Bertrand Russell Quotes
I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer.
Russell, Bertrand. Unpopular Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950, p. 160.
History has shown that as girls and women get educated and learn about family planning, their children are healthier and have better chances of survival and despite the lower death rate the population trend slows as a result of family planning.
One of the most contentious activities in all political history is a government trying to regulate the number of children which its citizens can have. When a government tries to do this, they run into opposition by some religious people who oppose birth control in general or some birth control methods (eg abortion). In addition it is opposed by many people who do not want the government involved at all in a decision that is so personal. Yet many governments, under the press of perceived overpopulation, or in an effort to limit mental retardation, have attempted such regulation and that includes the United States where 40 states have at one time or another practiced forced sterilization of people who the state believed were unfit to bear children. China and India—the largest nations of the world—have both maintained government policies and practices to control population with China making it illegal to have more than 1 child. These programs have reduced the population counts, but at a terrible ethical cost and resentment of the affected people.
In Burundi, family land is divided among the male children of a family. The average Burundian woman has 6.3 children, nearly triple the international fertility rate. With this fertility rate, the plots of land for each person inevitably get smaller and smaller over time. At 10,745 square miles, Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million. The small plots of land are inefficient to farm and provide subsistence. So the nation was in a crises as there was little industrialization and land was essential for existence for most Burundians. See {35808} and {35809}.
This proposal totally violates the freedom of many women who may be poor. Yet they may be orthodox Roman Catholics and birth control would be an anathema to them. Women’s freedom to control their own bodies requires that they have the right be decide whether to use birth control or not. This abuse of women’s freedom however is not unexpected from KKK members whose program advocates the denial of religious freedom and any rights to Blacks.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS was a British polymath, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. Bertrand Russell was one of the most influential and widely known intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his extensive contributions to world literature and for his “rationality and humanity, as a fearless champion of free speech and free thought in the West.“
