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Usually, it is the girl babies that are allowed to die, and, to be sure,
that is as it should be.
I hasten to say that I do not make the last statement out of
anti-female animus. It is just that it is the female who is the bottle-
neck. Compare the female, producing thirteen eggs a year and
fertile for limited periods each month, with the male, producing
millions of sperm each day and nearly continuously on tap. A
hundred thousand women will produce the same number of babies
a year whether there are ten thousand men at their free disposal
or a million men.
Actually, there are some points in favor of infanticide. For one
STOP! 207
thing, it definitely works. Carried out with inhuman efficiency,
it could put an end to the human race altogether in the space of
a century. It can be argued moreover that a newborn baby is only
minimally conscious and doesn't suffer the agonies of apprehen-
sion; that he as yet lacks personality and that no emotional ties
have had a chance to form about him.
And yet, infanticide isn't pleasant. Babies are helpless and ap-
pealing and a society that can bring itself to slaughter them is
perhaps too callous and inhumane to serve mankind generally.
Besides, we cannot kill all babies, only some of them, and at once
an element of choice enters. Which babies? The Spartans killed all
those that didn't meet their standards of physical fitness and in
general the matter of superiority-inferiority enters with all its
difficulties.
d- Fetuses
What about pre-birth infanticide in short, abortion. Fetuses
are not independently living and society's conscience might be
quieted by maintaining they are therefore not truly alive. They
are not killed, they are merely "aborted," prevented from gaining
full life.
Of all forms of raising the death rate, abortion would seem the
least inhumane, the least abhorrent. At the present moment, in
fact, there are movements all over the world, and not least in the
United States to legalize abortion.
And yet if one argues that killing a baby is not quite as bad as
killing a grown man, and killing a fetus not quite as bad as killing
a baby, why not go one step farther, and kill the fetus at the very
earliest moment? Why not kill it before it has become a fetus,
before conception has taken place?
It seems to me then that any humane person, considering all
the various methods of raising the death rate must end by deciding
that the best method is to prevent conception; that is, to lower
the birth rate. Let's consider that next.
If we consider the different ways of decreasing the birth rate,
208 THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION
we can see that, to begin with, they fall in two broad groups:
voluntary and involuntary.
B- Decrease in birth rate
1 - Voluntary
Ideally, this is the situation most acceptable to a humane
person. If the population increase must be halted, let everyone
agree to and voluntarily practice the limitation of children.
Everyone might simply agree to have no more than two chil-
dren. It would be one, then two, then STOP!
If this came to pass, not only would the population increase
come to a halt* it would begin to decrease. After all, not all
couples would have two children. Some, through choice or circum-
stance, would have only one child and some even none at all.
Furthermore, of the babies that were born, some would be bound
to die before having a chance to become adults and have babies of
their own.
With each generation under the two-baby system, then, the
total population of mankind would decrease substantially.
I do not consider this a bad thing at all, for I feel that the Earth
is already, at this moment, seriously overpopulated. I could argue,
and have, that a closer approach to the ideal population of Earth
would be one billion people, and this goal would allow several
generations of shrinkage. In a rational society, without war or
threat of war, it seems to me that a billion people could be sup-
ported indefinitely.
If the population threatened to drop below a billion, it would
be the easiest thing in the world to raise the permitted number
of babies to three per couple. Enough couples would undoubtedly
take advantage of permission to have a third child to raise the
population quickly.
I would anticipate that under a humane world government,
* Provided the life expectancy doesn't increase drastically. If it did, there
would be a continued accumulation of old people. It might be just as well
not to labor to increase that expectancy above the level that now exists. It
embarrasses me to say so but I see no way out.
STOP! 209
a decennial census applied to the whole world would, on each
occasion, serve to guide the decision whether, for the next ten
years, third children would be asked for or not.
Such a system would work marvelously well, if it were adopted,
but would it be? Would individuals limit births voluntarily? I am
cynical enough to think not.
In the first place, where two is the desired number of babies
per couple, it is so much easier to far overshoot the mark than
far undershoot it. A particular couple can, without biological dif-
ficulty, have a dozen children, ten above par. No couple, however,
no matter how conscientious, can have fewer than zero children,
or two under par.
This means that for every socially unfeeling couple with a dozen
children, five couples must deprive themselves of children alto-
gether to redress the balance.
Furthermore, I suspect that those families who, on a strictly
voluntary basis, choose to have many children, are apt to be
drawn from those with less social consciousness, less feeling of
responsibility for whatever reason. Each generation will con- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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