I wrote a column last week on the issue of the promotion of family planning (including access to free contraceptives) as part of foreign aid. My instincts told me to be wary of the case for the inclusion of family planning, in part because of the lack of understanding among do-gooders from Western countries about the real determinants of family size in developing countries.
I also had a hunch that family planning iniatives can soon become coercive and Cats should always fight illiberal policies.
I was heartend by the evidence (see Poor Economics, a great book) that providing access to contraceptives does not appear to have a marked impact on fertility rates in developing countries, as well as the evidence that large families are not associated with higher rates of poverty.
Strangely, I received a publication at work, entiled Population, Culture and Climate Change, written by a group called Women’s Plans Foundation. (Not a good start, the title.)
And here is the conclusion of the ‘report’:
Family planning is the most effective way to reduce the likelihoold of catastrophic global warming. … The cost benefit analysis [of the Optimum Population Trust] found that family planning is a more cost effective investment than the very necessary investment in changing methods of energy generation and use. Renewable energy paths must be explored, along with the essential of accessible family planning.
There seems to be a taboo on discussing that there could be too many of us. Yet the world’s population has quadrupled since 1900. One billion people on earth struggle to survive on less than $1 per day; they use very little carbon now but aspire to equity with our quality of life. There are 42 million refugees awaiting resettlement, the number increasing as both human population and the seas rise. Even poverty produces carbon emissions when people’s land use is drive to deforestation, to feed their families.
Given the great benefits family planning brings to women’s health and enablement, improving societies and helping to manage human impacts on our environmental support system, why in the world isn’t family planning receiving more attention and funding?
In the long run, family planning is the most effective way of manging the impact on humand development on the planet.
WORDS FAIL ME. BUT IF YOU CAN HEAR THE SCREAMS OF OUTRAGE IN THE MELBOURNE SUBURBS, THEY COME FROM ME.
Note that some of those signing up to this report include Tim Costello, Richard Broinwoski and the Reverend Judith Atkinson.
Update: It turns out the our own Governor General is Patron of the Women’s Plans Foundations!
That is ghastly.
This is a report from The Guardian about the UK program and the suffering inflicted on woman & families as a result of the program.
Yes, there have been deaths…
Token
11 Jul 12 at 5:48 pm
An American article noting US money has been spent on that program as well:
Token
11 Jul 12 at 5:51 pm
Bless me father for I have sinned.
It is about 25 years since my last confession.
These are my sins.
In the 1990′s on separate ocassions two girls and I “got ourselves into trouble”.
In both instances and by way of a mutual decision, we terminated the “trouble”.
I now have two gorgeous little girls. Far too often I look at them..and wonder.
Pickles
11 Jul 12 at 5:51 pm
It really is barbaric. And to think people do this thinking they are doing good, thinking they are making the world a better place.
The principle of ‘think global’ is probably the most insidious principle getting around. It’s basically giving people licence to interfere with the lives of others, under the mistaken guise that somehow they are ‘saving the planet’.
Once you accept that every human has a right to live, then you have to accept population is essentially uncontrollable. Whatever we would do to our own family, that’s less than we should do to others.
Sure, there are a lot of poor women in the world that suffer through a poor quality of life. But education and wealth is what will fix that, not throwing anonymous money over the wall with the explicit instructions tied to it ‘go and meddle in somebodys life’.
No doubt much of this money comes from families in which publicly rebuking their kid for being a noisy brat would earn a tirade of abuse about minding your own business.
brc
11 Jul 12 at 5:59 pm
TLDR : ‘treat others as you want to be treated’.
