Pendragons Princess

Who says you can’t predict pregnancies?

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20301647,00.html

Duggars Expecting Their 19th Child!

By Alicia Dennis

September 1, 2009

Make way for more Duggars!

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of Tonitown, Ark., who have 18 children and one grandchild on the way, are expecting a new addition to their household – baby No. 19 will arrive in the spring.

“We are so thrilled,” says Michelle, 42. “We just couldn’t believe it is happening.” Jim Bob, 44, agrees: “This never gets old. We are so grateful for each child. We are looking forward to our first grand baby and our 19th child.”

Oldest son Joshua, 21 and his wife Anna, 21, are expecting daughter Mackynzie Renée next month, so she will be older than her new aunt or uncle.

“I think it is going to be awesome, it is going to be great,” says Josh about the news that his parents are expecting. “We have been looking forward to the arrival of my little girl and to now get to celebrate for my parents, it’s a wonderful thing.”

Another Fun Pregnancy
The families often get to see one another and are looking forward to the babies’ births.

“I love all of this, it is so fun,” says Michelle. “Anna and I will have babies five months apart. My mother and my sister were pregnant at the same time and it was really wonderful. The kids were really close and still are. I have a nephew who grew up with me, we’re just three months apart.”

The Duggars live debt-free in a house they built themselves with their kids, whose names all begin with J: after Josh there are twins Jana and John-David, 19; Jill, 18; Jessa, 16; Jinger, 15; Joseph, 14; Josiah, 13; Joy-Anna, 11; twins Jedidiah and Jeremiah, 10; Jason, 9; James, 8; Justin, 6; Jackson, 5; Johanna, 3; Jennifer, 2, and Jordyn-Grace, 8 months. Their lives are featured on TLC’s 18 Kids and Counting, airing Tuesday nights.

Surprised This Time

Despite being pregnant 18 times before, Michelle says this pregnancy came as a shock, although her daughters wondered why she was eating more pickles than usual.

“I was wanting pickles and the older girls were saying, ‘Mom, you only crave these at the very beginning of being pregnant, You kept it from us before, now tell us. Are you?’” Michelle says. “And I kept telling them I wasn’t. I just wanted some pickles.”

But when she couldn’t lose weight on her diet, she became suspicious.

“I was in Weight Watchers with Jim Bob and I wasn’t losing any weight,” she says. “I couldn’t figure it out. I was doing what I should. And the baby, who was nursing, was fussy. I kept thinking, ‘This isn’t right. She isn’t teething, she doesn’t have an ear infection. I’m not cheating on my diet, I should be losing weight.’ Then, I put two and two together and wondered if I could possibly be pregnant.”

She took out one of two tests she had in the house and it was immediately positive.

Renewed Marriage Vows
“I told Jim Bob and he couldn’t keep it in, he was so excited,” she says. “The kids were outside playing on a water slide and he gathered them together and had to share the news. There was all this screaming and yelling.”

The Duggars recently renewed their wedding vows – they’ve been married 25 years and one month – and say that the ceremony was a wonderful way for their own children to understand the commitment of marriage.

“We got married when Michelle was 17 and I was 19,” Jim Bob says. “We were married in the hallway of a church because at the time they had no sanctuary. There were plastic chairs and crepe paper. So, when we renewed our vows, we did it in that same hallway and we splurged to make bows out of a plastic white table cloth this time, but we still had plastic chairs. I think it is important to have the kids see that commitment themselves.”

No Health Concerns
Michelle says that since she was 36 years old, her doctor has given her and Jim Bob pamphlets about prenatal testing since there is an increase of risk of health problems in babies with older mothers. But, she says they don’t worry about those risks and don’t take the tests.

“We know what could happen,” she says. “We read through the information. If the Lord chooses to give us challenges along the way, we know His grace will be there, so we don’t opt to do the testing.”

As far as her own health, her doctor told PEOPLE when her last child was born that Michelle’s health was excellent: “Some women are made to have babies, and Michelle is to the nth degree,” ob-gyn Amy Sarver told PEOPLE in December. “She is in terrific health without any strain on her uterus.”

Michelle says she’s just glad for every day that she gets to enjoy being with her kids, even as she endures a 19th round of morning sickness.

“I’m feeling nauseous right now,” she says. “And, I’m tired. I am happy for the feelings of morning sickness and I’m happy for every day I get to play with my kids. We don’t know what tomorrow holds and so I try to enjoy every moment.”

