Since writing a recent post where I joined the tiny chorus of people who are asking why we don’t ask whether we have too many people on the planet, I’ve been noticing quite a few articles in which the authors could have, might have, suggested to some of us that the resource depletion/crowding/degradation/contamination considered in the article had something to do with sheer numbers of people. Here are two examples.
The first one is from the May, 2007 edition of National Geographic. It is a story of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) India. More particularly, it is about a slum within Mumbai called Dharavi,
the teeming slum of one million souls, where as many as 18,000 people crowd into a single acre (0.4 hectares). By nightfall, deep inside the maze of lanes too narrow even for the putt-putt of auto rickshaws, the slum is as still as a verdant glade. Once you get accustomed to sharing 300 square feet (28 square meters) of floor with 15 humans and an uncounted number of mice, a strange sense of relaxation sets in—ah, at last a moment to think straight.
Dharavi is routinely called “the largest slum in Asia,” a dubious attribution sometimes conflated into “the largest slum in the world.” This is not true. Mexico City’s Neza-Chalco-Itza barrio has four times as many people. In Asia, Karachi’s Orangi Township has surpassed Dharavi. Even in Mumbai, where about half of the city’s swelling 12 million population lives in what is euphemistically referred to as “informal” housing, other slum pockets rival Dharavi in size and squalor.
The other article is actually part of a “Special Advertising Section” promoting the newest Ken Burns documentary featuring America’s National Parks. I found this article in the September 2009 edition of Harper’s Magazine. It was written by Robert F. Kennedy, who reminisced that his dad took him to the Grand Canyon in 1967. Based on his 2006 return trip to the Grand Canyon, things have changed dramatically:
Today, National Park Service employees are kept busy policing small infractions while our political leaders forced them to turn a blind eye to major abuses by powerful private interests. In 2006, I returned to paddle the Grand Canyon with my daughter, Kick. I was sad to see that the beaches where I camped with my father were gone; the sands that fed them are now trapped above the Grand Canyon Dam. The river itself, once a dynamic and specialized ecosystem, has been transformed into a plumbing conduit between the two largest reservoirs in the United States. The water, which should be warm and muddy, is clear and the frigid 46 degrees. Four of the eight native fish species are extinct, and the canyons of beaver, otter, and muskrat populations have disappeared. The reservoirs themselves are emptying to quench reckless developers and big agriculture, and the Colorado no longer makes it to the sea or feeds the great estuaries in the Gulf of California that once teamed with life. Instead, it dies ignominiously in the Sonoran Desert.
Kennedy never mentions that these “powerful private interests” are driven by the needs of large numbers of people to have direct or indirect access to water, admittedly oftentimes in wasteful amounts.
Neither of these articles address overpopulation by name, and this is typical of most article that comment on stressed resources. People who dare to bring up this topic of overpopulation get crucified from all angles of the political spectrum. To mention this word suggests that we need to actually consider whether we have too many people on the planet, and that raises the specter of admittedly terrible actions that have been taken to limit population in the past. To avoid this criticism, though, it’s only a rare writer that will dare to mention that we need to consider this issue. In my opinion, we need to consider the possibility of overpopulation and its effect on every square mile of land on the surface of the earth, from Antarctica, to Florida, to Great Britain, to Indonesia. If our goal has been to wipe out most of the biodiversity of this planet by shoving once-common plants and animals off of their native habitats with ever more humans, we are doing a great job of it.
If we don’t consider this issue, we will never able to deal with it. The current situation reminds me of many of the characters in the Harry Potter movies, who dare not refer to the character Voldemort by name. To mention that name would mean that they would have to risk dealing with the problem.
Whenever we think about buying or renting a house, we consider the capacity of that living space. How many people will it comfortably hold? We consider the same things when buying a car. How many people can safely use this vehicle at one time? I think it’s time that we consider the same basic question with regard to the entire planet. It is time to consider this issue to cause it’s already difficult to think of a basic natural resource that has not been degraded, depleted, contaminated or put at risk. If it’s not pressures put on these resources by increasing numbers of humans, it’s hard to think of what the cause might be. And for those who insist that it’s only our unsustainable lifestyles that are the problem, we are well past the point of making that argument. It is only thanks to our unsustainable use of water, fertilizers and fuel that have allowed the population to get to this point where humans fill every nook and cranny of the planet.