If you don’t want an Indian family to pay your government to get your kids sterilised, don’t go along with this.
brc
11 Jul 12 at 6:00 pm
An article I wrote back is relevant to this discussion:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/chinas-one-child-policy-no-solution-to-climate-change/story-e6frg6ux-1226404756438
This is also useful article:
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1588/article_detail.asp
This is a useful recent book:
http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Despair-New-Atlantis-Books/dp/1594034761
Dan Ryan
11 Jul 12 at 6:00 pm
An article I wrote back is relevant to this discussion:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/chinas-one-child-policy-no-solution-to-climate-change/story-e6frg6ux-1226404756438
This is also useful article:
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1588/article_detail.asp
This is a useful recent book:
http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Despair-New-Atlantis-Books/dp/1594034761
Dan Ryan
11 Jul 12 at 6:00 pm
Catastrophists would actually see a declining population as a positive thing.
ar
11 Jul 12 at 6:16 pm
The Optimum Population Trust – now renamed Population Matters – is an appalling Malthusian organisation which has the expressed aim of, amongst other things, reducing the UK population to about 20 million people.
How they think they will manage this without a solid investment in black marias, midnight knocks on the door and mass camps is beyond me.
The list of their patrons makes fascinating reading…
http://www.populationmatters.org/about/our-people/patrons/
Chris Harper
11 Jul 12 at 6:22 pm
Nuclear power is the answer obviously.
Sean
11 Jul 12 at 6:24 pm
Blokes are told they are not entitled to an opinion on issues that primarily affect women’s bodies, such as reproduction. On the other hand, my instincts are similar to yours: collectivism is the modern face of evil. I don’t see any form of women’s liberation here. Instead I see a socialist solution that requires group submission to a doctrine. When I see “climate change” being used as a call to arms, it’s pretty clear it’s a Trojan horse agenda that has little to do with its stated aims. Even if this was phrased as the empowerment of women, I’d be more inclined to listen to the sermon. But it has all the hallmarks of a big government solution.
Tom
11 Jul 12 at 6:25 pm
The Ecofascism with a human face…
Sean
11 Jul 12 at 6:29 pm
- Pope Paul VI, 1968.
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 6:30 pm
Prosperity is the best way to reduce birth rates.
The more prosperous people are, the fewer children they have.
The most important step towards prosperity is cheap, reliable, safe energy.
St Hubbins
11 Jul 12 at 6:40 pm
Does China still have its one child per married couple policy?
delfino
11 Jul 12 at 6:54 pm
Yes ‘prosperity is the best way to reduce birth rates.‘ And prosperity I believe is best delivered by true democracy.
stackja
11 Jul 12 at 6:55 pm
I’m one of 11 siblings. I have 46 direct cousins. Among my siblings and me, we have 21 children.
My siblings and I are all tertiary educated or equivalent.
Education is the answer to overpopulation. Forced sterilisation/forced abortion is the totalitarian’s answer.
mareeS
11 Jul 12 at 6:56 pm
Reminded once again of the P J O’Rourke chapter in ‘All the Trouble in the World’, pithily titled: Just enough of me, way too much of you.
TimT
11 Jul 12 at 6:58 pm
I’m more than happy for leftists not to breed. We right wing death beasts owe it to ourselves and the future to get the night tools out and go like the clappers.
Infidel Tiger
11 Jul 12 at 7:03 pm
I’d never heard of Women’s Plans Foundation so I looked up their site.
Yes, professional ALP gubernatorial favourite Quentin Bryce is the patron. The WPF puts out a newsletter, the latest of which itemises the organisations it helps fund. These include international abortion conglomerate Marie Stopes International, whose eponymous foundress was a British Nazi and white supremacist. The cheery newsletter also includes an interview with the Director-General of Planned Parenthood. Another global abortion conglomerate, Planned Parenthood was was founded by Ku Klux Klan supporter and lunatic, Margaret Sanger. It slaughters a disproportionate number of non-whites in the US and has recently been stung by whistleblowers for approving the abortion of a baby girl and for allowing minors to have abortions.
Says the ‘Director’ of Planned Parenthood (bear in mind that the Governor-General is the WPF patron):
By that, he means that Planned Parenthood is in the business of killing children and a disproportionate number of female babies.
Bryce should be pressured to quit this patronage immediately. It is a gross abuse of her position and is offensive to Christians (in whose number I don’t count Tim Costello or the ‘Reverend’ Judith Atkinson).
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 7:10 pm
Q. Bryce has five children. What’s she doing as patron of a hardline “family planning” organisation?
mareeS
11 Jul 12 at 7:17 pm
FFS, here we go again – another totalitarian ‘solution’ to a non existent ‘problem’.
