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The following, is an abridgement of one of the seven e-mails I
received from Times readers about my column of April 18.
Thanks Jose Maria Alcasid, Beth Barrios, Ruben
Calip, Eddie Leon, Dr. Eugene Pulmano, Phyllis Quinn and Apollo
Salle.
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“Peace and blessings!
“I read with great interest your op-ed in the
April 18, 2008 online edition of the Manila Times entitled
“Population Increase Is Down.” I am so happy that there are
people in the Philippine media such as yourself who exposes the myth
of overpopulation. Every now and then, I would be distressed to
watch in The Filipino Channel population control advocates rehashing
the overpopulation fallacy and then using it to promote artificial
contraception. It saddens me that not many people there in the
Philippines are aware that overpopulation is exactly just that: a
myth.
“Now there was this coffee-table book that I
bought in New York several years ago; it is a Ripley’s
believe-it-or-not kind of a coffee-table book which lists hard to
believe but actually true facts. One such fact is that if one is
simply were to gather literally all the peoples in the world (just
gather them up all together), they will all fit in the Isle of
Wight, a small island off the southern coast of England (and the
rest of planet Earth will then be totally empty).
“If there is a population problem right now,
it is not overpopulation but UNDER population. And this problem is
faced most acutely by, guess where, Europe. The widespread use of
contraception and, yes, abortion in that continent for the past
40-some years is now taking its toll. The Europeans (including, sad
to say, the supposedly Catholic French, Spaniards, and Italians) are
literally disappearing from the face of the earth, and the United
Nations itself admitted that, in a study a few years ago, the birth
rates in Europe are now so low that, frighteningly enough, it is now
beyond replaceable levels, and this is already the UN talking.
(Actually, the exact same thing is happening here in the United
States and the sole factor that is keeping the US population stable
is none other than immigration). And I think that is reflected in
the phenomenon that more and more young Europeans are marrying
either outside their nationalities or even outside their race and
perhaps the most visible sign of that is that the two Danish princes
both married non-Danes (the heir to the throne married an Australian
woman while his younger brother married a woman who is half-British,
half-Chinese). Now I have a German pen pal, and he is married to a
Colombian woman; and this German pen pal of mine has one relative
who married an Argentine woman, another relative who married a
Paraguayan woman, and a friend or another relative who married a
Nigerian woman (German tennis legend Boris Becker himself married a
black woman, although they have long since divorced, while his
female counterpart Steffi Graf married American tennis star Andre
Agassi).
“This kind of population problem is now so
dire that some European countries are now taking very radical
measures. Germany and Spain, for instance, now give tax breaks to
married couples who have four children, and the tax breaks will
increase per additional child. France embarked on a billboard
campaign which consists of billboards being set up across the
country with big, bold proclamations saying ‘France needs
infants!’ And Germany, because it had so many job openings which
could not be filled as the local population was either too young or
too old, liberalized its immigration policies starting from the
mid-90’s which then resulted in the influx of immigrants coming
from Africa and the Middle East who then filled up those positions.
The problem got highlighted in a particularly heart-breaking way in
France. The heat wave that ravaged the country a few years ago was
especially hard on the French elderly, particularly those living in
nursing homes. It claimed the lives of hundreds of old people! It
then got noted that a great many of those elderly were the same men
and women of childbearing age during the 60' s when the sexual
revolution was at its height and, carried away by the revolution’s
mentality, chose to remain childless or, if they had children, only
had one or two. What happened was that, upon reaching old age, they
ended up in nursing homes as there is now nobody to care for them
either because they were childless to start with.
“By the way, the most ‘westernized’
country there in Asia, which is Japan, is also facing the exact same
population problem: the New York Times reported years back that
Japanese government officials are now worrying that if the Japanese
continue to have low birth rates as they do now, by 2050, one-half
of Japan will be literally uninhabited.
“Let us continue to pray and/or work for the
respect for life because only when we acknowledge the dignity of
every human person, born and unborn, and recognize the sanctity of
human life from the moment of conception till natural death will
there be genuine and lasting peace on earth.”
Apollo Salle
Hillside, New Jersey, USA
rqb@manilatimes.net
rq_bas@yahoo.com
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