Cheryl, education is just one part of it, availability of family
planning materials and services, is however vital.

For a minute just forget that you are Cheryl the rich Australian,
lets imagine that you were Cheryl the young African, whose
husband had just paid 10 cows for you and he want's his money's
worth.

There would be no chemist shops around to buy your contraception,
in fact no money to buy any and no clinic to give you or him the
snip, when you felt that you had enough kids. No abortion services
either, when you felt that you just could not handle any more.

You would simply pop out kids as they came along, some would
live and some would die.

Under those circumstances, education alone would clearly not be
enough, the simple, basic provision of family planning services
would in fact be a huge relief to you, to have some control over
your fertility.

The above is exactly what alot of women in the third world face.

My point all along has been that we should be providing those basic
services to women of the third world, even if the Catholic Church
would try to stop us all the way.

"According to the theory of evolution the toughest survive. The weak will be replaced by the stronger."

Nope. You got that so wrong I didn't bother with the rest of your post. Looks like you've got some reading to do, Philip.

Cheryl, are you sure you know what anti-intellectualism is? Uncritically swallowing any and all glib criticism served up to you by corporate economists and industry-funded PR hacks because it suits your political views puts you with the Intelligent Designers, not the defenders of rational enquiry.

Yabby

While I enjoyed much of the truth of your last post regarding 'Cheryl the African'; education must, should, has to go hand in hand with contraception.

For a start an educated African Cheryl is less likely to be sold for 10 cows and more likely to understand how contraception works. Oh, and have the confidence to tell hubby to go get a vasectomy.

Poverty & environmental destruction is caused by population growth!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=---=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

All the poorest countries, countries with desertification and growing exploitation of the fragile environmnet have the highest birthrates... And it is THE CAUSE of poverty, not a RESULT of poverty.

SOURCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_fertility_rate
For a list of "fertility" rates by nation.

The highest fertility rates have the highest poverty.

Imagine, that our government had top build 5 time more schools, 5 times more hospitals, roads and somehow make 5 times more farm land each generation? Our wealthy economies would simply collapse! Our National parks would be opened up for food farming to fend off starvation...

But that is the burden we allow the poor countries to suffer from...
Rwanda's growth means that every 25 years, there are 5 times more people!

Why is it 'not acceptable' to talk about 'population management' as the solution to poverty? The people who oppose population management are sadists, guilty of causing immeasurable pain and death. (now I'm getting dramatic!)

THe western World is nto guilty.. quite the opposite... we are committing genocide against ourselves. The bottom of the list is western nations who are failing to produce children.

These are the most feminist nations... If education of women reduces fertility, then today's strong feminist institutions cause low fertility.

PartTimeParent@pobox.co

Fractelle, of course education goes along with availability
of family planning services, I have never claimed anything
else. Fact is both are required.

It seems to me however, that the Fractelles and Cheryls
of this world, don't seem to have a clue as to realities
of the situation in places like Africa. Fortunately I lived
in Africa for a number of years and let me tell you, things
work quite differently to what you are used to.

Of course vasectomies should be available to men, I fully
agree.

But if "Fractelle the African" was raped, a common
as chips happening in Africa and also a tool of war, hubby's
vasectomy is not going to do her one hell of a lot of good.

In parts of the Congo, crimes like murder carry a 7 day jail
sentence, if anyone is ever prosecuted, and rape is hardly
considered as a crime. Quite a differnt world to the one
that our rich Western women are used to.

So my point is that the best way to empower African women
is to give them the tools available, in terms of both education
and family planning "equipment", to be able to make decisions
about their lives and how many children they actually want to have.

Green labor and their lazy left wing cohorts infatuated with zero population growth is directly proportional to their inability to create tangible results outside taxation. Big brothers missing sisters.