This is something I've been thinking about. I suppose the topic came from thinking about how it is morally wrong to breed or support the breeding of animals when there are already so many animals who need homes: and so I applied it to humans.
It's fact that there is an overpopulation issue when it comes to humans, so why is it morally correct to contribute to the overpopulation issue by having children when there are so many children without families and parents?
As birth rates climb, natural resources get used up faster than they can be replaced, creating enormous economic pressures at home while the standard of living plummets throughout the rest of the world. As the result of having so many people who do not understand our reality and its behavioral demands, we have created an interrelated web of global environmental problems. We are depleting our natural resources: our forests, fisheries, range lands, croplands, and plant and animal species. We are destroying the biological diversity on which evolution thrives. With powerful new electrical and diesel pumping techniques, we are draining our aquifers and lowering our water tables. We are systemically polluting our air, water, and soil, and consequently our food chain. We are depleting the stratospheric ozone that shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. And, we are experiencing symptoms of global warming: heat waves, devastating droughts, dying forests, accelerated species extinction, dying coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, and a more rapid spread of diseases.
In my mind: it seems unjust to produce children instead of taking in a child with no home, and the decision to do so seems almost like a selfish decision based on one (or twos) own personal desires to reproduce just for the sake of having their own biological child. Of course humans and animals are biologically designed to want to reproduce but we are aware of the issue of global overpopulation: the destruction it causes for the other forms of life on the planet, etc.
I am not trying to cause an argument, just trying to understand. And in no way am I calling anyone with a baby selfish. This is just how the idea has formed in my own mind. And despite my idea that it is perhaps a reckless thing to do, my own desire to one day have children isn't gone.
Opinions?
