6 billion now and we will be 9 billion in 45 years. Wea re already too crowded right now! Bill said that the way to get reduce the children is to get women jobs. I also think we must immediatly provide family planning clinic worldwide and nothing should be off the table such as abortion as well as condoms. Bush has caused a lot of damage discussing abortions endlessly. I saw a documentary about the women in Iran along the seacoast and they have too many children and no access to abortions and they end up committing suicide while their husbanda are trying to go fishing and there is no longer the catch of fish as it used to be.

For starters, only children that are really wanted should be born and we should fight for their lives so that mothers do not have extra children to make sure somebody is around to help them when they are old- people need a social security network. More money for everyone- less for fat cats.

Progress is one thing, economic growth is something entirely different.

Progress is the refinement of methods, accumulation of knowledge, streamlining of systems, etc.

Economic growth may be the result of price inflation, price fixing, marketing-fueled mass addiction, taxation without representation, deliberately provoked crises/catastrophes, and myriad other capitalist rackets.

Capitalists trick the public into thinking that progress and economic growth are synonymous. But they are totally uncorrelated.

While progress can be and should be made sustainable and beneficial to the overall society, perpetual economic growth cannot be.

Legitimate market demands are made by an informed and responsible public with an eye toward progress. The result is maximum value in markets for the benefit of all. Check with the "father of capitalism", and with your own common sense.

Illegitimate market demands are fabricated by ignorant and greedy capitalists with an eye toward perpetual economic growth and other such idiocy. The result is generally destructive, and often catastrophic.

Let's not forget the role of religion in preventing family planning, including censoring education about human reproduction.

No one seems to dispose of the conundrum that an expanding economy, driven by an expanding population, living on a finite non-expanding planet, will reach social, scientific, and biological limits to growth. In essence the earth is a closed system in respect to mass and an open system in regards to energy (as long as the sun shines). One possible limit occurs when all biologically available carbon is contained in human bodies. We will wind up as our own food.

Natural scientists say that > 90% of all species which have lived on earth are extinct.Extinction is the "purpose" and goal of species.

That fallacy of closing the barn door after the horse has wandered off is being mimicked here. The best research indicates that the planet has a carrying capacity for a population of up to 2 billion people. The issue at hand isn't whether growth is good or bad nor is it who's responsible for the problem we face. The whole question is how we'll allocate or assign the neccesary reductions when the planet runs out of oil and water.....

Good article.
It's rare to see somebody challenging this whole "growth" crap. Most people don't realize that economic growth is not beneficial to them. Growth-driven economies are very successful when supplied with abundant resources and weak competition. Even then, the benefits go mostly to the chosen few.
This is not the case anymore. Analogy with cancer is appropriate. Virus also. Both of them seem very successful until the host organism dies.

This was a great article.

The religion of progress and economic growth should be constantly questioned

For example, there is a lot of productive land that is either taken over by agrobusiness or paved under for malls and urban sprawl.

Most of the US's anti-communist interventions were based on peasant land removal; very little of it was based on land reform (keeping peasants on the land -"Land to the Tiller).

Land should have been allocated to peasants along with appropriate technical assistance and micro-loans.

Instead, millions of Third World peasants were either forced off the land or the small, low quality plot of land they farmed could no longer sustain them.

When peasants organized in order to redistribute land, the US, directly or indirectly, intervened to smash them.
Of course, the local oligarchy did not need to face the challenge of land reform.

The US always promotes agro-exports, in the Third World, organized into large units. These units need cheap, landless peasants to work them.

Within Third World cities, US (and other rich nations) outsource industrial production to take advantage of the landless peasants streaming into the cities.

As a result, we are seeing both the slummification of the Third World cities and -for the first time in world history- the majority of the world's population are now urban dwellers.

That is why the Pentagon is changing the focus of its combat training from jungle warfare to urban warfare.

The US elite have to keep the lid on movements for social justice initiated by the new "wretched of the" ... cities.

"I don't seem to understand any of you, sorry."

The feeling-mutual...
'Violence and prostitution' don't grow naturally from childlessness. It is supremely-easy to 'adopt' a caring/family-like relationship with those about-you (or even, similar who are distant).
And, the developing/impoverished-world (which we expend so-much on -- to halt/abort their-'development') doesn't cling to large family-sizing for 'fun' or out of any 'tradition' (no more than out of 'intransigence'). They do-so because it's the ONLY form of security they are left-with ... the potential for a few-children left 'living/willing & maybe-able' to care for them in their declining-years -- since they have NO other social/governmental/capital-based-'help' for that-purpose. [Again, largely due to the rampant-greed of the so-called 'developed-world']
Left to a 'natural state' (as exemplified best/most-recently, perhaps, by New-World natives -- pre-Genocide) people will, when in a sustainable-lifestyle, tend towards ZPG -- without regulation, or even 'need'-to.
If the few (and I mean 'few', being under-10%) _greedy_ of the World were to step-off the necks of everyone else, the population (all other factors being 'equal') would revert to a little-over 2-billion...within two-generations.