Another J-Name
Already, names are being discussed in the Duggar household: Jessa, 16, has printed up a list of J-names for boys and girls that have yet to be used by a Duggar, Michelle says.

“We’ll hopefully find out whether it’s a girl or a boy at 20 weeks,” says Jim Bob. (Michelle is almost at the 12-week mark now.) “That will narrow the list down some.”

And Jim Bob says he’d welcome a little assistance: “We’d love to hear from the readers at PEOPLE.com to come up with a special name for this child.”

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Guffaw. A special name for the child? How about anything that does not start with the letter J?

My husband just commented to me that although Michelle Duggar and I are the same age, she could pass for my great great great grandmother. Sadly, multiple pregnancies do age a body and everything else in the process. Okay, so maybe he was exaggerating. Michelle may feel nauseous, but not as much as the rest of America, even those who have more than five but under ten kids. This is sick, it is not normal, it is not natural, and it sure as hell is not a clown car. I wonder if Jim Bob feels like God yet? This guy can populate an entire planet with his creations. Well, Michelle and Jim Bob have proven to the world they propagate prolifically enough for the rest for the human race to stop breeding overnight. I’m still laughing at my husband’s comment, though. And then that “Jim Bob couldn’t keep it in” - he certainly couldn’t! Too funny. It’s good to be childfree and look decades younger than your real age.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7996230.stm

Attenborough warns on population

The broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has become a patron of a group seeking to cut the growth in human population.

On joining the Optimum Population Trust, Sir David said growth in human numbers was “frightening”.

Sir David has been increasingly vocal about the need to reduce the number of people on Earth to protect wildlife.

The Trust, which accuses governments and green groups of observing a taboo on the topic, say they are delighted to have Sir David as a patron.

Fraught area

Sir David, one of the BBC’s longest-standing presenters, has been making documentaries on the natural world and conservation for more than half a century.

In a statement issued by the Optimum Population Trust he is quoted as saying: “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more.”

The Trust, which was founded in 1991, campaigns for the UK population to decrease voluntarily by not less than 0.25% a year.

It has launched a “Stop at Two” online pledge to encourage couples to limit their family’s size.

Other patrons include Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and Dame Jane Goodall, founder of the Jane Goodall institute.

BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said population was a fraught area of debate, with libertarians and some religious groups vehemently opposing measures by governments to influence individual fertility.

In turn, the Trust accuses policy makers and environmentalists of conspiring in a “silent lie” that human numbers can grow forever with no ill-effects.

In January 2009, Sir David revealed that he had received hate mail from viewers for not crediting God in his nature programmes.

His most recent documentary focused on how Charles Darwin came up with the theory of evolution and why it remained important.

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I’ve always liked David Attenborough - he is a very smart man. Nature has its way of balancing itself, whether it is through people being born sterile, or at its worst, natural disasters. At some point, the plant we call home will run out of fertile land for growing food on, clean water to consume, and clean air. We have arrived at a point in human history where it is unnecessary for humans to be having lots of babies that will just further consume resources. In fact, clean, consumable water on earth is only 0.003 percent of all water sources - and that is for every living person on the planet. It may come to a point where nations will be forced to implement a policy along the lines of what China presently has - only one child per family - if we are to save this planet and make it liveable for future generations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7884138.stm?lss

Is it selfish to have more than two children?

By Margaret Ryan

BBC News

Is having more than two children selfish? The future of the planet rarely plays a part when planning a family, but that’s got to change, say environmental campaigners.

Parents who have more than two children are “irresponsible” for placing an intolerable burden on resources and increasing damage to eco-systems, says a leading green campaigner.

Curbing population growth through contraception must play a role in fighting global warming, argues Jonathon Porritt.

This week, the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which Mr Porrit is a patron, launched its “Stop at Two” online pledge to encourage couples to limit their family’s size.

Mr Porritt said earlier this month: “I think we will work our way towards a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible.”

He is not advocating a compulsory limit but told the BBC that couples should “connect up their concerns with the natural environment with their decisions as prospective parents”.

“Every additional human being is increasing the burden on this planet which is becoming increasingly intolerable,” says Mr Porritt, who runs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission.

Each extra person in the UK emits around 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum, he argues, but he warns population is a subject even some environmentalists think too controversial to discuss.

