Roberts Nomination and Our Nations Policies on Family Planning



In 1900 there were 2 billion in the world. In 2000 there were 6 billion. We are now adding a billion people in 14 years.
    
What are the consequences of this With more people we all become more crowded and poorer, having less resources per person, less farmland, less topsoil per person, less drinkable water. Ocean harvests have begun falling due to over fishing. Forests keep getting cut down to grow crops, shrinking animal habitat and often eroding irreplaceable topsoil. The poorest areas have the least education and the highest birth rates, furthering the spread of slums and ghettos, causing increased poverty and misery. Go to Haiti, our southern neighbor, for a first hand look at the biggest slum in the western hemisphere. It is not pretty place to be. A billion more people will cause vast areas to degenerate toward Haiti like conditions. In the Muslim countries these conditions become a breeding ground for terrorism. Competition for basic resources can escalate into clashes between differing religious and ethnic groups. We have to realize that too many humans are destroying our Garden of Eden.
    
As the U.S. population grows, we have more traffic, more sprawl, more inner cities, more people at the beach, more homeless in the parks, more kids in each classroom, less green belts, less wilderness. You have to be blind not to see the spread of shopping malls into what was once prime farmland. In the last ten years the U.S lost 6 million acres of farmland, an area the size of Vermont. Whatever you like, be it fishing, hunting, hiking, cars, boats, motorcycles, even loud music, you lose individual freedom and become more restricted because your actions affect more people living in the same area. Is adding another 76 million to the world every year going to make the price of fuel go down Is this what we want as a nation What should we be doing about it
    
We should certainly not follow the agenda of the religious right. With their policies against abortion, against sex education in the schools and cutting of funding for international family planning, they are beyond being oblivious to the problem, they strive to prohibit many forms of contraception. Example: last year, 8.4% of our nation's high school students got pregnant, while the religious right successfully pressured the FDA to postpone access to morning after pills that prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus. Do the religious right think all these pregnancies were intended Do they think this the best way to bring children into our society
    
John Roberts, the Supreme Court nominee, by his record as an Operation Rescue sympathizer, and advocate that Roe v. Wade be overturned, is deeply entrenched in the religious right. Unanimous endorsements by pro-life groups leave little doubt about his stance.
    
By intentionally keeping a sparse record on Roberts by refusing to release his memos from presidential libraries, the Bush administration is not being open or honest with the American public. The administration is using obfuscation tactics to promote Roberts to reward the Christian political machine that helped get them into the White House.
    
In one of his first official acts, Bush cut off funds to international family planning. In the 8 years that Bush will have been in office, 608 million new people will have been added to the earth. By following the religious extremist dictate to allow divine will to determine our pregnancies and consequently our population, we are acting like bacteria in a Petri dish, where we grow until we suffocate in our own waste products.
    
The specter of the policies of the religious right being forced upon the U.S. for Roberts' judicial lifetime while world population grows to 9 billion, at the same time the fossil fuels run out, should be indeed chilling to every voter in this country.





Roberts Nomination and Our Nations Policies on Family Planning