Fertility treatments and overpopulation

But isn't that a radical position? Of course it is a medical condition. You can go to a doctor and they can diagnose exactly the reason you will never conceive or take a child to term. For some reason, this is a medical condition that lots of people feel privileged to weigh in to say you shouldn't seek treatment. Can you think of another condition like that? It seems like a weird double standard where medical treatment crosses politics. My home state had a very aggressive eugenics program through the 70's. Poor women who had children or girls who were considered promiscuous were given the choice of having sterilization done or giving up their government aid. Some of those girls who were sterilized by the state are still around and the state is trying to decide what compensation should be paid. It seems like there is an argument here that is one step inside of that - we won't sterilize anyone but you shouldn't seek help if nature has already limited you. At least some of those in the NC sterilization program had very good intents and some of those sterilized as teenagers may have indeed gone on to live better lives than they would have otherwise had they been saddled with children at a young age, but is it really our call? When should irresponsible family planning by some limit responsible family planning by others?

Thank you for the link, engineer! I wasn't living in the U.S. in the 70s and only heard rudimentary information about that. It sparked a major discussion with my 16 year old this morning who first thought it wasn't THAT bad, but came around after we discussed it in more depth and included the political agendas of people like Handel/Brinker (Koman for the cure) and how dangerous this can be for vulnerable minority groups. So it was a productive morning here!

Now I have. Attenborough repeats the same Malthusian arguments that public intellectuals have been making since the days of Thomas Malthus (1798), and that have been refuted by the empirical data ever since then. The sincerity of those doomsayers is not in question, and wouldn't be terribly relevant if it were. The problem is that they have consistently been wrong.


Me too---on this particular sub-thread anyway.

Question - you got married didn't you? What is the rationale for that? It really doesn't make sense - it is more expensive to get married rather than live together. The chance of divorce and expense of that as well makes living together to make more sense.

Seems like you had a reason to get married but I don't see why it makes sense when the alternative is much more practical...