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No Such thing as a Right to Have Babies: Population Trust
LifeSiteNews ^ | 7/15/08 | Hilary White

Posted on 07/15/2008 4:23:59 PM PDT by wagglebee

LONDON, July 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The solution to global warming, says a UK charity, is to implement laws that would result in people having fewer children. Governments should put slow pressure on people to limit their offspring to one or two children to save social and environmental resources.

"There is no unlimited right to have children," said the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), the group known to be one of the most militantly anti-life organisations in the world. There is a limit, the Trust said, "on the number of children to which people are 'entitled'."

"A voluntary population policy should be incorporated into law," the group said.

Governments, indicated the organization, should implement a "society-wide process of agreement, internalisation and normalisation" to the idea of small families and use a series of "gentle nudges" rather than "hard shoves," to get people to conform to the new childless paradigm.

All of this, they said, is to ensure that everyone has equal access to wilderness areas. "Our moral and legal rights to access wilderness and natural biological diversity (including other species), enjoy its benefits, and perhaps even see it restored, are at odds with, and arguably outweigh, the private right to have an unlimited number of children."

The Trust said that "human rights theory, legal precedent and national and international practice do not" support the UN's reassertion of its 1968 declaration that individuals "have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and timing of their children."

This year, the slogan by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), one of the world's largest promoters of abortion for World Population Day, July 11, was "Family Planning: It's a right. Let's make it real!"

But the OPT responded saying that there is really only a "far more limited right to 'found a family'."

The group quotes a paper by a US academic and animal rights activist, Carter Dillard, who called the notion that people have a natural right to have as many children as they want, "self-contradictory and illogical."

"Only the decision not to have children is a genuinely private act," Dillard wrote, whereas the decision to procreate affects the lives of others and limits the freedom of descendants who must then compete for resources. True freedom, the paper says, is the freedom not to be bothered by the existence of other people. "As numbers increase, life becomes more complex," Dillard wrote, and "the scope of law expands and regulation brings a contraction of rights."

To support his assertion, Dillard cites the example of China, where the state has "traditionally... perceived women's reproductive function as a legitimate matter of state control."

But such open calls for the state to coerce citizens to have fewer children is gaining critics.

Dominic Lawson, writing today for the Independent, said, "The population control freaks have also been skilful in adopting the fashionable political concerns of the day to their cause." He called the OPT's use of environmentalist slogans on "carbon footprints," "yet another illustration of the way these people mould their agenda to whatever is the most fashionable political concern of the day."

Brendan O'Neill went even further in the Guardian, saying that the new environmentalist movement is a threat to human freedom and democracy.

"It seems to me," O'Neill wrote, "that green thinking - with its shrill intolerance of dissenting views, its deep distaste for free movement and free choice, and its view of individuals, not as history-makers, but as filthy polluters - poses a more profound threat to liberty even than the government's paranoid anti-terrorist agenda."

In 2003, the OPT drew the ire even of the far left British media establishment after its conference at Oxford, at which the group suggested that the solution to Britain's environmental problems is to reduce the population to 30 million, half of the country's current number.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Government Must Institute Two-Child Policy says Leading UK Population Control Group
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07071201.html

Environmentalist Extremists Call Humanity "Virus", a "Cancer", Large Families Guilty of "Eco-Crime"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07050812.html


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: agw; eugenics; globalwarming; moralabsolutes; prolife; unitednations
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To: socialismisinsidious

Yep liberals are totally all about live and let life, don’t be judgemental, and all that. But here they are making a huge judgement about people who have children. They just don’t see the irony or the hypocrisy of it all. They are blinded by their “superior” judgement about how people should live their lives for the greater good.


21 posted on 07/15/2008 4:39:53 PM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: redgolum

Congratulations!


22 posted on 07/15/2008 4:41:14 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: Dilbert San Diego
Did you notice their other absurd "newspeak" too? They claim a "moral and legal right to access wilderness and enjoy its benefits" yet refuse to grant us the unlimited right to have children.

These folks are downright scary, as well as stupid.

23 posted on 07/15/2008 4:41:29 PM PDT by Flycatcher (Strong copy for a strong America)
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To: wagglebee

Unless you are muslim and then your religion says you can have as many children and wives as you want. One man, 52 children. Hey! Only the white folk will limit their children so in one generation they will become the minority and really will live under Sharia Law.


