Saving the world vs. Saving a woman's right.

After discussing the issue of over population in class a few weeks ago, and reading the article,"7 Billion People Fuel Concern over World Resources," I feel like I had seven billion opinions and ideas floating around in my head. So excuse me if this blog is a little scatterbrained. 


I do understand that if the population continues to grow as it has been, the consequences for our world could be detrimental. At some point, we have got to run out of space and food for every one living on the earth. However, while I do know the trouble it could cause, I'm not exactly sure I agree with some of the solutions that my peers have offered up in class. In fact, I definitely do not agree with the idea of taking a woman's right to have children away from her. One or two children seemed to be the "limit" many students suggested, which just blows my mind. Reproduction is something that all humans are born and created to do. Thats just the way our bodies work. I am one of three girls and while people were talking of limiting family size, I could only think about if this was a legitimate law and I didn't have one of my sisters in my life today because of such a law. 


I believe it was Amber who commented on the families like the Duggers from the well known television show, 17 Kids and Counting. In my mind, families of that size are COMPLETELY absurd. I don't see the need for that many children. However, I suppose any of the kids in that family could make the same argument I make about my smaller family. 


Also, if the government were to put a limit on how many children families were allowed to have, this would also create an increase in the abortion rate. You can't physically stop women from getting pregnant.  


I'm not sure how to go about solving the population problem all together because I do not agree with limiting family size, however, I do believe strongly in adoption. There are millions of children all over the world who are just waiting to be taken home by a nice set of parents. I feel as though it is WAY too expensive to adopt children, and if it were a little more affordable, perhaps that right there would solve a portion of the population issue. Lets find all the children that are here already families to go to, before we worry about having our own children. That way, parents are still able to build families of virtually any size they want, but we would also be keeping the population stagnant. 


Relating this to the article we read for today, we also have to keep in mind, certain countries of the world such as Nigeria (where the article takes place) have little to no education on teen pregnancy or contraceptives. I'm going to take a leap and assume that the teen girl the article talks about in the beginning had almost no idea the consequences of having unprotected sex at her age, or what she was in store for. I feel as though if we are THAT worried about over population, more developed countries such as the United States, or countries in Europe should step up and try to inform and educate less developed countries. It would be quite the task, but at this point, anything we do in attempts to slow down population growth is going to be a difficult process.