Rabz
11 Jul 12 at 7:18 pm
Let me hazard a guess – because she isn’t a sanctimonious hypocrite?
Oh, wait…
Rabz
11 Jul 12 at 7:19 pm
I would ask the signatories of the report this question:
“Given you will produce something like a thousand tonnes of CO2 directly and indirectly during your lifetime, should your mother have aborted you during pregnancy?”
And the supplementary question: if “no”, why not?
You can do your bit for the planet anytime…you know how.
Bruce
11 Jul 12 at 7:24 pm
Like Al Gore who advocates population control in answer to “climate change”. Gore has four children.
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 7:26 pm
Jeffrey D. Sachs, the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University in a CNN article:
“The arrival of the 7 billionth person is cause for profound global concern. It carries a challenge: What will it take to maintain a planet in which each person has a chance for a full, productive and prosperous life, and in which the planet’s resources are sustained for future generations?
“How, in short, can we enjoy ‘sustainable development’ on a very crowded planet?”
“The second key to sustainable development is the stabilization of the global population. This is already occurring in high-income and even some middle-income countries, as families choose to have one or two children on average. The reduction of fertility rates should be encouraged in the poorer countries as well.”
“Encouraged” is a euphemism for coerced, future tense.
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 7:42 pm
Absolutely with one exception; and that is when the prosperity is in a fundamentalist religious society; ie an Islamist society.
The problem is that the AGW believers, who overlap with the population is a problem crowd in the sustainability cesspool, are doing their level best to make sure no one is properous.
They are complete and utter bastards, but credit where credit is due; it is as neat a trap as you would like to spring on humanity.
Maybe they are Aliens.
cohenite
11 Jul 12 at 7:42 pm
Fucking hypocrite.
cohenite
11 Jul 12 at 7:44 pm
Global fertility rates clearly correlate with economic development and since 1950 have fallen from 5 to 2.3 (Wiki); economic development depends on cheap large scale electricity generation and distribution, not so-called environmentally sustainable projects preferred by highly rewarded charity agents like Tim Costello.
manalive
11 Jul 12 at 7:52 pm
Not that I mind lots of humans – they’re my fave species – but I can’t help but notice that where there is a dominant middle class, which aspires to things like orthodontistry and airbags, population growth is naturally modest, if it happens at all. Our Green Betters are just too “in love with easeful death” to notice.
That’s why I don’t send used bicycles parts to the Third World, so impoverished persons can pedal to get water or watch the cricket. Diesel will do for a start, till they have a massive and cheap energy grid powered by Aussie coal and uranium. I’d do them a good price…but no freebies!
The only downside is that these small, prosperous families will have children who attend university and start sending old bike bits and family planners to countries that are still poor.
Robert
11 Jul 12 at 7:53 pm
“dichotomise life and choice”.
I do like dichotomise, but as a (retired) physicist I prefer bifurcate.
GrantB
11 Jul 12 at 8:04 pm
One useful result that could come out of a climate change conference would be a declaration that punishing a criminal by sterilisation is not a violation of human rights.
I think broad agreement could be raised on this, as many of those who might have religious objections to sterilisation would be suspicious of international law.
2dogs
11 Jul 12 at 8:13 pm
By criminal, 2dogs, I assume you mean “climate” criminal? You know, those who are not part of the global climate elite and emit CO2.
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 8:19 pm
No, Gab, real criminals. No child should have to suffer a criminal parent.
2dogs
11 Jul 12 at 8:29 pm
I don’t really understand what the issue here is. Sterilising people by force or deception is monstrous. Providing people access to contraceptives so individuals can decide when and how many children they want to have is fine.
Discussion solved?
AJ
11 Jul 12 at 8:33 pm
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Robert.
The population/climate change intersection is one very unpleasant mix.
