01-06 Birth Control - John Bulloch

Women who are educated and relatively affluent have choices about having children. In simple terms, they have access to various forms of birth control and the right to use them or not. The result is declining birth rates in the developed nations. To control rising populations in less developed nations, it will be necessary to distribute birth control materials free.

It was 1947 and I am 13 years of age in Belfast visiting my grandparents. We had spent the day in Dublin visiting some of the beautiful churches and local culture.
On the way back I noticed the train jammed with young couples. According to my uncle they were coming to Belfast to buy contraceptives, which were forbidden in the South. The South of course is just Ireland. It was a lesson on how religion tries to influence family planning. And not just the Catholic Church but various arms of Islam
Today, there is a wide range of devices available to control pregnancy. But the “pill” is probably the most popular. It is easy to purchase and cheap.
And when you look at the declining populations in most of the developing nations, it is obvious that the low birth rates are linked to the easy availability of the “pill”.
As early as 1983 in Singapore, I heard government officials declare that their shrinking population was a national crisis. And in order to protect their tax base they would have to bring in Immigrants from other nations like Taiwan and China, that spoke Mandarin Chinese.
They said it was a combination of women being educated, relatively affluent and with access to cheap effective contraceptives.
Birth control was not always just a clean option available to affluent women. In the US as far back as 1920, there were laws in about half of the US states that allowed for forced sterilization. It was something that was highly politicized until it was banned.
But any student of history remembers forced sterilization under Nazi Germany. And it was more than people with genetic diseases that were sterilized but a whole range of people considered unsuitable.
The areas of the world were populations are exploding are in North Africa. There is an attempt to distribute contraceptive devices free or subsidized in some of the nations. Again, the issue is the logistics of getting these devices to those who can afford them and will use them. Best to give them away free.
And what about the exploding populations of Muslim nations like Indonesia and Pakistan. The issue is future economic power that their population represents. I would say that politics is more important here than women’s rights.