The total fertility rate - the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime - reached 1.90 in the UK in 2007, meaning 190 children were born for every 100 women, according to the Office for National Statistics. UK fertility rates have not been this high since 1980.

The UK population alone is expected to increase from 61 million to 77 million by 2051 but the OPT believes the UK’s long-term sustainable population level may be lower than 30 million.

“The more couples decide to have just one or two children, or even remain childless, the more they can relieve pressures on rapidly deteriorating ecosystems and alleviate demand for dwindling energy and food resources,” says policy director Rosamund McDougall.

If women in the UK stopped at two children, this would cut the UK’s forecast population by an estimated seven million by 2050, the OPT suggests.
But for mother-of-five Rosie Whitehouse, green issues did not play a part in her and her husband’s decision to have a large family.

“Life isn’t as simple as that,” says Mrs Whitehouse, a former journalist.
“For most women the environment doesn’t figure at all. I was making programmes about global warming when I became pregnant with my first son, who is now 20, and it didn’t enter my head,” she says, although she can understand why Mr Porritt feels justified in raising the issue.

“I didn’t think about money and what it was going to cost either. I just had this romantic idea,” she says.

Mrs Whitehouse, 47, who works full-time and lives in London, queries whether larger families necessarily place a greater burden on the environment.

“Money is important so you don’t buy ready-made meals. I cooked up cauldrons of soup.”

‘No more toys’

And just because you have five children “it does not mean you have five times the amount of plastic toys,” she says. “You just have to say ‘no more’.”

She has four children still living at home aged 18, 15 and twins aged 10 and says they are environmentally aware. But she does not believe green issues will be uppermost in her daughters’ minds when they come to think about having a family.

“Pregnancy is introspective. It is a selfish time, especially when you first find out, ” she says.

It’s a sentiment echoed by mother-of-three Siobhan Freegard who says environmental considerations aren’t even on the radar when couples think about how many children they want.

“If you polled mums and asked them for 10 reasons why they would not want more children the list would include money, sleepless nights and the strain on relationships,” says Ms Freegard, of the online parent network Netmums.

The bottom line would certainly seem to focus the minds of many parents, judging by recent research. The average cumulative cost of raising a child from birth to the age of 21 is about £193,000, according to a survey by the insurer Liverpool Victoria.

Ms Freegard says it is “crazy” to think the impact on the environment would even figure in the family planning process.

She has two sons, aged 12 and six, and a nine-year-old daughter. With the birth of her youngest, she felt they were a proper family, although managing three children hasn’t been easy: “It was messy and I lost control of things, but in a good way.”

And as one of five children herself, she extols the virtues of a large family, for example in having siblings to share caring for a parent.

“It’s about having some support and sharing the load. I wanted to recreate that for my own children.”

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At this point I love to ask, “Why do you want more than two children”? You’d be amazed at how many people think they are somehow special if they have more than two children (No, bearing a special mark as such does not make one special or superior by any means; it just establishes one’s status as a microbe; as my husband likes to say, “You have a one of a kind last name in five million people. Now that is special.” Thank you my love! :)”)

There is nothing virtuous about having a large family at this point in time. Why teach sharing and caring just to siblings? Can’t extend it to thetrest of the human race? The fundamentalist evangelical Christians err greatly on this side. They think their flesh is more special than the rest of the human race (here we go again with that much forbidden word per the Bible - flesh - hey, we’re talking about people who run through the blankets like animals. When one is doing that, who has time for a spiritual life?)

Humans couldn’t regenerate the environment even if they tried. Try making new soil, for example. Sure, it can be done with chemicals in any science laboratory - chemicals are good for you - as soon as that is done I predict the good people of Boulder, Colorado will be there to protest it since they advocate an all natural way of life (I can’t say I blame them there. It’s worth noting that Boulderites do not breed like rabbits, either, it’s just their neighbors to the south in Colorado Springs who have such a lifestyle.)

At the rate the planet is going, a utopia created by humans is impossible. A dystopia might be possible, though - one where humans eat their own offspring because no more natural resources for growing food is available. There are animals that do eat their own and once the human race becomes lowered to that status, yes, perhaps it is a fitting dystopia altogether.