As Chairman of a Committee of Owners for a unit block in Queensland, I recently got asked to fill in a questionnaire purporting to be ‘research’ from a Queensland university group. The questions were on how Owner’s Corporations could be ‘assisted’ to respond to climate change. There were no opt out provisions: you absolutely had to believe in their view of ‘climate change’ and to basically approve their prescriptions for imposing further stupid ‘climate response’ regulations on the already onerous lot of nonsense on various nanny issues for unit owners developed by the Bligh Government. I told them to get lost, and then my computer took this advice and somehow dumped the whole thing as Telstra collapsed my service yet again.
This survey was an unwarranted intrusion, demonstrating what idiocy passes for university research these days, but the linkage to population control brings idioctic intrusion and control to the level of the malign.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
11 Jul 12 at 8:35 pm
UN Population Division Policy Brief
No. 2009/1 March 2009
What would it take to accelerate fertility decline in the least developed countries?
Or how to force population control on the little brown people.
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 8:37 pm
Life and choice got dichotomised when someone decided choice was synonymous with abortion, particularly late-term abortion, and the sterilisation of undesirables.
wreckage
11 Jul 12 at 8:40 pm
‘Nuff said.
Dandy Warhol
11 Jul 12 at 8:59 pm
The golden age of the west coincided with the baby boom so I’m not sure that stacks up.
The only attempted procreation in Europe these days involves two blokes and a tube of KY. Consequently the place is in the shitter.
The evidence suggests that if we want to get our moribund economies going we need to romance the wife and leave the Durex in the nighstand.
Infidel Tiger
11 Jul 12 at 8:59 pm
It’s what the left used to call cultural imperialism and racism.
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 9:01 pm
Chris
What was appalling about Malthus? He accurately nailed the reality of human demographic dynamics across the globe and throughout history, with one exception: those very dynamics were ending right at the moment he was alive and writing. His only error was not to realize he was living in one of the top handful of most revolutionary periods in human history. In that sense, Malthus was a bit like the frog in the pot of warming water.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 9:03 pm
Any mention of Al Gore makes me vomit.
He is perhaps the most vomitous public figure of the modern era.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
You know who lost in the voting for that award?
This woman. But what would she know about peace, hey?
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 9:05 pm
That renowned sage of sex!
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 9:06 pm
Family planning in 3rd world countries is a complex issue. I’m not sure I would rely on a book on economics to advise me on the best outcomes for family planning in 3rd world countries. I would take advice from World Vision and Bill and Melinda Gates foundation first.
SteveC
11 Jul 12 at 9:07 pm
That’s because you’re an idiot.
Infidel Tiger
11 Jul 12 at 9:09 pm
SteveC; why? Particularly when economic outcomes are the point in question?
wreckage
11 Jul 12 at 9:11 pm
Sage is right. He foresaw exactly what would happen when public officials decided to solve putative demographic problems using the methodology of Joseph Mengele.
But anyway – you’re gay, aren’t you?
What would you know about actual sex?
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 9:11 pm
Imagine if a conservative Governor-General was patron of an organisation whose newsletter spruiked the activities of a capitalist conglomerate founded by a Nazi.
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 9:14 pm
wreckage, because those organisations have been working in the field for many years and I expect them to have an understadning of the complex issues. Having said that, I haven’t seen the particular book, so there may be great information in there. I’m saying economics would not be my first choice of information source.
Family planning is a very complex issue in the 3rd world and economics is not the only issue. I do know from the work of MSF in Africa that one of the big health issues is Obstetric Fistulas. And one of the major causes is pregnancies too closely spaced together.
SteveC
11 Jul 12 at 9:20 pm
Ha, I just checked out Margaret Sanger’s (founder of Planned Parenthood, thanks CL) Wikipedia page, and she does indeed seem a nutter. Interesting thing is, though, every time one of her batty ideas gets mentioned, it is immediately clarified and ‘explained’ in that faux objective tone Wikipedia has. It’s quite well written; I think any criticism of that article would have to be very precise to persuade anyone to make changes, but still, it reads like a very clever puff piece on a woman who was clearly nuts. Must be some interesting Wikipedia battles over that article.
