USFG should adopt a Childbirth Limitation policy

I thank BlackVoid for the topic. ==Weighing mechanism== We should evaluate this debate using a utilitarian framework to decide which policy is in the United States' best interest. ==My case== C1) The Demographic Transition If you observe the history of wealthy developed countries, their populations go through different phases as their wealth increases. During phase 2, death rates decline as the society is able to afford better sanitation and medical care. [1] In phase 3, birth rates decline because rising living standards make raising kids more expensive. [2] In addition, more educated women have fewer children because they have more career opportunities. [3] Because birth rates naturally decline with wealth, overpopulation is only a problem in poor countries. The United States is not a poor country, so it does not need to worry about overpopulation. In fact, the U.S. and other developed countries actually need to increase their population growth because people are choosing to have too few children. Reason Magazine explains the coming under-population crisis as follows: "The "demographic winter" is coming . . . the demographic winter augurs little good, e.g., economic collapse and social deterioration. If current trends continue world population should begin a steep decline sometime around the middle of the 21st century. Why? Because total fertility rates (TFRs) are plummeting around the world. Population stability is achieved when each woman bears an average of 2.1 kids over the course of her lifetime—one for her, one for her male partner, and a little overage to make up for childhood deaths. Today, there are sixty countries in which TFRs are below 2.1. For example, the European Union's TFR is 1.5 and no EU member state has a TFR at replacement or above. Even high population developing countries have seen steep declines in fertility. Since 1970, China's TFR fell from 5.8 to 1.6; India's from 5.8 to 2.9; Indonesia from 5.6 to 2.4; Japan's from 2.0 to 1.3; Mexico's from 6.8 to 2.4; Brazil's from 5.4 to 2.3; and South Africa's from 5.9 to 2.7. The U.S. TFR dropped from 2.55 in 1970 to around 2.1 today, largely because of the influx of higher fertility immigrants. However, the fertility of second generation Americans drops to the level of longer established Americans." [4] In the United States, we need to encourage people to have MORE children, not fewer. France is so desperate that they are paying people to have more kids. When a society has too few children, there are not enough young people to support the elderly. In the U.S., too few children would mean that Medicare and Social Security would become totally insolvent. China's notorious "One Child" policy has resulted in an aging population that cannot support itself; according to Fareed Zakaria in the book Post-American World, "China's median age will rise from thirty-three in 2005 to forty-five in 2050, a remarkable graying of the population. By 2030, China may have nearly as many senior citizens sixty-five years of age or older as children under fifteen . . . The effects of an aging population are considerable. First, there is the pension burden – fewer workers supporting more gray-haired workers." [5] Anyone in the U.S. who has more than two children is actually doing us a favor by keeping our birth rate above replacement levels. According to Zakaria, one of the U.S.'s greatest assets is our large and young population, which is key to maintaining an innovative economy. C2) technological improvements Technological improvements have historically solved overpopulation. In the 1800s, Thomas Malthus predicted a looming overpopulation crisis because he observed that populations followed exponential growth models whereas food production only grew linearly. However, his predictions proved wrong because not only did populations stop growing exponentially (due to the demographic transition), but also food production started growing exponentially rather than linearly due to technological improvements. Due to selective breeding of crops for higher yields and improvements in fertilizer (referred to as "the Green Revolution"), food production has continued to grow fast enough to keep up with population increases. C3) Rights In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court held that couples have a right to privacy (based on the 5th Amendment), and the government must stay out of decisions made in the bedroom. [6] The decision of whether to have more than 2 children falls clearly within this standard. In addition, a childbirth ban violates the First Amendment, since Catholics don't believe in birth control. In addition, depending on how my opponent chooses to punish offenders, this law would likely violate the 8th Amendment. Under China's One Child policy, if parents tried to have more than one child, the child was either killed upon birth or the parents were imprisoned, or both. This is a double bind: either the Supreme Court would overturn this Two Child policy, rendering it ineffective, or the U.S. government will be allowed to violate the Constitution whenever it wants and The Document becomes nothing more than a meaningless scrap of paper. In addition, having a child's parents imprisoned is not in the best interest of the child or society in general, since society will be forced to provide for the remaining children. ==Rebuttal== * My opponent says: Large families are the biggest problem in regards to childbirth. My first source (1) shows that 28% of women have 3 or more kids by the time they lose their reproductive ability.* His source actually shows fertility rates are declining in the U.S.: "Are big broods back? Not really, says Steve Martin, a sociologist at the University of Maryland. When Martin crunched the numbers from a 2004 government survey — the most recent available — he found that 28 percent of women age 35 to 44, who are winding up their childbearing years, have three kids or more. Ten years ago, it was 29 percent." The rates are in decline. *My opponent cites Octamom and another couple with 19 children* These two made the news precisely because they are such rare anomalies. And remember, the U.S. needs higher birth rates. *My opponent says his goal is that birth rates will be lower than death rates* This would lead to an aging population with no one to support it, and Medicare/Social Security would be in even more trouble than they already are. It will stagnate the U.S. economy since Fareed Zakaria points out that most inventors and Nobel Laureates make their major discoveries when they are young. A large, young population is key to U.S. economic success. Unless you want the U.S. to be a nation of old people by 2050, vote Con. [1] http://web.pdx.edu... [2] http://www.hcs.harvard.edu... [3] http://reason.com... [4] http://reason.com... [5] p. 197 [6] http://www.pbs.org...