Re: Suggesting birth control to starving Africans against their human rights?

> Many people tell me this would be an abuse but I disagree, it would be
> like doing them a favor......
>
> Birth control would save their lives! :)

I do see what you are saying, and agree that some form of population
limiting program would pay dividends in the longer term.

Involuntary sterilisation "For their own good" has a long history. See
http://www.vasectomy-information.com/moreinfo/history.htm for more info. The
idea of sterilisng certain sections of the poulation were discussed in the
late 1800's and became law in some US states early 1900's. Prisoners were
pretty much routinely sterilised. The Eugenics movement was also popular in
certain European countries. It has a long lasting legacy, as many of those
who were forcibly sterilised are still alive and very much kicking. Even
recently, one US govenor had to publicly apologise to men forcibly
sterilised. So, even if people are morally OK with enforced sterilising of
the masses, I doubt it would ever happen these days.

OK, so is there an alternative? Maybe. In the 1950's India (and China) did
research into how to stem the population rise. They realised that though
they weren't the richest countries in the world, they would soon be the
poorest if they didn't do something. There is less known about the Chinese
research as it was a fairly closed society at the time, but there is a good
deal of the Indian research available. In the late 1950's India was
aggressive in the research into vasectomy techniques, and China gave us the
NSV procedure.

The way the Indians in particular got widescale acceptance of vasectomy was
via financial initiatives. Somewhere along the line somebody got something
out of it from the government. The programs where there was no financial
initiative had much poorer take up. Not perfect by any means, but it did the
job. Maybe the answer is some sort of initiative that would benefit those
who volunteered to be sterilised.

I am aware how simplistic this sounds knowing what world politics are like.
I remember the time of the first big Ethiopian famine where we were all
trying to get food to the starving, the government of Ethiopia still had
shipments of Scotch for their consumption! Governments are corrupt - I'm
aware of that. Maybe some of the larger international charity organisations
could succeed where governments would certainly fail - they'd spend the
money given on themselves and not what we sent it for.

David
www.vasectomy-information.com