TimT
11 Jul 12 at 9:29 pm
Something that could be solved by education and/or contraceptives. Sterilisation-for-aid is inherently and irreducibly wrong; unethical, immoral, and a violation of basic human rights.
wreckage
11 Jul 12 at 9:34 pm
Glad to see CL has a Christian-O-Meter.
SteveC
11 Jul 12 at 9:37 pm
Agree totally – Judiths article started “promotion of family planning (including access to free contraceptives)”
SteveC
11 Jul 12 at 9:40 pm
Sterilisation for cash and brainwashing, which is pretty much what the various UN agencies and other do-gooders for the planet carry out. Sure, it starts out as “education” and very quickly accelerates to brain washing and guilt. How can you be so selfish as to have more kids?! Stop destroying the planet!!
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 9:41 pm
I think the point there is that historically, what drives lower birth rates is more wealth and higher child survival rates, not access to contraceptives.
wreckage
11 Jul 12 at 9:42 pm
They aren’t free, SteveC. Some mug is paying tax.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 9:46 pm
Buy your own condoms SteveC, not that I think you’d need them on a plastic doll.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 9:46 pm
Free to the recipient I guess the article means. A bit like free vaccinations.
SteveC
11 Jul 12 at 9:48 pm
wreckage at 9.42, again I agree. I was trying to suggest providing contraception in 3rd world countries has many benefits, not necessarily just economic. Abandoning contraception as one of the aid measures would be thrwoing out the baby with the bathwater.
SteveC
11 Jul 12 at 9:50 pm
Actually the birth rate in many Moslem Middle East countries is surprisingly low. Not as low as Italy of course, the bastion of Roman Catholicism has gotten rather sterile sadly.
Chris M
11 Jul 12 at 10:00 pm
SteveC:
Point is that jumping off the train before central works reasonably well. If women are getting pregnant too close to the previous pregnancy it’s not about contraceptives.
wreckage
11 Jul 12 at 10:01 pm
Birth rates in the Middle East are crashing.
wreckage
11 Jul 12 at 10:02 pm
When we hear adult Roman Catholic ‘confirmed bachelors’ opining on sex, citing other adult Roman Catholic ‘confirmed bachelors’ as authority, we are indeed entering the devil’s playground. You really are creepy.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 10:02 pm
I hardly need one to call out Tim Costello for supporting Joseph Mengele’s race hygiene policies.
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 10:05 pm
Patton
….’You kidding.
SteveC, the GetUP rep here, wants free condoms for his plastic doll. He actually thinks his plastic sex doll could get pregnant. ..and you’re worried about Catholics?
JC
11 Jul 12 at 10:06 pm
Memo to the Western world: If you want to deliver foreign aid in the Third World ethically and efficiently, you must deliver it yourself – under the protective eyes and gun muzzles of your own soldiers.
perturbed
11 Jul 12 at 10:06 pm
If you like Lionel Shriver (she was on Q & A a few years back after So Much for That came out), read one of her early books called Game Control (fiction). I read it years ago after seeing a interview with her where she talked about the relationship between research and funding (she has some zingers about that), but its characters are mainly involved in the issue of “family planning” in order to “empower third-world women women” and “solve the problem of overpopulation” in Africa.
sdog
11 Jul 12 at 10:10 pm
Mark your calendars…
The Women’s Plan Foundation newsletter advertises an upcoming function:
There’ll be dozens of black people there, I’m sure.
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 10:13 pm
No, Pete. You’re creepy. That’s one of the reasons you were banned from this blog on multiple occasions.
Pope Paul VI was right. Forty-four years ago he predicted that governments would start pushing around (also known as ‘educating’) vulnerable (read black) people to control their fertility.
End of story.
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 10:18 pm
When we hear adult Roman Catholic ‘confirmed bachelors’ opining on sex
Luckily, Pope Pius VI opined on its morality alone.
dover_beach
11 Jul 12 at 10:24 pm
hzhousewife
11 Jul 12 at 10:27 pm
Hey, maybe at that Darling Point fundraiser for Marie Stopes International they could read some of Marie Stopes’ notable works.
And a letter to inspire the gathering:
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 10:30 pm
Ah, yes, Margaret Sanger.
