I wanted to share an amazing article for Jill's readers who have an open mind.

It is often argued on this site that Family Planning is evil, or a conspiracy, or that overpopulation is a myth. While Family Planning is intervention by humans on human reproduction, it is considered to be a technology of our modern world. So are weapons of mass destruction. Poison gas (outside of volcanos) and nuclear explosions do not occur naturally in our world, and yet we humans have developed such weapons. Derivatives trading was not a part of the business world until 1865. Organ transplants didn't emerge until the 1950s. You get the idea. We humans develop new technologies to enhance profit, extend life, and to end lives in warfare.

This amazing article by Thomas Hayden and Malcom Potts argues quite convincingly that there is a relationship between unsustainable population growth and war. It also argues that Family Planning follows economic prosperity, not the other way around (as I previously believed).

The key quote is at the end:

As important as it obviously is to work for greater health and longer life, we could not agree more emphatically that to do so without also giving people the ability to determine family size is to condemn them to an increased likelihood of overpopulation, poverty and environmental degradation, as well as a dramatic and quantifiable increase in the likelihood of bloody conflict.

I'm sure some of you will dismiss this article as an example of atheist scientists playing god. But others might recognize that these scholars are arguing that we humans have technologies and solutions that give us a better chance of survival in a complex, violent, and technological world. They are arguing for the availability of Family Planning on moral grounds. They are not arguing that Family Planning is the only solution to war, or that Family Planning should be forced upon people through laws and/or policy.

Even if you think Family Planning is evil, you might learn something useful in this article. I did. It's so enlightening, it might just adjust my whole worldview.

Read the full article here:

Make Birth Control, Not War: The human tendency toward war is based on biology, but the right family planning policies can redirect the world toward peace. (Hayden & Potts, 2010)

"giving people the ability to determine family size"?

People don't need to be GIVEN that "ability" (especially through artificial birth control that leads to health problems in women or through abortions), people naturally HAVE the ability to determine the size of their family natural ways, through Natual Family Planning, and yes, modern technologies can help (eg. determining fertile days for a family to decide wether to try for a baby or abstain), but I'm afraid the author of the article meant pumping the females with hormones so they don't get pregnant and overpopulate the Earth (in consequence subjecting them to cancer and further reproductive health issues) and aborting all babies that are "too much" for the population.
No, thanks.