Control
Human population control is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population. Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including high or increasing levels of poverty, environmental concerns, religious reasons, and overpopulation. While population control can involve measures that improve people's lives by giving them greater control of their reproduction, some programs have exposed them to exploitation.
Worldwide, the population control movement was active throughout the 1960s and 1970s, driving many reproductive health and family planning programs. In the 1980s, tension grew between population control advocates and women's health activists who advanced women's reproductive rights as part of a human rights-based approach. Growing opposition to the narrow population control focus led to a significant change in population control policies in the early 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Population, World Human Population
Famous quotes containing the word control:
“There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been “Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself,” while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have any chance to look out for themselves.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron- clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life’s sacred spontaneity. They can’t trust life until they can control it.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
““Have we any control over being born?,” my friend asked in despair. “No, the job is done for us while we’re sleeping, so to speak, and when we wake up everything is all set. We merely appear, like an ornate celebrity wheeled out in a wheelchair.” “I don’t remember,” my friend claimed. “No need to,” I said: “what need have us free-loaders for any special alertness? We’re done for.””
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. The Self-Devoted Friend, New Directions (1967)