It gets worse:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/30/earlyshow/health/main4764432.shtml

Octuplets’ Family Filed For Bankruptcy

Source: Also Abandoned A House; L.A. Times: Mom Had Embryos Implanted; Ethicist
Blasts Clinic That Did

BELLFLOWER, Calif., Jan. 30, 2009

CBS News has learned that the family of the octuplets born this week outside Los Angeles filed for bankruptcy and abandoned a home a little over a year-and-a-half ago.

Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman says the mother is in her mid-thirties and lives with her parents.

There’s been no mention of the octuplets’ father, Kauffman observes.

The grandfather, she adds, is apparently going to head back to his native Iraq to earn money for the growing family. He told CBS News he’s a former Iraqi military man.

Kauffman reported Thursday, and the octuplets’ maternal grandmother now confirms to the Los Angeles Times, that the babies’ mother already had six young children.

And a family acquaintance had told Kauffman that two of the six other kids are twins, and the six range in age from about two to about seven.

The mother’s name is still being kept under wraps.

But her mother, Angela Suleman, also tells the newspaper her daughter conceived the octuplets through a fertility program.

Suleman told the Times her daughter had embryos implanted and, “They all happened to take.”

On The Early Show Friday, the scientific director of an Atlanta-area fertility clinic blasted whichever clinic did the implantations, saying he’s “stunned.”

Doctors at the hospital where the octuplets were born, Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center in Bellflower, Calif., some 17 miles southeast of L.A., say the patient came to them already three months pregnant.

Asked at a news conference whether fertility assistance should be provided for a mother who already has multiple children, Dr. Harold Henry, part of the team that delivered the octuplets, said, “Kaiser has no policy on that, adding that doctors counseled the woman on her options.

“The options,” said Henry, “were to continue the pregnancy or to selectively abort. The patient chose to continue the pregnancy.”

Dr. Karen Maples, who also helped deliver the octuplets, read a statement from the mother saying, “My family and I are ecstatic about all of their arrivals.”

The woman and her children live in a neighborhood of small, one-story homes, Kauffman reports, all with two-to-three bedrooms at most. Soon, she pointed out, there will be 14 children and at least three adults living in one of the homes — until the grandfather heads back to his native Iraq,

Kauffman says unanswered questions include where the woman got the fertility treatments and how they were paid for.

On The Early Show Friday, Michael Tucker, scientific director of Georgia Reproductive Specialists, says all these developments leave him “stunned. As the story’s unfolded and it’s gone from the potential use of just fertility drugs, or misuse thereof, to actual, apparently, IVF (in-vitro fertilization) with transfer of embryos, this is just remarkable to me that any practitioner in our field of reproductive medicine would undertake such a practice.”

Tucker, who has a doctorate in reproductive physiology, says it’s “absolutely” possible the octuplets’ mother got pregnant with them by taking fertility drugs on her own without the help of a clinic, “and that seemed the most plausible scenario, simply because the profession, we’re policed by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, has focused so minutely on the fact that we need to reduce the number of embryos that we transfer. We really are all about seeking the one, the one embryo that’s going to make the healthy, single-born baby.

“And this kind of multiple plethora excess of babies is too much of a good thing. And it’s rather a slap in the face of the whole profession, simply because it’s going in the wrong direction.

“And it’s unfortunate, because the media pick up on this and seem to go, I think, Arthur Kaplan from UPenn (University of Pennsylvania) said the media tend to go goo-goo gaga over this and, in fact, it’s really a bit of a medical disaster.”

“Had she walked into a fertility clinic and said, ‘Listen, I’ve got other children, the oldest seven, the youngest two,’ co-anchor Julie Chen asked Tucker, “is there any ethical responsibility on the clinic’s part to say, ‘I’m not going to treat you,’ or, ‘You know what? This is not a good idea?” ‘