Speaking of abortion and maternal mortality rates, Kellmeyer has been posting a bit on it lately.
A heads-up for the anti-Papists, as he’s a Trad Catholic, but he does make some interesting points.
nilk
11 Jul 12 at 10:33 pm
Patton
There’s a fair point being made here. The misanthropes in the ‘vironment movement don’t like Africans because they consider them to be getting in the way of the wild life there, which is why there’s a big push to stop them having kids. You don’t have to be a Catholic to know this what’s going on in their putrid minds.
And you of all people, luvvie hater and all ought to be taking a swing at someone like the luvvie governor general, Quentin Crisp.
As an aside it’s really strange how they both sorta share the same name and also look like they were separated at birth.
WTF has come over you. You were never a lover of luvvies.
Compare pics . I can’t tell one Quentin from the other Quentin.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 10:34 pm
JC
The only comment I have made is on the creepiness of a fellow poster’s choice of ‘authority’ on the issue of sex.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 10:40 pm
Seriously Petton, you were always on the side of the good when it came to Luvvies. You were always a lovie hater, never a luvvie lover.
I hope this isn’t some sort of doctor’s wife morphing we’re witnessing here in HD.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 10:41 pm
Given what the world has learnt over the past few decades, the irony of quoting a Roman Catholic ‘confirmed bachelor’s’ sermons from 1968, burns from ironic to creepy to just plain wrong.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 10:42 pm
JC
In those days, we did not have battalions of Roman Catholic males infesting every discussion with drivel their pope tells them.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 10:45 pm
Yes, that’s true, but in the old days you would have ploughed into luvvies like GG Quentin.
On a serious note, you don’t have to be catholic to be fucking appalled at the shit that’s going on with these luvvies.
They don’t even seem to have an issue that the vast, vast number of abortions in the 3rd world are to remove females/sex selection and meanwhile GG Quentin Crisp has five kids and the asshat parades around as a feminist.
What sort of colossal hypocrisy is that from GG Crisp?
JC
11 Jul 12 at 10:46 pm
Oh, and by the way, I know quite a few ‘doctor’s wives’. They are known as ‘doctors’ themselves.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 10:46 pm
Patton
Stop worrying if there are Catholics here. This is a blog that hits out at Luvvies. Stop focusing on the Catholics and know your enemy.
You’re losing focus Patton and it’s disappointing really. I’m very disappointed.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 10:49 pm
And nine grandkids.
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 10:50 pm
???
CL and maybe two or three others here are a battalion now?
sdog
11 Jul 12 at 10:52 pm
JC
The issue with the GG is intimately tied up with Roman Catholic politics. You DO know she is a Roman Catholic, don’t you? But she’s one of those Roman Catholics who actually has sex – with adults – and lots of it. And, of course, she is a woman.
There are a number of facts in the above paragraph, which help to explain much of the flow of this thread.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 10:52 pm
Freaking luvvie asshat. This is what really fucking disgusts me about these luvvie types. Their fucking hypocrisy is just unbearable.
And my assertion is right too. They don’t like Africans because they get in the way of the animals there.
If Abbott doesn’t boot her the first week, he’s history as far as I’m concerned.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 10:53 pm
Are you playing a game of “six degrees of separation?”
SteveC
11 Jul 12 at 10:53 pm
As soon as I saw this post I knew how it would end up. FFS.
Entropy
11 Jul 12 at 10:55 pm
JC
Given I was the one who introduced the whole critique of the ‘luvvie’ left into the blogosphere, please don’t tell me how to suck eggs.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 10:55 pm
No it isn’t. Are you kidding me that the world isn’t also infested with Catholic luvvies. Look at Stepford from Brisbane for instance.
No. What I do know is that she’s an insufferable attention whore. (note , not whoring as in hooker)
She’s also a hypocritical swine too.
Yea about Sanger and the other appalling stuff. Sanger really was a person that was fucked in the head.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 10:57 pm
Well you lost focus. They were very good comments too.
When was the last luvvie Critque you made, Peter?
JC
11 Jul 12 at 10:59 pm
Well we know for certain she’s had sex five times and with her husband. Not sure how you know she’s had lots of sex with lots of adults though.
