Dispatch: The New Eugenics
Eco-activists say we need to have fewer kids. Are they right?
by Kara Jesella
May 22, 2009
And this time, some of the same race, class, and gender-sensitive Americans who enthusiastically voted Obama into office are among those doing the finger-pointing. After eight years of an environmentally tone-deaf president and a runaway big business culture
that has our country's finances in ruin, they now see an opportunity for change. But this new frugality isn't just directed at Wall Street minions or banks, but is being projected onto the bodies of individual women — those who have more than one child; have
many children; or want their own genetic children, whether via reproductive technology or not. ("The vanity of having a baby who is genetically attached to the parents who raise it escapes me," said one
Times commenter, typical of the many who seemed to think that all families who want children should adopt.) They are looked upon by some as not all that different from overpaid executives looking to use taxpayers' stimulus money for a joyride on a
private jet, embodiments of a bloated age of conspicuous consumption we would rather forget.
Of course, not everyone thinks that a thriftier approach to childbearing is the answer. "Why do so many people remain convinced that it is the job of infertile couples to 'save the world'? The only thing that's smug is someone with biological children insisting
that others adopt orphans or not add to the population problem," said one Times commenter. Hartmann agrees that there is a pernicious effect to shifting a social issue like environmental degradation onto individual women or couples. In fact, focusing
on controlling births "is diverting attention" from enacting other policies to improve the environment, she says.
There is a pernicious effect to shifting a social issue onto individual women or couples.And though they may use different language to talk about it, many population control advocates and adversaries agree on some of those measures. Like many other concerned scholars, York thinks that the best ways to reduce population on an international level
are to improve the status of women and give them more access to education and to paid work; to improve health care, which would help reduce the infant mortality rate so that families didn't feel they need to have so many children; and to ensure that everyone
in the world has access to safe, effective, affordable birth control. All of these measures have been shown to lower fertility rates without state coercion.
Connelly agrees that, globally, we need comprehensive reproductive healthcare. He also notes that infertility is a huge problem in the developing world and believes that treatments should be government subsidized and more available globally, so that people
in all societies have equal access to choosing when to have families. And he notes that the Byzantine rules governing adoption here and abroad put off many of those who might want to otherwise; making adoption easier is an issue he thinks could bring people
on the left and right together.
Hartmann suggests enacting a sane environmental policy, which would include putting caps on carbon emissions, shifting from private automobiles to public transport, bringing back local agriculture, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, and making investments
in alternative energy. "People concerned with the environment need to get involved in pressuring the administration to enact good policies. There's a real political opening with the new EPA director and the administration's decision to get involved again in
international climate policy."
She also suggests that we focus not on limiting how many children individual women have, but on raising those children in a green way. "We should try to have a more positive attitude: yes, have children, but have a more healthy environment, a more sane lifestyle."
That's a solution that sounds down to earth.
©2009 Kara Jesella and Babble Media
About the Author
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Kara Jesella is a co-author of How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love
Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time and a frequent
contributor to The New York Times.
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