For more information on this topic, see this prior DI post and the website of the Global Population Speak Out.
The analogy of throwing the trash down under(where some still believe hell is) and then seeing it be transformed into useful fuel to power the economies of the world was obviously seen as an insult to anyone who believes it takes millions of years for the earth to produce bulk quantities of hydrocarbons.
Karl, "Insult"? There are plans to use old oil wells as sites of carbon sequestration. But is costs too much until we get carbon emissions monetized ("cap and trade"). There is no theory that it will somehow magically turn back into fuel, but it is a known hole down which to store excess carbon.
Then why don't some of the resources of those who blame the environmental woes upon the production of Carbon dioxide research ways to produce hydrocarbons by "cooking" the trash in an enviroment rich in carbon similar to a blast furnace?
Jim,
As to collectivism I point to these simple recent statements.
Did you miss this from Brynn? No, because you responded directly to it.
"Time for a serious question– why do we still talk to Karl? He’s repeatedly shown himself to be willfully ignorant on the topics he discusses. Ignorant, we can deal with. Wilfully ignorant is a whole other deal. I’m halfway tempted to believe he’s just trolling (as in the third definition here)for fun anyway. It’s apparent that we are constantly talking past each other, with little real dialogue taking place. Maybe that’s just me?"
Karl states – It would seem to me that based upon your ideas about human animals that only a collective group can decide if someone is truly being willfully ignorant. Just because I don't agree with you or some the general assumptions of modern science doesn't make me willfully ignorant or impossibly backward by the standards of reasonable human beings.
As well as your own response.
"Nope – not just you. But like Dawkins and Gould refused to debate creationists for reasons that to do so would be seen as validation of the creationists’ positions, Michael Shermer does debate them because he feels to not do so would be construed as the scientists not having rational arguments. So somebody needs to show readers where Karl is wrong. But that takes a lot of energy."
"Somebody else" doesn't need to show me where I am wrong, it is obvious that is not going to be done.
It might just irk you that someone could have gone through life and not fully bought that nearly everything they've been told from the perspective of university professors is all the truth that's fit to print or discuss.
Don't let it bother you, I don't feel short changed.
However, this group sure has toned down quite a bit of late, my compliments are in order.
??? The map's not big enough…
I'll share credence imparted by Dr. Will Sutton, professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, around 1989 in my Thermodynamics I class: "Check your sources, check your sources, check your sources"
Why would it irk me that someone has not bought into whatever they've been told? That's one of the most important self-education virtues to possess. But you might not know that about me, so I hope that dispels one misconception.
Enjoy your thoughts.
I do check my sources very frequently, but I try and not throw out the basic primary documents of recorded history which can be ignored by many modern sources. Most of today's modern sources seem to have a time limit of less than a century, which tells me that we do not wish to consider anything but "modern scholarship" as being worth the investment of our time and energy. How foolish we "moderns" really are.
This may work for cutting edge science and technology, but it certainly doesn't work when it comes to individual human nature and the nature of collectivist human organizations.
I don't always buy into the ideas and ideals recorded in primary documents, but I do try and not lose sight of what they mean for us today, as we consider both the present and the future as well.
Any one that ignores the writings of a particular religion because they don't believe them, doesn't mean other people won't believe and act upon what they say.
I also consider this simple principle. "Sources" can be used as a tool of collectivists especially when there is an assumed and preplanned agenda that uses "governmental" or "other peoples" money in pursuit of the preplanned agenda.
If sources from the past have been basically ignored, that gives people of today every reason to believe that the collectivists ideas and ideals of today are prone to repeat the mistakes of the past.
If the writings of a particular philosophy or worldview makes it a requirement to discount or ignore basic human ethics, we had better just expect man's inhumanity to man to keep rearing its head over and over again.
Karl writes:—"It might just irk you that someone could have gone through life and not fully bought that nearly everything they’ve been told from the perspective of university professors is all the truth that’s fit to print or discuss."
No, but it is irksome when it appears that EVERYTHING told you by university professors only registered as something to be denied. That's how it comes across, whether you intend that or not.
Karl, can you read koine greek, hebrew, aramaic, devanagari? Or any other of the ancient languages? To be able to read and understand the primary sources without relying on others' translations is pretty impressive and my hat is off to you. I have a friend would studies koine greek so he can translate New Testament texts for himself. Of course, he's translating what someone says is a primary source, so that's really not much different than reading already done translations.
