| World Population Problem, The |
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I recently came across the astonishing fact that in the year 1873 Mr. Gladstone, the great liberal statesman of Britain, withdrew his name from support of a memorial to John Stuart Mill because he had just discovered that Mill had once advocated birth control. A little later came the famous Bradlaugh-Besant trial, when Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh were tried and sentenced for advocating artificial birth control. By the way, it is interesting to note that the publicity for the idea of birth control achieved by the trial ahd the result of changing the sign of the [annual change in] birth rate in Britain from positive to negative. |
contraception social change |
| World Population Problem, The |
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What ought we to do? The first thing, obviously, is to realize that what is happening is truly a population explosion, that it constitutes the world's most serious problem, and that it has implications in all fields of human life and endeavor. The second is to change the set of our minds, to get away from the idea that increase in the number of human beings is somehow automatically a good thing, something inherently natural and right. ... It is now so wrong that it has become fundamentally immoral for any individual or group to put obstacles in the way of birth control or to oppose any policies aimed at reducing the rate of human increase. |
contraception social change population stabilization |
