Birth Control: The world's population needs to be reduced in number don't you think?

Should there be global laws to stop the human population increasing and reduce it?

  • Yes

    Votes: 16 36.4%
  • No

    Votes: 17 38.6%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 11 25.0%

  • Total voters
    44

Kudos

Psytranceaholic
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I'm concerned about the size of the population, not just for the UK but the whole world. There's simply not enough room:

We're importing most of our food, because there's not enough space for us to grow it for ourselves.
New houses are being built smaller, so now we're living in increasingly cramped conditions.
This allows for higher population density, so now we've got problems with 'rush-hour' traffic becoming a 24-hour thing.
More people=more cars=more pollution....

And then there' s the subject of PEAK OIL...which has already happened, so it looks like we're going to run out of it anyway in about 5 years time:

The Oil Age only properly took off at the beginning of the last century. It gave us extra means to acheive things, including giving people the chance to have more kids, as it was affordable, and transportation of any goods a family needed was easier and cheaper.

When the oil runs out, all the things that it is used for will no longer be produced, what's already exists will be used until it is finished or broken. We will basically have to live like we did before oil, burning coal and timber instead. Sadly our population has grown so much that there won't be any coal and timber left before long...

So a reduction in the population WILL happen, as people die of cold, starvation and getting killed by others in the fight for food.

What should have been done, as the oil age began, about 50 years ago, is a law to be enforced in every country which consumes oil, to allow no more than 1 or 2 children to be born between each couple.

I think that law should be in place now, even it is too late.

I know great-grandmothers who are not even 60 years-old yet...thanks to un-planned teenage pregnancies. SOMEHOW there needs to some form of control, to keep the population from increasing and actually have it gradually reduce...to the point where we can have our countryside back.

What do you think? Do the poll, cos I've never heard ANYONE say this an important issue...I'd like to know if I'm not the only one who is concerned about this!
 
Dont they have a form of birth control in China....only one kid per family or something?

I dont think we should have so severe a form of birth control....but teenagers really need to be educated more about sex and stuff. My sex ed lessons revolved around being shown numerous contraception 'devices' but not actually being told what they did, how effective they were blah blah blah...and the teacher was hardly someone u could approach.

People also need it drummed into them wherever they go about alternative fuel resources etc, and also shock tactics are needed so people understand that its running out. Dont think people quite understand how imminent it is.
 
There is enough, for everyone.....
It isn't a case of there not being enough resources, it is simply a case of mismanagement of those resources,
and birth control should be a individual choice, never one dictated by others.
 
Like Yodhe said - there is plenty. Its just a question of how you do it.


So - who gets to decide who is allowed to breed?

You?

The government?



Vegetarians would say that meat eaters shouldn't be allowed to breed.

Christians would say that heathens shouldn't be allowed to breed.

National Front supporters would say that brown people shouldn't be allowed to breed.

I would suggest that stupid people shouldn't be allowed to breed, but that would mean that you would have to be compulsorily sterilised for starting this thread in the first place.



:rolleyes:
 
Read this article, Kudos:

The Inhumanity of Population Control

Although it comes from an economic POV (what else would you expect from the Foundation for Economic Education?), the author has a surprisingly humanitarian approach - except he doesn't seem to realise that the final aim of many NGOs is to render themselves obsolete.
 
There is enough for everyone's need but not everyone's greed
 
The most effective form of birth control is actually breastfeeding. The World Health Organization estimates that more pregnancies are prevented each year by nursing than every other form of birth control combined. There is a neurological reflex loop between nerves in the nipple and the hypothalamus which then tells the pituitary gland to release the hormone prolactin. Prolactin is the most effective hormone in the human body at stopping ovulation.

The trouble is most people in the modern world don't nurse properly. Nursing once every few hours isn't effective. The prolactin levels will go up and then fall back down by the next time they nurse. Women in hunter gatherer societies nurse constantly, once every 30 minutes or so for only about 30 seconds. These women can have sex constantly but only give birth every 5 or 6 years, because their prolactin levels are steadily high as a result of more frequent but less intense nursing periods. Women in these societies have something like 10 periods in their entire lifetime.
 
Reconstructed said:
The trouble is most people in the modern world don't nurse properly. Nursing once every few hours isn't effective. The prolactin levels will go up and then fall back down by the next time they nurse. Women in hunter gatherer societies nurse constantly, once every 30 minutes or so for only about 30 seconds. These women can have sex constantly but only give birth every 5 or 6 years, because their prolactin levels are steadily high as a result of more frequent but less intense nursing periods. Women in these societies have something like 10 periods in their entire lifetime.

Interestin'.

And just makes it even more criminal that companies like Nestle "force" their baby-milk products on third world mothers...
http://www.babymilkaction.org/
:no:
 
Kudos said:
I'm concerned about the size of the population, not just for the UK but the whole world. There's simply not enough room:

It's easy to lay the "blame" for an inequatible (sp?!) society on one single factor, be it population, education, immigration (and your argument could equally well be used to support immigration cuts), but you gotta check the facts first.

eg: UK birth rate plummets

As for the world population, I agree with what the others have said. It's not a problem of limited resources but unfair distribution of resources.
Though oil resources are another kettle of fishies.
 
[doom-mongering hat]
Perhaps there are enough resources to go round, but even if we come up with a fairer way of distributing them (and we need to - preventable famine, disease and poverty are the single biggest causes of suffering in the world today), the population will rise again as more of the world will have access to enough food and health care, hence will live longer.