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 11:00 pm
SteveC
Go to bed, “Kimberly” the plastic doll is calling out for you.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 11:00 pm
No we don’t.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 11:01 pm
Yes we do.
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 11:02 pm
Given what the world has learnt over the past few decades, the irony of quoting a Roman Catholic ‘confirmed bachelor’s’ sermons from 1968, burns from ironic to creepy to just plain wrong.
No, the irony is he was largely right, to the chagrin of many the world over.
dover_beach
11 Jul 12 at 11:15 pm
Besides, you don’t have to be Roman Catholic to find it creepy whenever rich white Westerners decide to take it upon themselves to stop there being so many “undesirables” being allowed to breed.
I’ve actually heard otherwise-sane people in favor of sterilising third-worlders talk in terms of Africa’s and India’s and other countries’ “carrying capacity,” as though the earth is really just some big game park and they, its self-appointed game-keepers.
Once pampered white Western ‘intellectuals’ start seeing the earth as a big ranch or game park with necessarily limited “carrying capacity” and decide that People Like Them should decide who should and who should not be “breeding,” you should start getting nervous and I don’t care what religion you are.
sdog
11 Jul 12 at 11:20 pm
The quote from Paul VI wasn’t about sex, Peter. It was about state imposition of race and reproduction hygiene policies.
And Paul was 100 percent right.
As I said, you’re a homosexual and therefore wouldn’t know anything about actual sex.
You’re also the often-banned weirdo who changed his moniker after being banned for ridiculing female victims of sexual assault.
LOL. Notorious luvvie lefty Pete still hiding in the closet. His most traumatic experience was falling out with his chums at Larvatus Prodeo.
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 11:21 pm
@sdog, I’m a catholic female. Can I be a part of a battalion too?
Regarding ‘family planning’ and its consequences, the Catholic Church has been remarkably prescient:
Peter whether you like the Church or not – and we know where you sit on that particular line – which of the four trends mentioned are not evident today?
nilk
11 Jul 12 at 11:27 pm
About what? How Western homosexuals managed to kill hundreds of thousands of people?
You don’t seem to understand the word ‘ironic’ (basic word usage howlers are a recurring problem in your ‘writings’), it wasn’t a sermon (it was a famous encyclical letter), the pope wasn’t wrong and you’re the one who is notoriously creepy.
As usual, we see your signature traits: historical ignorance, apparent inadequacy of education, the relgio-politics of the Masonic Lodge and the Ku Klux Klan and clinical lack of self-awareness.
I mean, Jason Soon is a pretty nice and liberal bloke and he dismissed you as a “raving inner-city queen.”
C.L.
11 Jul 12 at 11:29 pm
No. Patton specifically singled out “battalions of Roman Catholic males“.
So shut up and go make me a sammich
sdog
11 Jul 12 at 11:30 pm
Peter,
“What was appalling about Malthus?”
Nothing, I was referring to the Optimum Population Trust. Malthus is largely blameless for the horrors which are now suggested. However, the term for these people nonetheless is Malthusians.
Chris Harper
11 Jul 12 at 11:33 pm
Peter,
“What was appalling about Malthus?”
Nothing, I was referring to the Optimum Population Trust. Malthus is largely blameless for the horrors which are now suggested. However, the term for these people nonetheless is Malthusians.
Chris Harper
11 Jul 12 at 11:34 pm
Call me superstitious, but I always end up losing money with stocks moving the wrong way whenever there’s blistering arguments on the Cat.
God isn’t punishing you guys for bickering. He’s taking it out on me. So please stop.
JC
11 Jul 12 at 11:35 pm
Ah, okay, spot. Ham and cheese on linseed?
nilk
11 Jul 12 at 11:36 pm
Thanks for opposing this meddling into the lives of others by these opinionated busy bodies.
I have a simple suggestion for anyone who feels an urgent need to reduce the world’s population – that much as I abhor suicide, I’m willing to let such people commit suicide so they can DIRECTLY get what they wish.