“Suffice to say,” Tucker responded, “I’ve been in this business for 25 years now. And it’s pretty much standard practice in all clinics to have some form of psychological evaluation of the patient. Also, their sociological circumstances. And I’m stunned, actually, that a clinic would proceed to treat a patient in this circumstance and then even to get to perhaps the transfer of embryos and ponder the transfer in, I believe, the lady’s mid-30s, a 35-year-old — she should be receiving two embryos, maximum, as a transfer into her uterus to have had eight transferred is somewhat — is extremely irresponsible.”
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Humans were not designed to bear litters of children. For this woman to have the embryos planted after she filed for bankruptcy is highly irresponsible. The state should confiscate all of her 14 - yes, 14 - children from her since she cannot care for even one child right now. The woman reportedly lives with her mother and father, until her father gets recalled to Iraq for duty. This is past the infuriating point and as far as I am concerned, this woman should be sterilized at government expense for her irresponsible behavior. But maybe that is not the most shocking part of the story: there is no mention of a husband at all since the initial octuplets story broke out. There must be a “father” of some kind, in this woman’s case, a minimum of possibly five fathers, since of her already six children she has two sets of twins. Talk about working the system - this woman really does have her sex trophies right now. So even though Miss CrotchDump Machine has filed for bankruptcy, lives with her parents, she will have to get on welfare in order to feed all 14 screaming tiny mouths. How did she pay for those embryos? Heroin money? I find it very hard to believe a clinic implanted eight embryos in her. Either Suleman is lying, or the supposed clinic that did it, violated medical ethic standards. This woman is not to be lauded for bearing octuplets. At this point it might be a good idea for the media to discontinue the anonymity. People who remain anonymous in circumstances like this usually have something to hide. The truth will come out eventually.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7759845.stm

Baby decisions - adding to the world’s woes?

By Joanna Benn

How responsible is it to have children in a world whose environmental health is already under stress? That’s the question Joanna Benn poses this week in the Green Room. On the other hand, she wonders, will a couple more hungry mouths make much difference?

I came out of my house last week and got caught up in a fleet of mothers and prams.

They were wearing a middle class yummy mummy uniform combining comfort and fashion - skinny jeans, UGG boots, black tops and large sunglasses.

The prams were all state-of-the-art three wheeled, balanced, air-bagged mini cars that can fold to the size of a postage stamp and carry the week’s shopping.

The urban mother tribe looked chic, proud and collectively cool.

It got me thinking. I love kids, I love babies.

I love the idea of the Brady Bunch, of close-knit large families and a stream of brothers and sisters of different heights with crazy hair.

However, perhaps it’s my age; suddenly everyone I know has children and it is confusing me.

I don’t even know when it all happened. I remember conversations about university, jobs, flats, boyfriends and partners, but I seem to have missed the pre-baby musings.

One minute people were childless - or child-free, depending on your viewpoint.

The next - magic wand, small bang, plume of smoke - it was insta-family, complete with new people-carrier in the drive and more often than not, a house extension.

Two weeks ago, a single childless friend confessed she’d been looking into freezing her eggs. That apparently is not a taboo subject.

Nor are conversations about contraception, fertility patterns, mastitis, post-partum depression and sex, child behaviour problems, sleepless nights, credit crunch worries or redundancy.

However, dare ask how green is it to have kids in a world of dwindling resources, vast global inequality, terrifying climate change scenarios and dying empty seas… then people get uncomfortable and usually defensive.

Ugly truths

I have couched the question a few times: “Why did you want children?”

The answers have usually been - “It seemed the next thing to do, we wanted to, it felt right, I couldn’t imagine not…”

Push again - “Have you thought about what kind of world you are bringing them into to?
Some climate change scenarios give us a 10 to 15 year window before things get very ugly and scary indeed.”

Resounding silence.

Being an environmentalist is, quite frankly, an awkward thing.

When I see babies, not only do I see the beauty, joy and miracle of life, I also see nappies, landfill waste, vast amounts of food and money needed, and a very shaky, unpredictable future.

According to United Nations projections, the world population will nearly stabilise at just above 10 billion people after 2200.

That’s a lot of people on one small planet.

When we talk about the environment and available natural resources, we bandy around statistics; yet none of it seems to be about me or you or that guy that everyone talked about during the US election campaign, Joe the Plumber.

Mood swings

Ask any environmental organisation what it thinks about birth control; it’ll sidestep the issue, and say it’s not their place to comment.

If a commentator says there are too many people on the planet, their words smack of authoritarian dictatorships and human rights violations, and echo traces of unpalatable eugenics.

However, the reality is that every time we eat, switch on a light, get in a car, drink a beer, go on holiday or buy something to wear or use, we are adding to our environmental footprint.

Toddlers - small beings that they are - require almost unlimited nappies, a fair amount of food, and apparently a loungeful of loud, battery-powered plastic toys.

I am not saying we shouldn’t have kids. They may well be the leaders of tomorrow, steering humanity into a just, equitable, fair and healthy future.