At current trends, the world population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2030. Following the same trend, it will get to 12 billion by 2045. It is growing unsustainably, there is no question. Something will have to give, but I could never condone imposed birth control, even what is already going on in China.

I decided a long time ago never to have children. This is one of the more important reasons for that decision. It's unethical to ask people not to have kids, but unless we want the next few generations of humans to be choking in their own rubbish and running out of every resource, we're gonna have to slow down the population growth. I do not want to contribute to the overpopulation problem. Of course I've got a host of other reasons not to have kids, btw.

More Bill Hicks but poignant: "We're just a virus with shoes."
[/doom-mongering hat]
 
Don't wanna be pedantic, Stu, but
(preventable famine, disease and poverty are the single biggest causes of suffering in the world today),
- no they aren't. They are effects, not causes. Ignorance, both in the developed world and the 3rd world, is the biggest cause of these effects, and greed is probably the biggest cause of this ignorance. We are ignorant about what WE can do about it. Our comfort and complacency (and I'm not just talking you and me, but all of us bastards who are comfortable and complacent, however motivated we think we are) cause suffering. Something like a tsunami strikes and we all get up and put on benefit gigs and so on, and thus we feel good about ourselves - but how many hundreds of children have died needlessly in the time it has taken you to read this post? And what are the REAL causes?

Overpopulation? No. Have a look, for example, at what President Mbeki is doing about AIDS in SA (i.e. nothing, he's a useless twat), and you'll see the kind of monumental constitutional ignorance we're up against.
 
"You could starve to death in a field full of wheat if you hadn't yet learned to identify it as food."
 
Reconstructed said:
The most effective form of birth control is actually breastfeeding. The World Health Organization estimates that more pregnancies are prevented each year by nursing than every other form of birth control combined. There is a neurological reflex loop between nerves in the nipple and the hypothalamus which then tells the pituitary gland to release the hormone prolactin. Prolactin is the most effective hormone in the human body at stopping ovulation.

The trouble is most people in the modern world don't nurse properly. Nursing once every few hours isn't effective. The prolactin levels will go up and then fall back down by the next time they nurse. Women in hunter gatherer societies nurse constantly, once every 30 minutes or so for only about 30 seconds. These women can have sex constantly but only give birth every 5 or 6 years, because their prolactin levels are steadily high as a result of more frequent but less intense nursing periods. Women in these societies have something like 10 periods in their entire lifetime.

The problem with the western world is its so easy not to breast feed, there is such a stigma about breasts being a sexual object that many women feel uncomftable with the idea, Plus Soccietys prudish veiw on it still... A lot of women get frowned upon for breastfeeding in public, and sometimes asked to leave a public place! I was once asked to breastfeed my son in the toilets of a restuarant because an elderly couple near me complained! :o
My response to this was, well would you eat your meal in a public restroom?

Admitedly at antenatal class it was drummed into us that breast is best...

Unfortunatly this attitude is not present on the marternity ward... I had great problems at first trying to breastfeed my son, And got told by a midwife that I shouldnt bother anymore after 2 nights of no sleep and I should give him formula for my own peace of mind :Sad:

I however perservered... It was difficult and at times a painful experiance, but i breastfed for 6 months solidly, until he was well weaned and then mixed breast with forumula til he was 9 months...

Jack fed every hour on the hour for the hole 6 months for about 20 minutes at a time...

In my grandmothers time a baby would of been breastfed for longer... But It got to the point where i didnt want to be a social recluse in my home because people weere offended by the natural act of a mother feeding her own child... :Sad:

BTW...the point of breastfeeding being a natural contraception... I breastfed solidly for 6 months, I got pregnant again at 3 months....but then I have been told im extremly fertile :crazy:

The social stigma really put a damper on something which should of been a beautiful bonding experiance between me and my son...

:sad:
 
Squagnut said:
Something like a tsunami strikes and we all get up and put on benefit gigs and so on, and thus we feel good about ourselves .


too right mate.. Oxfam.. right bunch of c*nts... almost as bad as self rightous hippies...



.
 
Pheadra said:
Jack fed every hour on the hour for the hole 6 months for about 20 minutes at a time...

BTW...the point of breastfeeding being a natural contraception... I breastfed solidly for 6 months, I got pregnant again at 3 months....but then I have been told im extremly fertile :crazy:

The important part of nursing as contraception is that it has to be nearly continuous. Prolactin will only be released by your pituitary gland if that reflex loop that connects your brain to your nipples is being stimulated. After 45 minutes or so of no stimulation, prolactin levels will decline and it will be ineffectual for surpressing ovulation.

People in non-westernized countries that use nursing for contraception typically carry their babies around in little sacks where they have constant access. These women are breastfeeding for fairly short amounts of time every 15-30 minutes. So as soon as prolactin levels are going to start dropping, the baby is breastfeeding again and they shoot right back up. It is kind of an all-or-nothing thing, if the prolactin levels aren't consistently high enough to surpress ovulation, the method is innefectual.
 
Its just not possible in western society to walk around with your breast hanging out...

Plus we are not taught to feed that often, I was told i was doing it wrong by doing it hourly, i was told i should do it less!

I fed Jack on demand, he didnt want "bitty" every 15 minutes! :lol:
I also dont think my nipples would of coped with it either... swollen sore breasts and cracked nipples anyone? Im glad i did it though...
 
plus i breast fed every hour for 20 mins at a time...only leaving 40 minutes btween each feed...so what your saying is i shouldnt of got pregnat again?

Im flukey tho when it comes to fertility :crazy:
 
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