23-05-2012, 10:45 AM
Human population control
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Human population control is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population. Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including high or increasing levels of poverty, environmental concerns, religious reasons, and overpopulation. While population control can involve measures that improve people's lives by giving them greater control of their reproduction, some programs have exposed them to exploitation.[1]
Worldwide, the population control movement was active throughout the 1960s and 1970s, driving many reproductive health and family planning programs. In the 1980s, tension grew between population control advocates and women's health activists who advanced women's reproductive rights as part of a human rights-based approach.[2] Growing opposition to the narrow population control focus led to a significant change in population control policies in the early 1990s.[3]
Methods
Ancient times through Middle Ages
A number of ancient writers have reflected on the issue of population. At about 300 BCE in India, Kautilya, a political philosopher (c. 350-283 BCE), considered population as a source of political, economic, and military strength. Though a given region can house too many or too few people, he considered the latter possibility to be the greater evil. Kautilya favored the remarriage of widows (which at the time was forbidden in India), opposed taxes that encourage emigration, and believed that asceticism should be restricted to the aged.[4]
In ancient Greece, Plato (427-347 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE) discussed the best population size for Greek city states such as Sparta, and concluded that cities should be small enough for efficient administration and direct citizen participation in public affairs, but at the same time needed to be large enough to defend themselves against hostile neighboring city states. In order to maintain a desired population size, the philosophers advised that procreation, and if necessary, immigration, should be encouraged if the population size was too small. Emigration to colonies would be encouraged should the population become too large.[5] Aristotle concluded that a large increase in population would bring, "certain poverty on the citizenry, and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil." To halt rapid population increase, Aristotle advocated the use of abortion and the exposure of newborns.[6]
16th and 17th centuries
European cities grew more rapidly than before, and throughout the 16th century and early 17th century discussions on the advantages and disadvantages of population growth were frequent.[8] Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian Renaissance political philosopher, wrote, "When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere... the world will purge itself in one or another of these three ways," listing floods, plague and famine.[9] Martin Luther, a German monk and theologian (1483–1546), concluded on the issue, "God makes children. He is also going to feed them."[9]
The population control movement
In the 20th century, population control proponents have drawn from the insights of Thomas Malthus, a British clergyman and economist who published An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus argued that, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." He also outlined the idea of "positive checks" and "preventative checks." "Positive checks," such as diseases, war, disaster and famine, are factors that Malthus considered to increase the death rate.[11]