No Such thing as a Right to Have Babies: Population Trust

LifeSiteNews ^ | 7/15/08 | Hilary White

[wagglebee]

LONDON, July 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The solution to global warming, says a UK charity, is to implement laws that would result in people having fewer children. Governments should put slow pressure on people to limit their offspring to one or two children to save social and environmental resources.

"There is no unlimited right to have children," said the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), the group known to be one of the most militantly anti-life organisations in the world. There is a limit, the Trust said, "on the number of children to which people are 'entitled'."

"A voluntary population policy should be incorporated into law," the group said.

Governments, indicated the organization, should implement a "society-wide process of agreement, internalisation and normalisation" to the idea of small families and use a series of "gentle nudges" rather than "hard shoves," to get people to conform to the new childless paradigm.

All of this, they said, is to ensure that everyone has equal access to wilderness areas. "Our moral and legal rights to access wilderness and natural biological diversity (including other species), enjoy its benefits, and perhaps even see it restored, are at odds with, and arguably outweigh, the private right to have an unlimited number of children."

The Trust said that "human rights theory, legal precedent and national and international practice do not" support the UN's reassertion of its 1968 declaration that individuals "have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and timing of their children."

This year, the slogan by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), one of the world's largest promoters of abortion for World Population Day, July 11, was "Family Planning: It's a right. Let's make it real!"

But the OPT responded saying that there is really only a "far more limited right to 'found a family'."

The group quotes a paper by a US academic and animal rights activist, Carter Dillard, who called the notion that people have a natural right to have as many children as they want, "self-contradictory and illogical."

"Only the decision not to have children is a genuinely private act," Dillard wrote, whereas the decision to procreate affects the lives of others and limits the freedom of descendants who must then compete for resources. True freedom, the paper says, is the freedom not to be bothered by the existence of other people. "As numbers increase, life becomes more complex," Dillard wrote, and "the scope of law expands and regulation brings a contraction of rights."

To support his assertion, Dillard cites the example of China, where the state has "traditionally... perceived women's reproductive function as a legitimate matter of state control."

But such open calls for the state to coerce citizens to have fewer children is gaining critics.

Dominic Lawson, writing today for the Independent, said, "The population control freaks have also been skilful in adopting the fashionable political concerns of the day to their cause." He called the OPT's use of environmentalist slogans on "carbon footprints," "yet another illustration of the way these people mould their agenda to whatever is the most fashionable political concern of the day."

Brendan O'Neill went even further in the Guardian, saying that the new environmentalist movement is a threat to human freedom and democracy.

"It seems to me," O'Neill wrote, "that green thinking - with its shrill intolerance of dissenting views, its deep distaste for free movement and free choice, and its view of individuals, not as history-makers, but as filthy polluters - poses a more profound threat to liberty even than the government's paranoid anti-terrorist agenda."

In 2003, the OPT drew the ire even of the far left British media establishment after its conference at Oxford, at which the group suggested that the solution to Britain's environmental problems is to reduce the population to 30 million, half of the country's current number.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Government Must Institute Two-Child Policy says Leading UK Population Control Group
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07071201.html

Environmentalist Extremists Call Humanity "Virus", a "Cancer", Large Families Guilty of "Eco-Crime"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07050812.html

[goldstategop]

"Voluntary" in libspeak means the government ordering you not to have kids. They do that in China. No wonder the libs admire the Chicoms' One Child policy.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[goldstategop]

We have a right to fill the earth with the blessings of humanity. Those who hate the human race are free to leave the planet to us.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[samiam1972]

“...it happened after a bottle of wine.”

That’s how we got our third! :0) Congratulations!!

[goldstategop]

They hate you because they're a bunch of miserable, godless twits and they can't stand you being happy and having faith in God. There's an inverse relationship between faith and how much you value posterity.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Randy Larsen]

I have the perfect solution for you!

Run around naked all the time!

Men love that stuff! LOL!

[BuffaloJack]

Wow, having limits put on having babies sounds like a great way to speed the islamization of Europe.

[goldstategop]

They will not be content until civilization is erased from the earth. I'm glad they told us their true agenda.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[cpforlife.org]

Pro-Life PING

Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

[darkangel82]

They hate life itself, including their own. The end result of decades of indoctrination.

[goldstategop]

Don Feder calls it "demographic winter." Ditto Mark Steyn. These idiots will never appreciate our greatest hope for mankind's future: our children. May we have lots of them!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[goldstategop]

Got to love the logic. If they had two thoughts that pass between what's called their brains, liberals would realize that zero population growth and the welfare state are incompatible. They're belatedly realizing that in Europe.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[LibertyRocks]

How scary... I didn’t even want to read the whole article, honestly. Don’t these people have a clue, at all? Look what happened to China? Like these programs really work? What kind of enforcement will they have - forced sterilizations, forced abortions? Absolutely disgusting... Maybe these folks should just off themselves if they are that concerned about overpopulation... (No, I don’t REALLY mean that - but I get so tired of these idiots blabbering these fanatical theories and looking down their noses at those of us with more than 1.5 kids.)

[cdbull23]

Oh, don’t worry, you can always buy Child-Offset Credits from someone who hasn’t used up their allotted number of children.

[LibertyRocks]

That’s what gets me about these people. They have a serious lack of intelligence and critical thinking. A LAW is not ‘voluntary’ by its nature. A law automatically includes some type of punishment if it is not abided by. Otherwise it can’t be called a law. I seriously wonder how some of these people make it through life...

[mockingbyrd]

Holy cow that’s a lot of brothers. good luck gettin a date!

[LibertyRocks]

glitter-graphics.com

I'm so happy for you both!

One tip if I may - please get yourselves the book "What to Expect When You're Expecting". It was like my pregnancy "bible" with all four of our children! Full of great information, and good advice on just about everything you can imagine! :) [There are other books from the authors about after the baby is born - I didn't have any of those books - they came along a few years after our first child - but if they're anything like the original I'd expect them to be pretty good as well.]

Again, a very hearty Congratulations! I'm sitting here smiling and remembering 17 years ago when I was pregnant with our eldest! So many emotions, a lot of hard work - but OH so worth it!

God bless you, your wife, and your little one!

[mockingbyrd]

hooray!!!! There are no words to describe what’s coming for you!

[Trillian]

They really are.. they must want complete destruction of their own country.

I’m currently pregnant with #4 & #5 and not even close to being done just yet. They have no idea what a blessing children are.

[Grizzled Bear]

OOps. Looks like one of the girls is the MOM! LOL!

The tired looking one?

[brushcop]

That's just murder by the state.

Either way it's murder. Period.