The new generation may indeed succeed where all others have failed, and learn lessons of the past.

Perhaps it’s just my mood.

Or perhaps it’s the media’s fault that some of us feel as if humanity is sliding from one patch of melting ice to another in a murky sea of financial, environmental and social woes.

I am curious to know if I am the only 30-something woman who has these dilemmas, worrying about the planet’s future and what we could and should do to ease the strain.

Am I fretting needlessly? Because in the grand scheme of things, one or two more children in the world really make no difference, do they?

And as for the future - rising sea levels, bare former forests, desertification, empty seas and a few dollar bills floating in the wind - well that’ll all take care of itself.

Won’t it?

Joanna Benn is a journalist, writer and consultant specialising in environmental issues
The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website
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The comments on this article are definitely worth reading since many of them do agree with what Benn says about overpopulation. Most people do not stop to question what society tells one to do and how to live, as one comment mentioned. People just “got married, had babies, that was that.” Social regression has not done a whole lot to improve the human race - our planet is overpopulated at 6.6 billion people with close to 600 million of them living in poverty. There is really no need to mention the fact that people still die from starvation in Africa, South America, and India. I mean, so what if by 2200 the planet has to provide natural resources for 10 billion people for an average of an 80 year life span. By then, we will all have to eat synthetic food (oh wait, McDonald’s has already taken care of that), man-made water, breathe toxic air, and depleted soil bare of minerals. What too many people forget is the following: Nobody ever died from not having children, but women have died from having children. Just ask anyone who knows a woman who died during childbirth. Human beings are not microbes - it’s just a shame that one too many of us microbes, I mean humans, can’t stop to think before running through the blankets (something my husband likes to say). Ego satisfactions will be the ultimate downfall of the human race, not the lack of human reproduction. Natural resources are finite, not infinite - things like oil, water, food, soil does not become magically regenerated. Having said that, I will close with my favorite comment from that news item:

“Planet earth does NOT belong to us! She will make you pay for believing so!”
Earth, Everywhere

This is an older article but worth mentioning:

Time magazine January 2, 1989

Too Many Mouths

by Anastasia Toufexis

Close to the Zocalo, Mexico City’s great central square, lies the barrio of Morelos, a vast warren of dusty, potholed streets and narrow entryways. The passages lead to a gloomy world. On each side is a roofless patio in a ten-room jumble. Each room holds a family: each family averages five people. The only bathrooms - two to serve 100 people - are located at the back of the patio. The odor of grease and sewage permeates the air. Flies buzz relentlessly. The people who live here are considered lucky.
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Such squalor is common in poor nations like Mexico and nearby nations like Guatemala where there is a high rate of population growth and a poor economy where jobs are scarce. What if something likes this happens in a major American city, like New York? It can, if by the year 2050 the human race has not done something to reduce the growing population of the world. By then, if present birth trends continue, the population of the planet will be 9 billion, with approximately one billion of them born in the industrialized world (Global Population Trends, http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2001/06/061101_population.jhtml).

Another excerpt from the article:

In the poorest countries, growth rates are outstripping the national ability to provide the bare necessities - housing, fuel, and food. Living trees are being chopped down for fuel, grasslands overgrazed by livestock, and croplands overplowed by desperate farmers. Horrifying images of starvation in northeastern Africa have captured world attention in the past decade. In India, according to government reports, 37% of the people cannot buy enough food to sustain themselves. Warned Shri B. B. Vohra, vice chairman of the Himachal Pradesh state land-use board in northern India: “We may be well on the way to producing a subhuman kind of race where people do not have enough energy to deal with their problems.”

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No, they won’t have enough energy to deal with their problems. In 1989, the population of that nation was 833,421,982. In 2008: 1.13 billion. Yet they have no energy issue when it comes to human reproduction.

Another excerpt:

Prospects are so dire that some environmentalists urge the world to adopt the goal of cutting in half the earth’s population growth rate during the next decade. “That means a call for a two-child family for the world as a whole,” explained Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute. “In some countries there may be a need to set a goal of one child per family.” That is a daunting challenge. During the past decade, many of the world’s poor nations condemned the notion of family planning as an imperialist and racist scheme touted by the developed world. Yet today virtually all Third World countries are committed to limiting population growth.

