World Congress of Families Appalled by UK Group That Wants to Limit Family Size
by Staff
July 23, 2007
(christiansunite.com) -- "We've always known the population-planners are totalitarians are heart. But such candor is rare," said Allan C. Carlson, International Secretary of the World Congress of Families. Carlson was responding to a report by the British group The Optimum Population Trust.The Trust is demanding that parents in the United Kingdom limit family size. If they won't do so voluntarily, the organization says coercive measures will be necessary.
"This is appalling," Carlson commented. "In China, compulsory population control has led to forced abortions and sterilizations and infanticide. Do the British people want to see these horrors inflicted on the United Kingdom?"
The Optimum Population Trust's hysteria is occasioned by a recent blip in British child-bearing, which rose from 1.8 children per woman in 2005 to 1.87 in 2006. Demographers attribute the increase to more career women having children later in life.
This is still far below the post-World War II high for Britain, 2.93 in 1964. More significantly, it's well below replacement level of 2.11. Even if the current rate is maintained, the United Kingdom will still see its population decline in every generation, absent massive immigration.
"The Optimum Population Trust is composed of radical environmentalists," Carlson charges. "They want the British to commit demographic suicide to reduce the global consumption of resources and set an example to the Third World. The group has actually calculated that the average British child born today will have the 'environmental impact' of 620 round-trip trans- Atlantic flights in the course of his or her lifetime."
Carlson noted: "Such a skewed perspective is the result of viewing children as a burden rather than a blessing. A modern society can't be maintained without a robust population. Besides having an 'energy footprint,' a child born in Britain today could develop a new energy source or make a significant contribution to cleaning up the environment."
World Congress of Families IV was held in Warsaw, May 11-13. The Warsaw Declaration, adopted by the 3.400-plus delegates from 54 countries, affirms, "Joyful responsibility for every child-to-be, versus fear of the child expressed in the contraceptive mentality." To read the complete Warsaw Declaration, go to www.worldcongress.org/WCF4/wcf4.dec.htm.
The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seeks to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society. The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families - Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2006).