The population-control proponents need to understand a couple important things:

1. Even with a shrinking population, the capitalist system would still require ever increasing rates of resource consumption. And because of this;

2. The vast majority of damage to the environment - particularly CO2 emissions, is being done by the nations with low birth rates and stabilized populations.

Wow this article is so sad. It's even more sad is that so many people agree with it.

Humans are not some sort of parasite to the planet and economic growth is not a scourge on the world's poor. Corruption is parasitic and greed is a scourge but these do not go hand in hand with childbirth or a robust economy. Blame greedy and corrupt people for the issues many of you are pointing out. Don't blame the loving human spirit which shares itself with the world through childbirth and family nor the ingenuity which creates the economies and technologies through which they flourish.

middleground and Zydeco thanks for trying to turn on the light.

I grew up in the most wonderful, children-loving family that a person could ask for. All my male role models loved kids and responsibly remained kids at heart themselves. And so all my life I've looked forward to having kids too. My mistake was, I became a serious writer, and so will never be able to afford having any. And yet the more I look around, especially in this country (having lived 2 years overseas), I am beginning to finally feel at peace with having no kids. For I see very little ahead but a Christian Capitalist Police State built around wars for Earth's remaining resources and I sure as hell don't want to bring any children into that world. What a dark fuckin' planet this is getting to be.

Yes, Yes, Yes.

McDonalds wants only more people to eat their burgers and more cheap labor to flip them. This mentality accomplishes no good -- in the longer term, not even for McDonalds -- and surely not for the rest of us.

The United States is a huge part of the problem. We just hit 300 million, and with current trends we will surpass 1 billion people in 100 years. We almost can't avoid hitting 1/2 billion much sooner. Especially with our lifestyle -- we are a huge part of the problem. Remember "think globally, act locally"?

Many of you say that most of this US growth is due to immigration. True. If stopping our growth (but not progress) means reducing immigration, then that is what must be done. From a local and global point of view, that would be a positive. Being a relief valve to other countries and drawing the very people away who could institute change at home is not doing the United States or anyone else any favors.

A great "activist" book on growth is "Better Not Bigger" by Eben Fodor" (ISBN 0-86571-386-3).

Check out NumbersUSA.com also. I believe their work may be the path to a quality-of-life for our children.

How about this story?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=495495&in_page_id=1879

Is the next logical step to mandate sterilization?

Who's ready for it?

JACK 37: some soul may have missed out on a great father, but there will be other opportunities and corporeal engagements.

As for single child families, evidently you have never lived in second or third generation of a one child family. Besides one little slip and you are out of the gene pool. There are natural limits for reproduction but most of these have been modified based on unnatural contingencies. Really, I don't think you want to live in a society based on quotas.

Actually, the U.S. has little or no population growth and most industrialized countries are below replacement rates. U.S. growth in from immigration.

Unrestricted growth IS the purpose of a cancer cell.

How is it that we are any more far sighted?

A cancer cell doesn't just happen, there is a process of development. Cancer doesn't start will unrestricted growth, it is the end result.

There must be at least a dozen ways to measure a society's progress that are more meaningful than its per capita GDP growth or standard of living. The Human Development Index is one. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Human_Development_Index)

And others are listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life

The US may be improving in terms of standard of living, but it is definitely losing ground (versus other nations) in terms of quality of life.

rtdrury, very well said.

Capitalist/imperialist growth (or at least the greed-head capitalism as perverted from Schumpeterian productive capitalism) appears to be little except a guileful system of private and government controlled mechanisms to subsidize growth as the promised palative to the masses, while allowing the ruling-elite Ponzi artists to hide their negative externality costs and shine the stage light on the superficial benefits --- most of which accrue to the rich themselves.

The currently unraveling big lie about global resources and survival is in essence just a bigger (global version) of the formerly biggest lie in the world, which the ruling-elite have been parroting at least for the last half century; namely, "that a rising tide will lift all boats". The absurdity of this lie can only be compared with a predatory pack of wolves saying, "More predatory behavior will not only be good for us but also for you sheep".

It is beyond irony that the very analogy and allusion (illusion) that the ruling elite had settled upon in the late twentieth century (and particularly in the Reagan era) as their last argument to keep the poor poor, and to justify the investment stream that can only spout from a high degree of global and US inequality; that a 'rising tide will lift all boats', is now so precisely and ineluctably the harsh and contradicting reality that, in the 21st century, is ushering in the very real rising tides of global warming that will sink the elite's last justification of their sanctimonious economic eliteness --- and expose the whole idea of 'growth' as nothing but a predatory cancerous metastasis through negative externality dumping.

When this last illusion of 'growth' justifying elite surplus capital accumulation and concentration is gone then all justification of economic inequality is exposed as the lie that it is, and will disappear also.

Resource sloth, profligacy, and most importantly 'perdition' is a factor linked only to 'predator' mindset and philosophy ---- not to geography, nationality, race, religion or other guileful, PR 'cover stories'. 'Predator mindset' and predatory behavior with respect to resource predation is seminally linked to only one issue ---- the predatory 'class' issue that "what's beneficial to me may hurt or kill other creatures, but that's what I choose to do as a predator". I would only expand your example of driving a "15mpg status car" to the more significant elite ruling-class example of using a 200 gallon per HOUR power yacht, or 1000 gallon per HOUR private jet for purely extravagant luxury pleasure use to show where the real excessive 'resource predation' target belongs.