One last thought on this and I'll bow out of this thread: humanity evolves, thus evaluations of humanity (ethics, morality, religion) must necessarily evolve. Scientific knowledge evolves as more and more is understood, and like much of science (it being self-policing), some things not scientific – ancient religious texts – are rationally discarded as untenable within a modern context. Or they should be. "Universal truths" are relativistic, because there are always deliberate exceptions when related to the self of a person or a family-group or a nation-state or a civilization-state. Thou shalt not kill…unless…all those instances following Genesis when it was okay.
I am only somewhat proficient in French and Koine Greek.
I would like to learn other languages, but I was more referring to recent scholarship (within the past few decades)that often takes the "cliff notes" method based upon their interpretations of early historical primary documents.
For example – abridged histories by their very nature "leave out" something(s) for very specific reasons. Most wish to not have to state what they have left out and they often leave it to the reader to try and figure out why they decided to keep some things but not others.
For example, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote two indepth texts written about Democracy in America. The originals texts are now part of the Guttenburg project are are available for free of charge.
However, what is taught in many courses about these texts today assumes that the word "Liberal" meant the same thing to Tocgueville as it does today in America and it does not.
I do not have a problem with what is taught from a univeristy professor unless I am familiar with the method by which they had to get their doctorate and what types of people have been kept from obtaining their doctorates mainly because of their religious beliefs.
Karl,
As often happens, you are managing to wrestle this thread off its original topic. This discussion is concerned with the unsustainable rate of population growth and what steps may be taken to avert or at least soften the impact on mankind when the tipping point is reached.
In typical tortucan fashion, some deny the population problem. You seem to try multip[le techniques to derail and deflect the topic.
About source references, the quality and veracity of a source should be considered.Most bloggers realize they can search and verify stuff in minutes. In this situation, referring to unsubstantiated works is like saying "I didn't make this up, that guy did!".
If "the population reaches a tipping point" is a premise of this thread. This premise should be changed to state that if the human educational, economic and innovative abilities of a specific local population results in a standard of living abhorent to others what are the others to do?
Rational self-reliant people vote with their feet as they have done in the city of St. Louis for a couple of decades. People that are happy to be dependent upon the government however let the infrastructure (the very means of their livlihood)fall apart.
As Erich and many others have already noted, in some high population density locations this premise has already reached the tipping point because those with the means to help, do not go and assist.
Modern day Christian Missionaries if they do nothing else of value bring assistance to places where there is physical and economic hardship. Aids, famine, Islam, and political opposition have done more to decimate the population of world than any grandiose human suggested laws could ever do.
Thomas Malthus made a "modest proposal" and Jonathan Swift added another satirical solution years ago.
Both of their solutions were based upon a lack of human ethical constraints.
Islamic "missionaries," settle the population problem in third world countries by using mass genocide. It is legal according to Jihad, and doesn't require any resources other than a bullet or a knife, so it doesn't put a strain upon their economic system.
Political opposition lets this arm of Islam do as it wants and just looks the other way.
Laws against abortion drive it "into back alleys" so the statement goes. An attempted control of a population of law respecting and abiding citizens with new laws to keep the population under a certain size only forces the child "birth" business underground as it does in many parts of the world.
This problem is one of human educational, economic and innovative abilities, not one of shear "numbers."
The "numbers" are not the elephant in the room, the human educational, economic and innovative abilities are the elephant in the room.
I have been discussing that this issue like many here on Dangerous Intersection are framed in ways that throw personal responibility off of those who identify a problem, and look to others to solve the problem by legislation or some other means of governmental involvment.
If this issue is to be solved in some fashion by a "reasoned collective" approach the real problem must be identified, not some grossly mis-represented statistic like human population numbers.
If all that matters is "quality of life" in America, than the suffering of the rest of the world will need to come here before we wake up to the real problem.
Karl: Once again, I disagree with you on so many issues that I don't have it in me to respond completely. But how about this: Shouldn't we strive for a world where only those people who want to have babies have babies? Shouldn't it be easy for anyone, anywhere to have pills and devices readily available so that they don't get pregnant unless they WANT to get pregnant? And yes, I'm assuming that sex is a basic human need, just like eating, sleeping and exercising, so don't tell me that people should simply refrain from having sex if they don't want to have babies.
