Feminist call for population control

http://the-daily-behemoth.blogspot.com/2007/10/journalist-calls-for-population-control.html

Eugenics and population control were the subject of a leading article
in the Murdoch-owned Times of London yesterday. Calling for 'brave new
thinking' on overpopulation, Melanie Reid urged feminists to embrace
their inner dictator, and 'acknowledge that population control is a
counter-intuitive thing.' Castigating the 'idealistic eyes' with which
the argument is perceived, and calling for the West to transcend its
'liberal shibboleths', Reid believes overpopulation is the most
pressing challenge confronting the planet.

'We can argue, quite lucidly, that population control equates not only
to liberation for billions of women who spend their lives shackled by
perpetual pregnancy but, even more portentously, that it represents
liberation for the whole human race from starvation and disaster. It's
what women choose when they have neither the wealth not the power to
control their fertility in other ways, and to argue otherwise is to do
so from a position of phoney idealism... It's time for creative
thinking, by women for women. I rather admire the Chinese. They
recognised a huge problem and did something about it... After nearly
30 years of it, Chinese women, who are increasingly working, now say
the rules facilitate their more Westernised life.'

But lest we think that Ms Reid has disappeared into some parallel
dimension in which Germany won the war, she reminds us that the
'global incentive scheme' which she has in mind would be discharged
'with all the proper safeguards' (!) and 'done with willing
participation.' As willing, I suppose, as the Africans deliberately
infected with AIDS by the World Health Organisation in 1977 were
willing, or the gay population of New York and San Francisco, who-
thanks to the hepatitis B vaccinations conducted by Dr Wolf Szmuness,
an ex-roommate of Pope John Paul II- were infected with the same virus
over a three year period from November 1978 to October 1981?
International bodies don't have a very good record when it come to
safeguarding the rights of their target populations- especially
populations they wish to reduce in size... But perhaps this is just
another 'liberal shibboleth' we need to adjust?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/melanie_reid/article2759369.ece

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