🚀 go-pugleaf

We need to make a major push on the media and politicians that there is a third
position distinct from pro-life and pro-choice, which holds that:

(1) The state has a natural right to regulate the reproductive behavior of its
citizens, and may, under certain circumstances, need to either compel women to
bear children or to refrain from doing so. Therefore, women must not be accorded
a constitutional right to choose whether or not to bear children.

(2) The present situation of world overpopulation requires that the state compel
women to refrain from bearing children by whatever means, including abortion.

Environmentalists have been compromising their principles by allying themselves
with the pro-choice position, as an expedient, hoping that it would lay the
foundation for population control when that becomes more acceptable. But it
would be a mistake to do so at the cost of establishing a constitutional right
of choice that will later be an obstacle to population control.

Incidentally, to those postings about radical reductions on population size within
a hundred years, it should be pointed out that that is enough time to do it
without having to shorten anyone's lives. Since few people live longer than that,
a population can be reduced to any level, in principle, by restricting reproduc-
tions to a sufficient rate.

It should also be pointed out that population control is not new. Indeed, it was
the prevailing order for humanity for most of the several tens of thousands of
years he spent as a hunter-gatherer living in village communities. Tribal societies
developed elaborate customs and laws to limit their reproduction, including
controls on marriage, separation of the sexes, and, when necessary, infanticide.
It was not high rates of infant mortality from hunger and disease that held early
populations down in most cases. That only became the prevailing factor after
humans began herding, farming, and forming political organizations larger than
the village and moving around more. It was not uncommon for most of the child-
bearing to be done by a designated minority of the women of such primitive
villages, although everyone shared in the upbringing of the children, so few if
any of them felt abused by not having biological children of their own.

If we were rational, we would restrict reproduction so that only about one out of
25 women would be allowed to bear one child each, for one generation of 25 years,
then gradually raise the rate to 2.12 children over the next 25 years. At the end
of 100 years, the world population would have fallen to a more nearly sustainable
level of 100 million, which would be sufficient to support a complex technical
civilization and could be sustained by the natural ecosystem for about another
100 years, giving us time to build the kinds of sealed, compact cities that we
would need to sustain civilization for a longer period.

Let's not say it couldn't be done. It is a decision like any other. We make it, or
we don't. But it is within out power to do so. It requires nothing that we don't
have. The more of us that say it can be done, the more likely it will be done.


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starflt@uunet.uu.net, jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com
Jon Roland
Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141