Topic: SOW Section: Environmentally Sustainable Childbirth
As I continued to read “Traditions Old and New,” I came across another very interesting section titled Environmentally Sustainable Childbirth. The section addresses whether or not the current population is hazardous to the environment and whether or not limiting the amount of children a person can have will have any positive effect.
Many developing-country governments believe that population growth is too rapid in their countries. Many people believe that it is time to evolve cultures that actively promote an average number of children born to each woman so low that the population shrinks in the near future.
The current average fertility (2.5 children per woman) is only slightly above the fertility that would yield a stable human population size (2.3 children per woman). It’s hard to tell which is the largest factor in fertility: culture and women’s response to its influence or the accumulation of accidental pregnancies. With the exception of China’s “one child rule,” which was put into place because of a shortage of natural resources, it’s hard to identify a culture where small families are promoted to assure environmental sustainability.
One thing is for sure – countries that provide women and men access to safe contraceptive, backed up by safe abortion, have fertility rates low enough to end or reverse population growth.
There are many abuses of reproductive rights noted in many countries, such as incentive payments for sterilization to forced abortions which have been noted in India and China. These factors have sourced policymakers and healthcare professionals on population policies, programs, and media messages aimed at convincing women to have fewer children.
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