Comments on: Do We Have A Moral Obligation To Limit Population Growth To Save Humanity?

By: John Taves

John Taves — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:31:30 +0000

This is not a difficult question at all. The logic is actually quite simple. It is immoral to choose to have more than two children.

There is a limit to how many people the planet can support. It does not matter if you think we can invent ways to double food production, or produce more fresh water, there is still a limit. It does not matter what that limit is, and it does not matter where you think we are relative to that limit. The population must be stabilized, or we will hit the limit. The only way to stabilize, without killing, is to limit our offspring production. Or to put it another way the population will be “stabilized” one way or the other.

When you choose to have a third child, you are choosing to permanently increase the human population. The only way to undo that permanent increase is for someone else to have fewer than two. So, choosing to have more than two is a selfish choice. It is also cruel, because it moves the human population closer to misery. When you choose to have a third, you are not expecting that child to die before having children of their own. And at today’s fertility rate you can expect that child to also have more than two and thus you are choosing to grow the population forever, thus guaranteeing that some generation will suffer dramatically shorter lives to make up for your selfishness. Or to put it another way, you are choosing to force humans into shorter lives. Shorter average life spans is the only possible outcome if the fertility rate stays above the replacement rate.

By: Alyss

Alyss — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:02:29 +0000

I think we need to limit population, but before we start limiting the number of children people can have, why don’t we find a way to ensure acess to contraception to everyone, world wide, and see what happenes.

By: david

david — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:13:10 +0000

I could not agree more Tatyana and Bucky. It’s amazing to me that people want to outlaw choice in this country, but those same people are not willing to support those kids who are not getting a fair chance in life because of the situation they are born into. If you want to take away choice, you better be ready and willing to deal with the consequences. And this country is not willing to do that.

By: Bucky

Bucky — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:06:22 +0000

Tatyana:

Interesting comment and near and dear to my heart as an adoptive father. But ain’t never gonna happen. I never had any desire to see little replicas of me running around loose in the world, but I know lots of people do. Go figure. And then throw in the religions requiring everyone to go forth and multiply and multiply despite the immorality of banning birthcontrol and encouraging huge families to people that can’t even feed themselves.

And you don’t even want to get started on couples who will go to any expense and length to have a “child of their own to love.” I get it that you might want a genetic copy for all sorts of reasons but if you can’t love a child unless he’s got your nose and eyes, perhaps you shouldn’t be a parent.

But I digress …