Introducing The Next Generation Of Leaders And Thinkers

How Birth Control Could Literally Save the World

Birth control has been a controversial and taboo topic since it’s creation; especially since the pill was released for contraceptive use in 1960. There have always been reasons given on why contraceptives are bad or ungodly. There’s the “sex should only be for reproductive purposes,” or the “contraceptives condone premarital sex,” and many others. However, there haven’t been many good reasons given for contraceptives other than the fact that you don’t have a baby when you don’t want to, or that some lessen menstrual symptoms.

Other than the everyday reasons to start using birth control, there’s another reason that’s bigger and more important than all of us: population. No matter what your religious affiliation, or how many conspiracy theories you believe in, you know that the Earth has a lot (and I mean a lot) of humans, and the numbers are only growing.

This may not seem like a problem at first glance, but it is. In fact, it’s a huge problem. If you watch the world population clock, you can see that there are over 7 billion people in the world right now and the numbers go up as much as every second. This is an issue because of something called carrying capacity.

When studying ecosystems, scientists use the term carrying capacity to describe the maximum population of one species that a specific ecosystem can provide for. Typically, a species will hit their carrying capacity when there are too many animals and not enough food. The amount of food supply spreads thinner between each animal until they’re all malnourished, and they all begin to starve and die. So in terms of humans, we ask the question, how many humans can live on Earth before we all starve to death?

That’s a pretty dark question, but it’s one that we need to be asking. How many humans can the Earth provide for in terms of food alone (not even factoring space, water, or health)? Scientists believe that the Earth would only be able to support 10 billion people, and that’s if everyone were vegetarian. Everyone would need to stop eating meat because mass amounts of food are put into raising livestock that do not feed as many as the original crops would.

Obviously, 10 billion people wouldn’t collectively decide to change their diets, so the capacity is thought to actually fall quite short of 10 billion.

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re all going to starve out and die. As the world becomes more socially progressive, the average family size is becoming smaller. This means that though we will eventually hit 9-10 billion people, we may be able to stabilize at that number instead of going over. Even so, that amount of people would cause problems aside from food.

We all also need water, space, and health to survive. Though water and space are not expected to run out before food, the more people the faster disease spreads. This is because when people are in closer proximity to each other, disease spreads faster. Also, migration from one place to another (which would happen since people would go where the food is) introduces foreign diseases that then spread.

So now that you’ve been pounded with a lot of scary statistics, what can we do about it? That’s right, birth control. Obviously, the less babies people have, the less people we will create and the slower the population will grow. This isn’t to say that everyone should stop creating the next generation. The use of contraceptives only prevents unintended pregnancies.

It might not seem like preventing the unintended pregnancies (including unwanted and mistimed pregnancies) would make enough of a difference, but studies show that about 82 million of the 213 million pregnancies in 2012 were unintended. That’s about 40% of pregnancies, which is quite a bit.

That means that if all pregnancies were intended, then about 82 million less babies would be born every year, which would at least slow our dangerously fast approach towards carrying capacity.

Plus, unintended pregnancies usually result in abortions, adoption, or lives with unstable financial situations. This means the though you’re preventing a human life, you’re at least keeping that life from facing situations that may be harder than that of what a planned baby might experience (obviously this isn’t an absolute, only a generalization).

However, sometimes contraceptives are faulty, people don’t have access to them, or they go against someone’s beliefs. Or, in some cases, people simply aren’t educated enough about their contraceptive options or the dangers of ignoring population control. By educating others of contraceptives and the issues of our rising population, we could potentially slow the growth and prevent hitting or exceeding our carrying capacity.

If birth control doesn’t contradict with your religious or personal beliefs, you don’t want to have a child at the moment or ever, and you’re sexually active, go to Planned Parenthood’s website or talk to your doctor about your options. Then, spread the word to friends and family. The world’s population is a tricky issue and one that impacts everyone in the world. Don’t ignore it.  

Related Posts