With that as the context, it disturbs me that many missionaries export to the people they are "helping" the dogma that they should NOT use easily available methods to keep from becoming pregnant. As a result, half of pregnancies are unintended, even here in the U.S. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortio… This is unacceptable to me, and religion is often part of the problem. Good for Mother Teresa, helping the poor. Shame on Mother Teresa for shaming people into having children they couldn't support. Shame on the Vatican for its condemnation on birth control.
Karl writes—"However, what is taught in many courses about these texts today assumes that the word “Liberal” meant the same thing to Tocgueville as it does today in America and it does not."
You are quite correct. It is not widely understood that "Liberal" was descriptive of what we now call Free Market economics and the culture emerging from such practice. Much of what we consider odious about "conservatism" today was the core of 19th Century Liberal philosophy.
However, there is one way in which the term has consistency—both then and now it engendered an atmosphere of inclusion insofar as prior barriers, mostly based in class, were broken down to admit participation by previously disempowered people. That has not changed.
The irony, of course, is the very people such "liberal" policies favored in the 19th Century became powerful enough to close doors to all those who came afterward and basically own the new market economies, thus requiring a new movement of breaking down barriers and redefinition of the finer points of Liberalism is light of new information.
So in a sense, the definitions didn't change, at least philosophically, but the players did.
Karl,
You over simplify and over complicate all in the same post. Amazing.
People go where the jobs go. Crumbling infrastructure is a direct result of lack of resources due to dwindling job markets. Individuals don't leave first and business follows, business leaves and individuals follow. You have the cart before the horse. Businesses make such decisions based on taxes and other local "perks." If the community thus abandoned doesn't have the tax base to pay for infrastucture, whose fault is that?
Numbers are the elephant in the room because this is a resource issue and more numbers mean heavier burden on available resource. Again, you have a business cycle exercised through local government that provides for excess remuneration to those who control the business, not the people such businesses take advantage of for low-cost labor. If distribution of health care is kept at a minimum—which includes infant care AND birth control—then you have population cycles that provide cheap labor with no possibility of gaining the kind of personal resource to make decisions other than to take what's available. No birth control, bigger families, fewer resources equal a cycle of poverty that allows Nike to pay ten cents a day to underage factory workers. High mortality rates require continual replenishment of the available labor pool as well as maintain a burden that is both emotionally intractable and economically unsupportable to keep that pool oppressed and pliant.
It has already been proven time and again in western economies that the more educated the family the fewer children they have BY CHOICE. But that also means, with higher educational standards, all other resource factors come in line to provide health care INCLUDING BIRTH CONTROL that lowers infant mortality and aids a cycle of smaller families with higher individual incomes.
If you think for a minute number don't matter, just what is it you think is driving the current immigration hysteria throughout the western world?
Erich,
As always, such missionaries have a single, ridiculous message—people shouldn't fuck. They can't get that out of their head and be sensible about it. People shouldn't fuck. Giving them the means to fuck without "consequences"—i.e. babies—is morally objectionable, so they stress the main message and if the poor ignorant natives choose to fuck anyway then it's all on their heads that they live in shit. But the missionaries can be content that they have maintained their morality by not helping anyone to fuck. Never mind the problems that arise from related issues that can be fairly easily and cheaply dealt with just by being reasonable about it.
Planned Parenthood is the only non-profit organization that dispenses contraception and related information in its global clinics. They have a track record of reducing not only local birth-rates but also disease rates, infant mortality, and chronic abuse of women and children. Because they don't have that absurd dictum stuck in their head. And for that, the Right is trying to destroy them—because it threatens the potential for cheap, controlled labor.
The maxim should not be that people shouldn't fuck—it should be that people shouldn't fuck stupidly.
My apologies for all the language, but we dance around this so delicately most of the time that it allows the point to be sidestepped by people who just don't want to deal with it.
Erich,
You missed my clarification of the problem. Numbers are the easiest thing to "reduce" any analysis to. However, this ignores all of the variables that are actually present in the full picture.
I am in agreement with your statements concerning the need to encourage responsible choices in having children. However, your belief that individual sexual activity itself not being something we can keep under wraps is like saying we can only prevent deaths in war by simply providing paint ball guns to all the combatants. Would the team with the least paint on vital body regions win the battle? Someone will drill somebody in the eye and cause a death despite our best of intentions.
