Population Control

Issue

   The world is overpopulated and the situation will become worse if no preventive measures are taken to correct the matter.

Euthanasia

   Euthanasia is the practice of allowing a terminally ill or gravely injured person to die humanely with procedures done in a sympathetic and compassionate manner. Whether viewed as ethical or not, allowing people to pass in a dignified manner to prevent further pain and suffering is a meaningful gesture.

   When nations are overpopulated to the point that it becomes detrimental to the nation's welfare, it may be beneficial to consider expanding euthanasia to also include those who are not in life-threatening situations. Such as considering those with criminal behavior/history, physical/mental disabilities, elderly with difficult function, financially distressed at any age, etc.

   Expanding euthanasia to reduce the population in this manner may seem inhumane. However, if population levels continue to rise and become detrimental to the quality of life, extraordinary measures may be necessary to prevent a nation from collapsing due to its overpopulation level.

Abortion

   The debate over abortion whether pro-choice (a woman’s right to abort the fetus), or pro-life (the child's life should be valued until natural death), may become irrelevant if nations become overpopulated to the point of being detrimental. In which case, abortion may be forced upon society as a mandatory policy for reducing the population level.

   Until then, the alternatives to abortion are adoption (with financial aid for surrogate mothers), forced sterilization at a young age (to prevent pregnancies), or develop artificial womb technology (where the embryo is extracted and brought to full term in an incubator).

   Research for the latter is an ongoing process and some success has been made with animal development in recent years. For human development, one estimate is less than 20 years away and if achievable, would provide a viable alternative to the abortion dilemma.

   When artificial wombs become available, another factor that needs to be considered is how to handle the large number of children that will be raised by the program. In America, over one million abortions occur every year which brings into question how to adequately care for so many when they come to term. Orphanages are already at capacity and won't be able to handle the influx of over a million newborns every year.

   One possibility, even though it may become unpopular, is that the nation may need to consider a forced adoption policy to handle the situation. Around 100,000 adoptions occur in the U.S. annually which is only a fraction of the number that will be raised with artificial womb technology. So, nations may need to employ a forced adoption policy similar to a military draft to handle the influx of newborns each year.

   There are approximately 60 million married couples in America, less in the ideal age range of 20-50 yrs, that may adequately raise a child into adulthood. With a million abortions, that results in roughly a 1-in-60 chance per year of couples being forced to raise another child.

   For those not selected, whether married or not, will be forced to pay for child support because it wouldn't be fair to impose upon couples to raise someone else's child without the finances available to do so. So, in the future, people will either be raising someone else's child, or they're paying child support.

   For the time being, the possibilities to consider moving forward are that nations will need to decide whether to allow abortions, forcibly sterilize the population during adolescence (e.g., tubal ligation), or use artificial wombs with a forced adoption/child support policy.

Overpopulation

   The international community should consider overpopulation as a human rights violation since the quality of life is diminished by a certain degree under such circumstances. Because of this, the United Nations should impose a more forceful and restrictive policy towards nations that fail to address their overpopulation issue.

   The international community will need to first adopt a universally accepted means of determining a nation's population level. Possible criteria are: (1) population growth rate and variance, (2) economic stability, (3) quality of life, (4) agriculture production, (5) geographical location and expansion, (6) death rate, (7) environmental impact (waste/pollution), among others.

   Once a nation has been determined that it is unable to support its population for the next decade or so, sanctions should be placed on the offending nation to encourage corrective action. If sanctions are ineffective then the United Nations may need to declare that the nation is in violation of human rights and a strict quarantine should be imposed.

   A quarantined nation will be isolated to the degree that travel will be denied, trade halted (including food and medicine), assets frozen, and other economic conditions imposed until the overpopulation situation is resolved through corrective measures.