Ethics Newsline®

British doctors ignite controversy with medical journal editorial calling for the British to save the environment by limiting number of children

LONDON
The British press last week was intrigued by a controversial essay in the British Medical Journal that calls for couples to help the environment by having no more than two children.

According to the U.K. Guardian, the editorial calls on family doctors to encourage the view that big families are environmentally tantamount to driving a gas-guzzling car.

The London Daily Telegraph reports that John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health at University College London, and general practitioner Dr. Pip Hayes wrote: “Unplanned pregnancy, especially in teenagers, is a problem for the planet, as well as the individual concerned. ”

“But what about planned pregnancies?” they ask in the editorial. “Should we now explain to U.K. couples who plan a family that stopping at two children, or at least having one less child than first intended, is the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren? ”

Britain’s population is projected to swell from 60.6 million to 77 million by 2050, London’s Daily Mirror reports, and according to the editorial, introducing a two-child policy would reduce that figure to 55 million.

In a Mirror survey piece, proponent Rosamund McDougall, policy director of a population control advocacy group, argues in favor a two-child policy: “We are suggesting that people think seriously about the impact of population growth, and about peaceful solutions.”

“Nature’s ways of dealing with overpopulation are cruel — famine, disease, and wars over diminishing resources. It’s madness to think that the U.K. will be isolated from worsening developments worldwide,” McDougall argued. “We are more crowded than China and England is the fourth most densely populated country in the world. In the last half century we’ve accommodated an extra 10 million people and the stresses on our resources are clear.”

But Julie O’Neill, mother of 12 children, disagreed when interviewed by the Mirror: “I can see where their argument is coming from — the need to think about the future of our environment — but there are so many other important issues they should talk about. What about couples with no kids who own gas-guzzling [sport-utility vehicles nicknamed] Chelsea tractors? What about all the emissions from aeroplanes used by people to fly around the world on holiday several times a year?”

Sources: Guardian, July 25 — Telegraph, July 24 — Mirror, July 24 — Daily Mail, July 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 21 — Related Newsline story, May 5 — Related Newsline story, May 5 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 21 — Related Newsline Commentary, Sep. 17, 2007.