In your analysis anything that results in fewer unwanted pregnancies means we all win. I agree this sounds like a logical deduction, but there are many social groups that do not think the way you do. This only works for individuals that are agreement with your "numerical" analysis of the problem.
This does not work for any minority group that desires to have the rest of society "pay" for their rights to "play." You entirely miss that there are many young people that simply defy any means of birth control because they want the rest of society to provide for both them and their children.
You think that by changing the external conditions upon human sexual activity that the amount of propagative outcomes would decrease. I would prefer to speculate that if people were nurtured and educated to understand that if they are irresponsible with their child bearing abilities there will be unwanted consequences both to them and society. As well, if they are responsible with their child bearing abilities there will be positive outcomes for both them and society.
Unfortunately we are approaching the matter from different perspectives, one of nature verses nurture. You believe nature (sexual urges) are all too powerful for young or anyother poorly educated
people to control. Therefore they must be somehow made to prevent pregancies while being told that they don't need to be responsible for how they deal with their sexual urges. This will not be successful because the consequences of irresponsible gratuitous sexual activity outside of marriage have been nearly eliminated in many western cultures.
If the "uncontrollable" human urge for sex is the main reason up to half of people are here on the planet then we have indeed mis-educated and/or mis-led young people about the true nature of their sexuality.
Karl: People are going to have sex whether you want them to or not. I believe in abstinence as one part of the approach to preventing unwanted pregnancies. That might put a big dent in the problem. But that will not solve the problem. Thousands of years of human history prove me correct.
Please get over your puritanical inhibitions and admit that abstinence is not a complete solution. Further, how dare you suggest that adults shouldn't have unrestricted access to the means to have sex without risk of conception. Talk about misuse of the government to annihilate basic human liberties. I have no respect for your simplistic and arrogant version of the nanny-state.
And here's my challenge to you, lest there be any misunderstanding (I'll limit the question to adults to keep it simple). True or false: American adults (people 18 and over) should have the unrestricted ability to purchase the means to prevent pregnancy, including birth control pills, condoms, diaphragms and other pharmaceuticals and devices. What's your answer: True or False?
Karl writes:—"This does not work for any minority group that desires to have the rest of society “pay” for their rights to “play.” You entirely miss that there are many young people that simply defy any means of birth control because they want the rest of society to provide for both them and their children."
Myth.
In the US, the number of children being born to married couples has been decreasing while children being born to single women (ie unmarried) has been increasing. This is what is encouraged by providing no cost/no consequence birth control and abortion to individuals that do not wish to be responsible for how they use their child bearing abilities.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/…
"Clearly the American family, like all families in the Western industrial countries, is now profoundly different from what it had been in the recorded past. It typically is a household with few children, with both parents working, and with mothers producing their children at ever older ages. At the same time, more adults than ever before are living alone or with unmarried companions and more women than ever before are giving birth out of wedlock. These trends have profoundly changed the American family and are unlikely to be reversed any time soon."
The United States has been riding the fence both above and below the 2.0 fertility rate over the past decades. Amoung its citizens there actually is a negative population growth rate. It can be argued that the entire population growth in America is now following the trends of Europe and is now on a negative downward spiral. In both Europe and America any actual increase in population as recorded by census numbers has been coming from legal and illegal aliens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate…
http://www.endillegalimmigration.com/Illegal_Immi…
Erich,
I have never said that the methods and means of helping an individual or a couple to be responsible for how they use their child bearing abilities shouldn't be there.
Just as you believe that abstinence can be a part of the educational program for young people, so too a proper understanding of fertility and conception needs to be included in education given to young people.
Teaching how to basically avoid a pregnancy and an "unwanted" child is going about the entire matter from the wrong perspective.
The practice of encouraging gratuitous sexuality as being a part of an experiential learning process is bogus. Its like teaching people to eat all they want and then stick a finger down their throat so they still lose weight.
In America, the land of the free and individual rights, the methods and means of birth control are a reality of the human condition. This does not mean they should be the primary fallback solution to the question of how parents or society teaches their young people about the best ways to both understand and use their sexuality in responsible ways.
People of the world and any religion need both of these means to encourage the proper understanding, use and experiences of human sexuality.
Karl: Quit your BS and just answer my simple question.