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While the population growth rate has slowed down a bit from 1959 to 1999 (about one-half the rate), there will still be a major population growth problem due to the finite resources of the earth. Third world nations continue to grow in population, as the example of India shows; and in the United States, the growth population is just below 1% (0.88%)but is still the highest in the industrialized world. The United States Census Bureau predicts our population to hit 439 million, which is still a lot of people. One more issue the article mentions is, of course, religion. The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to family planning in Third World nations (some things never change). China has at least exercised some responsibility in population control since 1979, and Thailand managed to cut population growth in half, in 1989, mainly through education in birth control. Ideally, Third World countries would be better off following the example of Thailand. If they can before 2050, the world’s population growth will be able to stabilize by then.

Well I dug out another goody from my files, this time, from the National Catholic Reporter, dated August 29, 1997, eleven years ago. Some excerpts from this very long commentary by Jesuit priest Robert F. Drinan:

Organizations that see to slow or control the growth of world population have never received much attention from Catholics. Resistance, even hostility, have long marked the attitude of Catholics toward groups like Zero Population Growth.

The unspoken premise behind the Catholic view has been that as a human being it is better to be than not to be, and that God in his loving providence creates every person for good if imponderable reasons.

Meanwhile, population growth continues at a startling rate. In 1966 Earth’s total population was 3.4 billion. In 1996 it was 5.7 billion. That’s an increase of 2.3 billion in just 30 years.

In September 1994 the world focused on population at the UN’s nine day International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt. The Catholic press reported at some length on that event but mostly about the views on abortion raised by Catholic delegates. There was little attention in the Catholic community given to the awesome problems that are inevitable if the human family continues to grow by 70 million each year.

Education of women is one of the most important [ways to decrease population growth]. Women who can read can obtain accurate information about maternal and child health. They can discover that breast-feeding can often be a natural contraceptive.

[William G.] Hollingsworth urges [women to have] access to contraceptive information. Even though it is well known that lack of contraceptive information is one of the causes of some 52 million abortions each year worldwide, many Catholics have traditional or moral misgivings about artificial contraceptives.

The lack of [overpopulation] interest [by Catholics] is surprising, given decades of official Catholic teaching urging parents to be responsible about the number of children they bring into the world.

The issues are morally complex. There are no simple answers. But it is clear that in the year 2010 there will be at least one billion more persons in the world than in 1997. People of faith and the entire human family must undertake heroic efforts to prepare an existence for these children that is worthy of human beings.

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Drinan’s figures are accurate: in 1997, the world’s population was 6 billion. In 2008, right now we are at 6.7 billion: that’s an addition of 7 billion people in only eleven year’s time. So, yes, if birth trends continue this way, we will definitely be at 7 billion, if not slightly more (7.2 billion at the most) by 2010 – two years away from today.

The Roman Catholic church has always been opposed to artificial contraception – the rhythm method is recommended but even that is not a guaranteed form of birth control. According to the commentary, birth growth has dropped slightly in third world countries as of 1997 but not a whole lot. Catholic teaching aside, it would be more accurate to say this church favors the “imponderable reasons” for one thing only: to increase the numbers of the Roman Catholic Church. Once more people are born into poverty, the church can send its workers to aid and convert the poor, much in the way Mother Theresa did.

Like Hollingsworth said, education for women is the primary key for birth control – access to information, birth control methods, and much more. Poverty has for too long been the mascot of the Roman Catholic Church – encourage a problem, then send a ‘hero’ from the church to help alleviate the problem. Sexual attitudes by this church has probably caused more personal struggles and issues than anything else. What comes of the married couple who are finished having 2 ½ kids and cannot have sex anymore because their church forbids it if contraception is used? Can love and intimacy disappear? It usually does, thus exacerbating the relationship between the married Catholic couple. After all, sex used for pleasure is regarded as Original Sin, something that is only to be used for procreating and nothing else. Then if a baby is somehow conceived while it’s being pleasurable, it’s guilt trip time – not for the parents, but for the child they made. How sad is that? The parents would be better off using contraception and not telling anyone in their church about it. The problem here is the amount of control the Roman Catholic church exerts over its members as well as non-members. It is not unusual for someone to say that if he or she cannot do or have something per his or her religious teachings, then no one else can, either. Admittedly, it is childishness at its finest but then again members of such a church are indeed considered to be “Children of the Church.” There is no independent thinking allowed in this area known as birth control. Those who are open about using birth control usually wind up doing penance. Perhaps it is better to not tell anyone birth control is being used, if one is a Roman Catholic. No one else needs to know. It’s better to have a clear conscience and use birth control rather than instill the tragic results of guilt feelings into the potential offspring, who didn’t ask to be born.

