Population control

I was drawn to this issue by an item on Spirit Daily(see link at sidebar) and a reference to Jonathan Porritt. Until earlier this year, Jonathan Porritt had been Chair of the Sustainable Development Committee (SDC), a Government advisory body reporting directly to the Prime Minister on matters of sustainable development. I linked into Mr Porritt's blog and there he refers to a report from the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) proposing future limitations on the number of children per family in the interests of population control and for the betterment of the whole planet. Mr Porritt begins his comments thus " absolutely love the new campaign from the OPT...do your bit for climate change by having fewer children - or no children". Mr Porritt is no linger Chair of the SDC but he is a Patron of the OPT. The item can be read at www.jonathanporritt.com/pages/population

I then went on to the OPT website and looked at a report from July this year. The researcher quotes the 1968 UN Declaration which says "individuals have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and timing of their children." The report contradicts this and denies the right of the individual to take this control. It suggests that reproduction should take more account of wider social, economic, environmental issues and that the public duty aspect of planning a family is greater than the right of the individual. Two quotes iillustrate: " There is no unlimited right to have children....." and " individual right here is said to be balanced by public responsibility". OPT also link increasing population with the inevitability of human conflict.

In its section on population policies OPT states " Every country should act urgently to improve women's rights, including removing barriers to women's control over their own fertility".
It advocates a lot of the familiar policies of the pro-abortion and anti-life agendas: more sex education, free family planning ( they talk about using ordinary commercial outlets to avoid "medical barriers", greater use of media in storylining and reporting to promote the OPT agenda and so on.

Throughout they use the word "volountary" and to be fair they do not, as far as I can see advocate coercive measures. But what if volountary doesn't work? What is their fall back position? Bearing in mind some of the apocalyptic rhetoric in the climate change arena, one could ask: is there sufficient time for volountary measures to work? That being the case, the issue of Plan B is very relevant. There are clearly agendas here that are anathema to pro-lifers and
certainly very much outside Catholic doctrine. But putting aside those issues, there is still a very worrying move towards increased social control and diminution of human rights and personal liberty. But, if you paint the picture black enough and ratchet up the scare tactics, then people might well agree to all sorts of things. Indeed, we have already surrendered much of our privacy and personal liberty. It seems, though, that things have only just begun.

None of the political parties in the UK have definitepolicies on this issue, but OPT and the SDC are clearly influential in devloping political thinking with very good access to politicians and the media. Expect things to change.