Overpopulation

Overpopulation

October 12, 1999 marks the day when the world's population supposedly reached six billion. Many humanitarians and ecologists worry that soon the planet's population will become too big for our food production and resources to support. With the current population growth rate, the total population in the year 2050 is estimated to be between 7.3 and 10.7 billion (Kluger, "The Big Crunch" 47). Soon the Congress of the United States will vote on whether to restore $60 million of U.S. taxpayer funding over the next two years for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The United Nations Population Fund, for the past 30 years, has been involved with "brutal population control programs" such as China's genocidal one-couple, one-child policy. However, using taxpayer money to fund these programs is a total waste of time, money, and energy. The world is not overpopulated; thus, population control is unnecessary, it is also unethical and anti-religious beliefs.

Population control presents several problems for a country. The Philippines, for example, has an "artificial" birth control program, instated by the government and funded by UNFPA. The people of the Philippines, consisting mainly of Catholics and Muslims, are taxed to pay for this program. Because of its nature, contraception must be paid for every year, in increasing amounts. "Over 20 years from 1970 to 1990, it has cost our people over three billion pesos (P3,000,000,000), but has not significantly achieved its self-assigned goals of reducing poverty or improving quality of life." This is because artificial contraception is incapable of accomplishing those goals. "It is powerless in removing the yoke of poverty from our people. It is impotent in improving the lot of victims of economic inequity, which is the real cause of poverty," says Antonio B. de los Reyes (http://www.pop.org/students/cbreyes.html).

Contraception, a mild form of population control, goes against the grain of Filipinos, who traditionally respect life, and see children not only as resources for production, nor only as means of security for the future, but also as blessings from God and expressions of gratitude to Him. American propaganda and aid policy have portrayed this pro-life orientation as "anti-development", and the contraceptive establishment has gradually infiltrated into Filipino minds fewer children mean more happiness. Yet the impotence of past national governments in mobilizing the people's labor resources, and its squandering of the nation's capital assets, were the real problems.