Friends:
Availability of safe effective birth control is an important first step
in a woman's being able to take control of her life. Constant
pregnancy, fear of pregnancy, child birth is wearing to the health and
welfare of both the woman and her existing children.
It seems to me that the question of birth control or genocide is not an
either or question, but one where women's needs and desires are
paramount. If she wants birth control, can she get it? If she doens't
want it, is someone going to ram it down her throat, so to speak?
Neither is acceptable. And with structural readjustment developing
countries may find it hard to provide the kind of health care needed to
make modern contraception work, so do we have a responsibility to help?
I feel that we do, if we do it in a way that respects the women and
their needs.
Judy Seaman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sat Nov 22 08:12:11 1997
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 1997 09:12:17 -0600
From: "Melanie E. Napoleon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Population
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
That's a really great point Judy brought up. Empowering women has a strong
correlation on the lessening of environmental impact. I even attended a
conference entitled "Women, Population, and the Environment". The three
are all linked together.
Additionally, I wanted to address the issue brought up previously debating
which has the greater effect: population explosion in poorer nations, or
over consumerism in the more "developed" nations. Indeed, consumerism is
one of the greatest downfalls in our battle to save the environment.
Unfortunately, our global community and the "MacDonaldization" of the world
had made these highly populated countries the target for mass consumerism.
When these two combine, who knows what will happen.
I think that a goal in helping to slow down the destruction of our
environment should be two-fold. One, we should strive to approach a zero
population growth. I think that it behooves the human race to make efforts
to achieve this. As many population ecologists know, when the carrying
capacity is met by the size of the population, there is a population
crash. The earth will most likely still be here - we may not. Two, we
should strive to live lightly on the earth by making wise consumer
choices. Industry knows what the majority wants and buys, and if enough of
us alter our consumer habits, corporations will pick up on this.
Melanie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Judith Seaman wrote:
> Friends:
>
> Availability of safe effective birth control is an important first step
> in a woman's being able to take control of her life. Constant
> pregnancy, fear of pregnancy, child birth is wearing to the health and
> welfare of both the woman and her existing children.
>
snip
