The Pope and population Control

Today in HIST1015 a discussion opened up on the use of contraceptives in society, primarily among people of the third world. A document that Pope John Paul II wrote claiming that modern civilization was turning into a "society of death" was debated. Obviously the abortion discussion can be had over and over again, mostly with no real ground taken by any side. The question of abortion and its legality seems to be stuck at the 38th parallel. The topic of this debate didn't focus on abortion however, it centered on the usage of contraceptives to prevent birth.

The class seemed to be mostly in support of contraceptives, yet one student in particular seemed to defend the pope's irresponsible comments by blaming the hyper-sexualized culture, in which the U.S and much of the so called "developed world" live in, for most of the unwanted pregnancies. The question then became whether or not humanity should strive for a solution to over-population.

Many Americans are quick to demonize China's One Child Policy as tyrannical. In their eyes, each family should make an individual choice of how many kids to have, the consequences be damned. It then becomes a question of at what point does your expression of freedom infringe upon mine? This "freedom to die" thought process is fairly easy for many Americans who have never even dealt with food shortages, much less starvation. During the Great Leap Forward, when Red China was experimenting with homemade steel production, a large crop failure spread claiming the lives of around 30 million Chinese. In many high population developing countries, a small failure in the food supply ends up killing hundreds if thousands of people. Such a event could be triggered by something as minimal as a few extra days of the monsoon rains.

In the next fifty years, the population of the world will double. One would assume in today's society of science and real world solutions, ideas about how to stem the ever growing population of the world would abound, unfortunately this isn't the case. Most of brightest minds are busy coming up with new products to sell, or solving the humanitarian problems in the present, instead of the near future.

I saw a statistic a couple weeks ago. In the next twenty years, water in dry parts of the world will become more valuable than oil. An answer to the growing population, which takes place almost entirely in the developing world, needs to be found. The last thing that the world needs is the leader of the world's largest religion condemning condoms and birth control.