This is not an issue of nationality, countries or 'civilizations' of the globe, but rather an elite 'predatory mindset' characteristic of 'class' commonality anywhere in the world. Just as wolf, lion, or shark predator behavior is not properly scientifically characterized as "those American wolves, those Asian wolves, or those European wolves", neither is it appropriate (nor usefully revealing) to characterize human predator behavior (and mindset) as American, European, Asian or other resource predators --- since the 'class' of the mammal (or creature) is the proper basis for scientific categorizing and understanding, not the geographical location!

As we humans near the abyss of environmental and species survivability it is critically important that we understand that elitist and imperialist PR propaganda, like the absurd distractive fairy tales of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" only hide, divide, and incite racial, nation-state, and regional wars for the global corporate elite control of ever more scarce resources (firstly oil) from the reality that we are facing not any trumped up 'Clash of Civilizations', but rather only seek to obscure the reality of our common society of average people to the real "Clash of Classes" between the tiny elite of predators, who only survive through bringing death, and the vast non-elite who are content to live together, and in peace, in our cooperative garden of eden --- and enjoy life.

Middleground

People who have no family to nurture end up with all sorts of psychological disorders (violence and prostitution being usually consequences). ??? Is there supporting evidence of this phenomenon?

I'm unmarried, 40 years old, with no kids and I'm at the happiest and most constructive point in my life right now.

I have no crippling psychological disorder, whatever you mean by that. Unless you count consumer capitalism as a mass psychological disorder. A state of collective hallucinatory fantasy. That I can agree with.

Do you mean people who have no family end up prostitutes and descend into madness?

GRRROWTH! GRRRROWTH! Bark the rabid dogs of war.

WAR AGAINST FAMILY PLANNING
The population time bomb can never be reversed until the authority of those who oppose family planning & women's rights are quelled.

Bush has already undermined family planning and women's rights in impoverished areas--the only real means of ending world starvation and poverty for this and future generations, including the unborn. His appointment of the worst imaginable person to oversee our nations family planning only underscores his relentless wars against our environment and health. Dr Kerkoack opposes birth control, and had headed an anti-contraception family planning organization. They even provide scientifically false health information to promote their agenda--just as Bush has done.

His alleged concern for the unborn is rendered void by the unmeasurable deaths and illnesses resulting from his blockage of vital environmental, conservation, and health reforms–using secrecy, or environmental friendly disguises based irrational logic and manipulated science used to a degree never before experienced in our history.

By allowing such outrages from this unlearned and dangerous president, guided by his financial and radical religious right supporters who planted him in office, Americans have only themselves to blame for the resulting medical setbacks, expanded world poverty, sickness, and degradation of our planet.

OK I made two comments about "singlehood" and "adoption" that do not find consensus.

I think singlehood is not a good thing. People who live alone are prone to various types of unbalances. I am not saying ALL single people. Unfortunately we live in societies where more and more men and women live by themselves. People I know who choose this lifestyle spend hours in internet chats, in bars, jumping from plane to plane ...socializing in zillion ways... Being single leads one into looking for various substitutes to a companionship. So why pretend being proud of being single?

Some negative consequences of singlehood and absence of family: the majority of thugs, gang members, delinquants are single and childless. Someone who is married and has a kid knows far better the value of life and treasure it far more. I have the quote of a mafia member in my mind all the time. He said (I'm quoting from memory): "If I knew I was killing the father of a small child, I would have never done it". This he said after he became a father.

Adoption is same (this seems like another point of contention from my earlier post). Adoption SHOULD NOT be institutionalized by all means. Adoption can have great merits, no one denies it. Orphans deserve to be adopted (if no close family can take care of
them), and couples who have fertility problems might contemplate that as well. BUT going from a case-by-case situation to a global policy, especially as regards to adoption, is non-sense and dangerous. It's going to be a zoo, and if drugs is hard to fight, then imagine what it would be for a business like adoption (and its consequences like forcing women to donate kids, or encouraging women to sell kids for money, not to mention likely psychological problems for kids taken away from their moms, religious problems, etc, etc).

Please think about consequences of what you advocate. Something I noticed on this media is by fighting one extreme, a few sometimes end up in another extreme.

Robert Settgast: Very important issues that you raised, and thank you. There is a deep-seated misogyny that accompanies the authoritarian mindset that sees in women's bodies, a commodity that must be controlled for the sake of the patriarchal lineage. There was a piece published in "The Nation" and quoted on CD where it was exposed through divorce court records, that either this disgusting "champion of women's health-not" or his would-be predecessor (name fails me), used to sodomize his wife when she took sleep meds. So much for consensual sex as meaningful basis for 'christian' or other communion. I think half these purported christian leaders ARE closet homosexuals, so divorced from their own sexuality as to be dangerous.