Vietnam: Catholics fined for having large families (Coming to America next?)

Catholic villagers in Thua Thien-Hue province say they have tried their best to follow Church teaching on the use of artificial birth control methods in the face of the government's two-child policy.

Huong Toan villagers, just like Vietnamese elsewhere in the country, are required to have no more than two children per family since 1994, when village authorities launched a nationwide family planning program. Families with more than two children have to pay rice to the government as a fine.

Many local Catholics say they have done their best to remain true to Church teaching but some have had to resort to using contraceptives later on as they could not afford the hefty fines.

Catherine Pham Thi Thanh, 44, said that since 1996, she has been fined a total of 3,800 kilograms of rice for having six children.

Thanh, who produces rice alcohol and raises pigs to support her family, said she was fined 300 kilograms for her third child, 600 kilograms for the fourth, 900 kilograms for the fifth and 2,000 kilograms of rice for the sixth. Her children range from two to 15 years.

She pointed out that her family makes an annual profit of only 700 kilograms of rice from their 1,000 square-meter farmland the local government grants them....

Father Joseph Nguyen Van Chanh, Huong Toan parish priest, said 90 percent of his 1,200 parishioners have agreed to pay fines as a way to be faithful to Church teaching. Local Catholics are taught natural family planning methods during marriage preparation courses, he noted.

Some local Catholics said Father Chanh is asking for donations from benefactors to support local people with large families. Huong Toan village has about 14,000 people....

Crowded third world countries don’t have an endless supply of new farmland for ever-growing families. If a family has 5 acres of farmland when they have one child, they still have 5 acres of farmland when they have eight, and there’s no way for the additional children to make the tiny plot produce more food. They have no money to buy more, because it’s scarce and expensive, and they’ve been spending every dime they make just to feed themselves. What worked for large families in the sparesly populated early United States — just moving West and taking over more land to farm — is not an option in most of the world (just like it’s no longer an option here).

VietNam is a society in which the vast majority of the population is barely making enough food or money to feed and shelter themselves. Things have improved substantially over the past couple of decades, but this has coincided with drastic and oppressive population control measures. Per capita income is still less than $1000 a year.

I’m not advocating the oppressive tactics. But I recognize that if people don’t limit child-bearing voluntarily, governments will end up doing it for them involuntarily. The best way to counter such governmental abuses is to vigorously promote responsible self-limitation on child-bearing, and that’s what is sorely lacking in conservative discourse.

You need look no further than the post immediately preceding your own, for an example of the typical FR argument re poverty and fertility, repeating the usual theme of “having more babies will make them better off economically”. Can’t afford to hire employees to generate profits for you? Just breed some that you can make work for you without pay!

But ichabod1 makes a good point: that a poor agricultural family can't afford NOT to have more kids: they can make farming more productive, yes, even on 5 acres: productivity isn't about acreage, it's about good management of land and labor.

In any case, that's for Catherine Pham Thi Thanh and her husband to decide. They are the only ones who can make this judgment of how many children they want and need.

The point must be reiterated: the people in this article are productive, they and their children; and the government --- not the babies, the government --- is reducing them to penury.

On the family level--- according to the article--- they have the means to space, delay, or even prevent more childbearing already, via NFP: the only method of family-planning which requies no daily, monthly or yarly supplies, makes no demands on the public health infreastructure, and costs nothing (beyond the initial investment of learning the method); which has no expensive or dangerous side-effects; which requires the equal and intelligent commitment of both the husband and the wife; and which cannot be used coercively by the state.

If they have the liberty to manage both their production and their reproduction, the interference of the state has nothing to do with the common good and everything to do with tyranny.

The reality is that many of these countries are filled with families who have many children and can’t afford to feed and shelter them. These children end up providing cheap human capital for terrorist groups, tyrannical political groups, and slave labor (including sexual slavery). If there were opportunities for these children to be productive in a self-sufficient household, their parents wouldn’t be selling them to them slave traders and brothel owners, or shipping them off to terror-promoting madrassahs which provide the only opportunity for the children to learn to read. These people have no clue about “good management of land and labor” — they’re uneducated and many are illiterate (although a huge boost in the literacy rate has been one of the achievement of the Vietnamese government (as has also been the case in China). And no amount of good management can extract more than a certain amount of food from a few acres of land — they have no money to buy machinery, or high quality fertilizer and seed. And one ill-timed flood or drought can (and often does) wipe out an entire year’s production — more people in the family can’t change that harsh fact.

"And no amount of good management can extract more than a certain amount of food from a few acres of land .."

GS, It's not a matter of extracting more than a certain amount of "food" --- it's a matter of producing the honorable reward known as "profit." Small producers can produce more proft from (say) 200 lbs of flower seeds marketed in 1/2 oz. packets, than they can from several tons of beans; or more from tiny organic blueberries marketed to the hotels and restaurants, than for bulk rice; more for an acre of potted ornamentals than for an acre of Christmas trees; or more for... the specifics will vary, but you get the picture.

The optimal use of a little bit of land is something each producer will have to decide upon, based on their own capactiy to invest, to manage, to produce and to market. These decisions --- I'll bet you'll agree --- should be made by the producers, and not by some Government Planning and Commanding Commission ---

... and the same goes for the decisions of how many children to have, and when, and by whom.

"One ill-timed flood or drought can (and often does) wipe out an entire year’s production — more people in the family can’t change that harsh fact."

Less people in the family can't change that harsh fact, either.

The bottom line is, I'm not deciding for Mrs. Catherine Pham Thi Thanh what she's going to grow on her land or how many children shall be born from her womb. That's her chosen burden, her chosen opportunity, her chosen investment of time and energy, and/or her chosen wealth: hers and her husband's.

Th point is so simple one would think any lover of human liberty would cotton on to it. I'm done. Good night.

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