Please control your own fertility, don’t dabble in others’. Work together with me to promote liberty in India, if you have spare change. There is nothing better than liberty to achieve education, prosperity, and (for those wishing a smaller population) a SELF-MOTIVATED smaller family size.
Sanjeev Sabhlok
11 Jul 12 at 11:38 pm
This.
What gives someone the right to decide how many children someone else is allowed to have or not?
And this is the first time I’ve heard the term ‘carrying capacity’. That’s seriously creepy.
nilk
11 Jul 12 at 11:40 pm
Oh Nilk. How can you be so readily subservient to a corrupt imperialistic phallocratic paternalist like that?
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 11:40 pm
Yes thanks.
And make Patton a toasted lemon and horseradish on sourdough wile you’re at it. It’d suit his mood lately.
sdog
11 Jul 12 at 11:42 pm
For Pickles @5.51pm. I am so sorry for your loss.
nilk
11 Jul 12 at 11:49 pm
Gab, I once has a fellow female proclaim to me: How can you wear high heels? You’re a feminist!!
I passed on feminism oh, 25 years ago or so when I got out of school and home and into the real world, and I really, really like high heels.
Besides, if you make sammiches, then you can pretty much name your price.
Oh, and Spot, no horseradish in the house. How about kabana, cheese and coriander instead?
nilk
11 Jul 12 at 11:52 pm
“In a similar way, we are growing into a nanny state, as opposed to the goose-stepping/missile parade kind, but, at the end of the day, our millions of unborn children are just as dead. A recent case of forced abortion in China outraged the international community, which only serves to show our hypocrisy. If we remember to take the child into account, all abortions are forced abortions. Sometimes, as in China, the mother and child are both coerced. Other times, as practiced in America, only the child is. But do you think these are vital distinctions as far as the child is concerned? The dead Chinese baby and the dead American baby are both dead.”
(http://www.dougwils.com/Obama-Nation-Building/nullification-or-nutterfication.html)
Ellen of Tasmania
11 Jul 12 at 11:53 pm
Oh well, time for Mortine, the swarm has descended. Nightie night Xian soldiers.
Peter Patton
11 Jul 12 at 11:54 pm
You’ve got to stop sniffing the Mortein, Peter. It’s messing with your head.
Gab
11 Jul 12 at 11:56 pm
I first heard it in reference to population control on one of those subtly neo-Malthusian “Our Changing Earth” type nature docos on the American PBS, years ago. It struck me as so creepy at the time, my ears have pricked up every time I’ve heard people casually use the term since.
sdog
11 Jul 12 at 11:56 pm
Great news story and video re George W. Bush raising tens of millions for African clinics for orphaned children. The one featured here is run by a Catholic order of missionary sisters. I guess there weren’t too many atheists on the ground:
http://www.voanews.com/content/george-bush-africa-cervical-cancer/1363615.html
C.L.
12 Jul 12 at 12:31 am
As a point of interest, has any group tried to reduce population by such means in any Muslim controlled country at all???
Jazza
12 Jul 12 at 9:48 am
PP
The question is not that it is weird that the Popoe made a pronouncement on birth control, the question is whether what he said was right or not. In this case it was.
Rococo Liberal
12 Jul 12 at 10:18 am
As a father of four on hearing this, I’m going home tonight to have number 5 (yeah baby yeah!). I’ve worked hard enough to get an income to support them so why can’t I decide; I don’t need some thinktank or do-gooders!
Lysander Spooner
12 Jul 12 at 1:30 pm
@delfino, from my Chinese colleagues, the policy is still in place although if you and your partner are both ‘only’ children, you can then have two between you.
Steve D
12 Jul 12 at 4:05 pm
I am over fifty and have had a hysterectomy but this makes me want to go home and try for a baby too. These people are mad, and we are even crazier for putting their mates into power here.
Thumbnail
12 Jul 12 at 5:44 pm
The cognoscenti giggled, then ridiculed, then railed at the various religious missions that entered darkest Africa a century or so ago.
Then they drove them out so that the locals could exercise their hoooooman right to self determination. Evidently.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
12 Jul 12 at 10:52 pm