I just don't get it. Why are anti-abortion groups so adamantly opposed to artificial means of birth control or even accurate information about it? Vast amounts of peer-reviewed research prove that the most successful way to bring down the abortion rate in any community is through accurate sex education and the availability of birth control for both men and women. Abortion opponents in Congress should be applauding Planned Parenthood for its success in bringing down abortion rates, as well as for promoting the health of girls and women. Instead, the fools in Congress are trying to kill Planned Parenthood.
Erich,
True and false questions are about the worse types of questions under the sun. My answer to such a beligerent question could easily change tomorrow. If it was discovered that the budget deficit of the US was going to pay for condoms for the entire world I would have to say no until the words "unrestricted ability to purchase" were defined a little better.
TRUE! TRUE! TRUE!
I answered your question in the affirmative if you didn't catch it. Sorry I wasn't suppose to add anything else to it.
In an ideal world there would be no worse consequences for any of the choices we make.
People have free will and they should also have access to anything they would like, whether it's the best for them or not. I also suggest that we give screwloose abortion opponents AK 47's and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as many nuclear warheads and deliver systems as he would like to have.
Giving rights without expecting responsibility is like giving a hand grenade to a four year old.
I guess it all comes down to when men and women have become responsible adults with both how they handle their own sexuality and how they instruct their own children about it as well.
Those roles of responsible adulthood have virtually vanished from many societies in the world, if they ever existed at all.
Karl: You have now clearly responded that you would restrict at least some adults from buying birth control pills and devices. Welcome to Karl's Nanny-State.
Karl writes:—"In the US, the number of children being born to married couples has been decreasing while children being born to single women (ie unmarried) has been increasing. This is what is encouraged by providing no cost/no consequence birth control and abortion to individuals that do not wish to be responsible for how they use their child bearing abilities."
There are all kinds of things wrong with this statement.
Overall birthrates, to all groups, are declining. As a percentage of women having children, single women giving birth has risen, yes, but fewer children are being born across the board. Many of these single women are women who maintain themselves responsibly and have either opted not to put up with what they see as the down side of life with a male partner or they are women in otherwise monogamous nontraditional but nevertheless stable relationships. Teen pregnancies are down, but not among girls who have received only abstinence only education.
How women who are utilizing your "no cost/no consequence" birth control are contributing to births is beyond me. You must mean women who are NOT utilizing it. Your suggestion is, I suppose, that the atmosphere created by open sexuality is a contributing factor, but the only group showing alarming rates of increased undesirable births are among the rock solid Bible thumpers.
There are psychological factors contributing to this that have nothing to do with the availability of contraception—which would seem obvious since if one is using contraception and availing one's self of the information pertaining to it, pregnancy would be down.
However. In a country that is still locked up in a Puritanical death-grip over this issue, the one thing a lot of young people do not get is a "proper understanding, use and experiences of human sexuality." It seems that every time someone tries to implement such a program there is some parent or religious group ready to pounce on it as somehow promoting immorality. The only immorality involved is stupidity, of which we seem to have an abundance.
MikeFitz17
The answer to your question lies in human perversity. The Right has been seeking to put the genie of the Sixties back in its bottle for 50 years now. One of the drawbacks, as far as they're concerned, is that women have the option to say no and leave relationships. I suspect the male ego of a certain sort cannot tolerate this. What's that old saying? "Keep 'em pregnant and barefoot and they won't give you any trouble." I would like to think it's more sophisticated or even more sinister than that, but unfortunately I suspect it actually comes right down to that. Male privilege regarding prime female stock has been sharply curtailed since women have been able to control their own fertility and it drives a certain kind of male nuts.
Karl,
The article you referenced at the Hoover Institution website doesn't support your claims.
My understanding of you argument is that minority women have children so they can collect more welfare. It an old piece of BS that was debunked years ago.
There are many reasons for single parent families, including divorce, death of a spouse and unplanned pregnancies. This is true across all ethnic groups.
Unwed mothers have a difficult life, especially teenaged unwed mothers. They, with a few exceptions, only raise 1 child, because of the difficulties of juggling a job, with childcare and in some cases high school or college classes gives them an understanding of hardship. The few exceptions are the ones with a lot of family support who can count on ma or grandma as baby sitters; who can count on parents or grandparents for financial assistance, and who can pass their financial responsibilities to parents and grandparents.
It would seem to me—maybe I'm stupid—that giving people free access to birth control is merely providing them with the ability to act responsibly. It seems that restricting such access sort of guarantees a certain outcome.
I dunno. Maybe I am stupid.