This is another article-letter from my old newspaper files. It is significant in that it mentions both overpopulation and child-free, even though this piece is already eight years old. Read on:

The following op-ed letter appeared in the Hartford Courant on November 26, 2000:

Overpopulation Is A Cancer

by

Teresa M. Barton, Killingly, CT

“Why haven’t we hired better trained and well paid staff to zealously safeguard the children? Are we waiting for another child to die?” asks Naomi W. Peck [letter, Nov. 16, “More Resources for Children”].

My question is, Why are people still breeding children when our world is overpopulated with them? Human overpopulation is a cancer in our biosphere.

I have a short-term, medium-term and long-term response to Ms. Peck.

Short-term: Require pro-life advocates to adopt a child or spend their free time helping Department of Children and Families staff. Pro-life advocates who protest outside family planning clinics have way too much time on their hands, time that would be better spent caring for orphaned or abandoned kids they don’t want aborted.

Medium-term: Encourage infertile people who want children to pursue adoption and not have insurance companies or the government fund their fertility treatments. Fine parents who have children via fertility treatments. Require a parental license for expecting parents. The education to obtain this license should be as tough as the kind medical doctors endure. This education would weed out naive and incompetent wannabe parents, and would decrease population, abortion, and child abuse.

Long-term: Start an international debate on the immorality of bringing children into an overpopulated world, especially children whom parents can’t afford to raise. Challenge the ideology that labels the child-free, childless or infertile as cursed or selfish. Nature is calling them to a noble cause - to voluntarily reduce the human species by not reproducing.

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This letter was a response to an original article regarding the failure of the state of Connecticut to protect a child who died due to neglect on the parent’s part, and the state’s part. While Peck originally wanted to see more money going to DCF, the reality is that money is not going to solve child abuse problems. Neither is money the answer to providing children with safe, happy, nurturing homes. People who really love their children and not neglect them nor cause them to wind up in the hands of the state is the solution here - not people who lust for babies, which seems to be the norm nowadays seeing how today’s kids are being raised. Hopefully this is something to be learned from.

I found the following clipping in an old school folder with other articles on human overpopulation:

From The Hartford Courant, Thursday January 20, 2000

The Problem Is Humans, Not Deer.

I am writing in regard to the recent controversy over the deer hunt in Groton [“Bluff Point Deer Hunt Allowed,” Page 1, January 12]. It seems that those in favor of the hunt believe that they are acting in the best interest of the deer because, due to the overpopulation of deer in the area, most of the herd will die a slow death of starvation that is “less humane” that a quick death by bullet.

The reason the deer in the area are supposedly overpopulated is due to the fact to another species’ overpopulation - humans. The deer herd is too large due to a loss of habitat caused by human development in the area.

Human overpopulation is the main threat to a fragile ecosystem, not a herd of deer. There are millions of starving people in the world, and this too is due to human overpopulation. The more we feed hungry people, the more people reproduce. Then we have even more hungry people starving. The only way to really cure the world hunger problem would be to thin out the population. Wouldn’t this be “more humane” than allowing millions of people to starve to death each year? But I don’t think anyone would endorse the idea of “thinning the herd” of starving people with shotguns and orange vests, even in the most overpopulated parts of Africa or Asia.

I am not saying that I think we should solve the problem of world hunger with a manhunt. What I am saying is that we should not accept a fate for our fellow animals that we are not willing to accept for ourselves.

- Katie A. King, Wethersfield, CT

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This article brings up an interesting viewpoint: while legally organized hunts of wildlife have been held in order to reduce the “swelling” population of wildlife in certain suburban areas, mentioning that the swelling human population must have cures of its own has its own taboos of just how do we do it. I agree, I don’t think anyone would legally endorse eliminating starving people with guns - after all, we have wars to “take care” of that problem - but in reality, it does not do anything to reduce world hunger.
The other problem is, even in poor nations with a high rate of hunger, they also have high rates of birth, particularly in Africa. There are in fact more humane solutions to overpopulation and one of them resides in the childfree community over the world.