24 posted on 07/15/2008 4:42:29 PM PDT by autumnraine
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To: wagglebee

They are well paid. Our own Congress could cease funding these NGOs, but they are geting paid, too.


25 posted on 07/15/2008 4:43:30 PM PDT by RightWhale (I will veto each and every beer)
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To: wagglebee
No Such Thing as a Right to Breathe: Progressive Knowitalls

see tagline

26 posted on 07/15/2008 4:45:53 PM PDT by headsonpikes (Genocide is the highest sacrament of socialism.)
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To: wagglebee
Hey Population trust! Look Here!


27 posted on 07/15/2008 4:46:06 PM PDT by GreenLanternCorps (No Surrender, No Retreat!!! Only one candidate will win the war, and it's not Barack Obama!)
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To: wagglebee
Thank you! We went and saw the first ultra sounds yesterday (9 weeks along!) that little guy's heart was beating fast! 120 some beats a minute, which is normal.

Funny thing was that conception would have been in May, which was a very stressful month for us. Looking at the chart, it would have been a day where both of us grabbed some of our Nebraska wine and just got happy after two bad days at work.

All the charting, doctor's visits, and stuff and it happened after a bottle of wine. Reminds me I have to get more of that stuff!

28 posted on 07/15/2008 4:48:24 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: GreenLanternCorps

LOL! ABSOLUTELY AWESOME PICTURES! Wow. 13 boys and two girls. We have friends who have two girls and six boys. Life is GOOD.


29 posted on 07/15/2008 4:51:16 PM PDT by redhead (B-I-NGO...B-I-NGO...)
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To: redhead

OOps. Looks like one of the girls is the MOM! LOL!


30 posted on 07/15/2008 4:52:34 PM PDT by redhead (B-I-NGO...B-I-NGO...)
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To: redgolum

LMAO!


31 posted on 07/15/2008 4:56:08 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

Looking up Carter Dillard,

1) attorney for the Humane Society of the United States
2) on the NYU law faculty.

Why am I not surprised.


32 posted on 07/15/2008 4:57:12 PM PDT by Varda
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To: Varda

The sad irony is that a century ago it was the Humane Society that took the lead in reforming child labor laws. Now, they support denying children the right to even be born.


33 posted on 07/15/2008 5:01:03 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
More liblogic. Lefties say there's no natural right to kids --- yet they love all the "fake" means of getting them (creating and killing lots of embryos in search of the perfect one, surrogacy, cloning, not to mention queers adopting....) It's only the normal way of procreating that they hate. Lefties say there's too many kids already --- but the Euros are starting to pay "native" women to have babies to pay for all their social programs.
34 posted on 07/15/2008 5:04:02 PM PDT by workerbee (Vote for Obama? No thanks, I already have a messiah.)
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To: wagglebee
Pass laws protecting the perps - check

Pass laws freeing past perps from jail - check

Pass laws changing War against Terrorists to a 'War against doctors, nurses, and knives' - check

Pass laws outlawing defense by citizens - check

Pass laws outlawing even discussing the perps - check

Pass laws making the victims accessible to the perps - check

Pass laws stopping catching mass murderers and terrorists before the fact - check

Pass a law allowing polygamy for Islam - check

Pass a law limiting the number of children for dhimmis. - coming

Pass a law making it illegal not to surrender. - coming

"England is dead, Jim. Dead, moribund, deceased, passed on, over, in its final dirtnap"

35 posted on 07/15/2008 5:08:00 PM PDT by Diogenesis (Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum)
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To: redgolum

LOL! A bottle of wine. That seems to be the ultimate conception tool. A family friend and his wife have conceived both of their children while under the influence.


36 posted on 07/15/2008 5:10:01 PM PDT by HungarianGypsy
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To: redgolum

Congrats! I’m just over 12 weeks along - it’s an exciting time!


37 posted on 07/15/2008 5:12:31 PM PDT by inflorida
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To: wagglebee

I want to get preganant again and parade my fat belly and all my kids around in front of these people just to piss them off. Absurd.


38 posted on 07/15/2008 5:21:51 PM PDT by samiam1972 ("It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."-Mother Teresa)
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To: redgolum

Just give me a call! They will have at least TWO to confront!

CONGRATS POP!


39 posted on 07/15/2008 5:26:01 PM PDT by Randy Larsen (Arrogance IS my virtue!)
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To: wagglebee
Liberals should practice voluntary human extinction first. Buh bye libs!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

40 posted on 07/15/2008 5:27:40 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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